It had been like a beautiful seamless dance, and somehow she had tripped—had forgotten the rules, had tipped the scales from trusting to wary almost imperceptibly.
So she lay there, trying to pinpoint the moment it had ended, when, for Luca, the light had gone out on their relationship.
Trying not to ponder what she had done wrong.
Because she had done nothing wrong, Emma knew that.
It wasn’t about wrong or right, or trying to please, or bending to fit—she had known from the start it would be short-lived, that Luca, by his own clear admission, would never loan his heart to anyone for long.
She had accepted the rules of the game, had gone into it utterly prepared—and had come out of it utterly broken.
Had been so sure that she could handle it.
Change him. Be the one.
Glimpse a future for them.
So, instead of sleeping, she lay there, rueing her own carelessness, because she had been taught, and she had learnt, and yet she had chosen to forget.
What a fool she’d been…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE call when it came was unexpected. Luca had won, Emma finally decided. She had her notice typed up and printed off and it sat waiting in her bag for when the right moment presented itself. She simply couldn’t do it any longer.
Evelyn had had her blood test that morning and the bad news that very afternoon. Luca had offered to let her go home, but Evelyn had declined. ‘This will not be the last time,’ he had said to her, as Emma had sat with her arm around Evelyn.
‘Maybe it’s time to see someone else. I have found out about a very good clinic. Their success rate with IVF is high.’ He handed his PA a thick glossy brochure.
‘We can’t afford to go there,’ Evelyn sobbed.
‘I am to be sent the bills,’ Luca said, ‘and this time you will take the time off that you need and rest properly while you wait for the results.’
‘Why would you do this for me?’ Evelyn wailed as Emma wondered the same thing—he could be so nice, so charming, so very, very kind. Ah, but Evelyn was vital to Luca, she thought cynically, the last thing he must privately want was for his esteemed PA to be leaving—but his show of kindness had caught her off guard.
As he always did.
Her throat thickened with tears as he spoke to Evelyn, as she heard again the rare tenderness that she craved from him. ‘Because you do so much for me, because always you have been loyal to me. Because I know that when your baby is here—and it will be here, Evelyn—that even if you come back to work for me part time, or even if you decide to never work again, I will be able to call on you, perhaps to train someone up, perhaps to help for a few days. And more than that, we are friends. I know I can count on you, and you can count on me too.’
When he was nice, there was no one nicer, Emma realised.
No one.
Evelyn was perhaps the one woman he could sustain a relationship with because there was no sex involved, no attraction, just mutual liking and respect.
Emma would kill to have the latter two from him.
Later, sitting at her desk, staring out at the grey autumnal sky that declared summer over, when Luca strode past her desk and to his office and slammed the door behind him, she felt like one of the trees waving in the streets below. Slight, every breeze exposing the bare truth beneath, and she couldn’t do it to herself any longer.
Couldn’t cling on when there was nothing left—couldn’t stave off winter.
She didn’t hate him after all, she only hated his behaviour.
Hated it that he didn’t love her.
And she must remember this, Emma realised, when she told him about the baby.
If she told him.