‘You’d be wasting your time. There’d be nothing waiting for you here.’
The flatness of his tone struck her square in the chest, knocking the breath from her lungs, and she reeled. Where had the man she’d fallen in love with gone? Where was the smile and the warmth?
‘Are you sure?’ she said, her voice cracking a little in response to the ice she could feel forming inside him.
‘Quite sure.’
His expression was unreadable and his eyes were devoid of every emotion in existence, but his meaning couldn’t be any clearer. For whatever reason, he didn’t want her the way she wanted him and it was agony.
‘Right. No. Of course not. Sorry,’ she said, a thousand tiny darts stabbing at her chest.
‘We agreed a week.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t give y
ou what you want, Carla.’
Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t? She wasn’t going to ask. There was only so much humiliation she could bear. ‘It’s fine,’ she said, dredging up a smile from who knew where because she was not going to fall apart in front of him, however much it cost her. ‘It’s not your fault I fell in love with you.’ The almost imperceptible widening of his eyes was the only indication he’d heard what she’d said. Other than that he remained silent, his face expressionless. ‘None of this is your fault,’ she continued. It was hers. All hers. She was the one who’d read too much into everything and come to conclusions that didn’t exist. However much it broke her heart, he might never be ready to embrace everything she and life had to offer and there was nothing she could do about it. ‘I just have one last request,’ she said shakily, determined that some good should come of this.
‘Name it.’
‘I know I can’t force you to see things my way about getting to know Finn, but you’ve been looking for a family, Rico, and you have one. A great one. Please say you’ll at least think about meeting him. At least give me that.’
For the longest of moments he didn’t say anything—was he really going to make her beg, after everything?—but then he gave a short nod. ‘Va bene,’ he said. ‘I can give you that. I’ll think about it.’
‘Thank you.’
And with her heart in bits, her body aching with sadness and disappointment, the warmth of the day and the sunshine beating down on her a bitter contrast to the chill seeping into her bones and the darkness now enveloping her like a heavy black cloud, Carla turned on her heel and walked away.
* * *
With every step she took the strength leached from her limbs, but despite the stinging of her eyes and the sobs building in her chest she held it together through Check-in. She made her way through Security and Passport Control without giving in to the pain clawing at her stomach and shredding her heart.
It was only once she was on the plane and in the air and Rico hadn’t made a dramatic appearance to declare his love for her and beg her to stay—as she’d secretly, stupidly, been hoping—that her defences exploded and she crumbled.
How could she have got it so wrong? she thought desperately, tears leaking out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks as she stared out of the window, her heart breaking at the realisation that with every second she was leaving him behind. She’d been so sure. He’d taken on an employee in order to spend more time with her. He’d sought her counsel and shared intimate details of his past. He—a man who had spent so long on his own—had let her into his world.
But she hadn’t got it wrong, she told herself, nudging her sunglasses out of the way so she could wipe her eyes with a tissue as she went over the conversation for the hundredth time. He’d been tempted to say yes to dinner. He’d wanted to embrace everything she’d offered. She’d felt it. So why the resistance? Why didn’t he want to fight for her the way she wanted to fight for him? Why was his attachment to the past more important than a future with her? Why wasn’t she enough? Why wouldn’t he allow himself to love her?
She’d taken the biggest gamble of her life, she realised, the pain slicing through her and splitting her wide open unlike any she’d felt before, and she’d lost. What was she going to do?
* * *
Rico spent the first day following Carla’s departure once again thanking God at having had such a lucky escape. He’d been right to recognise the danger of her wanting more. He’d been right to reject her offer of dinner in London.
But as the relief faded the guilt set in. That she’d fallen in love with him was his fault. He should have put a stop to it sooner. He should have resisted her allure. He should never have opened up to her. He should never have let her into his life in the first place.
The rampant remorse sent him to his gym, where he tried to sweat out the image of how devastated she’d looked when he’d said there was nothing left for her here, which seemed to be permanently etched into his memory. He’d hurt her further when she’d declared she was in love with him and he hadn’t said a word, he realised grimly as he rowed a stretch of the Arno on the ergometer, his muscles screaming with every stroke. He’d done more than that. He’d crushed her. But who the hell fell in love in a week?
If only he could remove her from his head as decisively as he’d removed her from his home. He didn’t want her hanging around in there with her smiles and her warmth. It shouldn’t have even been hard to do. It wasn’t as if she’d left anything behind apart from that maledetto fridge magnet that was hideous and served no purpose and which he should have tossed in the bin instead of slapping it on the door of his fridge and then doing his best to ignore it. He’d never wanted reminders of the past, he was all about looking forward, and he’d never understood why people grew so attached to things.
Carla definitely fell into the category of ‘the past’ yet annoyingly, frustratingly, his house was full of her. Everywhere he looked he could see her, especially in his bedroom, and the images that bombarded him were as vivid as they were unsettling. The villa felt strangely empty without her and when he wasn’t on the treadmill, running up and down virtual hills and pounding along virtual paths through virtual valleys and villages, he prowled around it, oddly restless and unpleasantly on edge. Being alone had never bothered him before. It was irritating and frustrating that it did now. He didn’t even have much work to distract him, since the fund manager he’d hired was so keen to impress.
Unable to stand it any longer, Rico went to Milan to visit a client. The fact that the city was also home to the law firm where his parents had lodged their letter to him all those years ago was not a coincidence.
Because when he wasn’t remonstrating with himself about how badly he’d handled Carla and regretting the promise guilt had forced him to make, he found he couldn’t stop thinking about these brothers of his, the family he might have out there. Long before he’d met her and lost his mind, Finn at least had been lurking in the depths of his conscience, unwelcome and unacknowledged but nevertheless there.