He’d once thought his life didn’t need changing, but he could see now that it most definitely did. His life before Carla had blown into it like a whirlwind had been terrible. A cold, empty desert, devoid of colour and light and warmth. For the week he’d shared it with her, it had been brighter and shinier and better.
She’d shown him what it could be like to let someone in. When he thought about the void he’d lived with for so long, he couldn’t find it. She’d filled it with promise and hope. She’d helped put him back together. She’d risen to his defence. She’d never once been anything other than honest and upfront with him. She’d given him her love and her loyalty, even after everything she’d been through, and what had he done?
Still determined to believe that he could only survive if he remained alone, he’d sent her away.
What he’d lost hit him then with the force of a battering ram, slamming into the mile-high walls he’d spent years constructing and reducing them to rubble and dust.
Carla, with her unassailable belief in family and friends, was everything he’d never known he wanted, he realised, his head pounding with the realisations now r
aining down on him. Everything he’d been subconsciously seeking his entire life while convincing himself that he wasn’t lonely and he didn’t need anyone. She was strong and brave and tough. And, Dio, the loyalty she so fiercely believed in... He’d been on the receiving end of that and it had been stunning.
He’d had the chance to build a future with someone who understood him and who he understood. After years of searching he’d finally found a place to belong and develop new foundations upon which, with her, he could have built a life, something brilliant and strong.
How could he have been such a fool?
Well, he was done with allowing his preoccupation with the past to influence his present. He’d let it dictate his thoughts, his behaviour and his actions for too long. Carla had shown him a glimpse of what his life could be if he took a risk and spent it with her.
And taking the risk was exactly what he was going to do, because as he looked briefly around Finn’s study he realised that he wanted the photos. He wanted what Finn had. All of it. And he wanted it with Carla. Seven days ago he’d wondered who the hell fell in love in a week. Well, apparently, he thought, giving free rein to the emotions that had been clamouring for acknowledgement for days and letting them buffet him, that would be him.
‘Fix up the interview,’ he said, his heart banging so hard against his ribs he feared one might crack. ‘It’s a good idea.’
‘It was Carla’s.’
Of course it was. All the good ideas were hers.
‘Would you mind if we continued this conversation another time?’ he said, leaping to his feet as if the chair were on fire. ‘There’s somewhere I have to be.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CARLA SAT AT the table on her tiny roof terrace, the glass of rosé before her untouched and the rays of the setting sun doing little to warm the chill she felt deep inside her that just wouldn’t shift.
When was it going to stop? she wondered with a sniff. When was the pain going to go away?
She’d done her best to keep herself busy over the last seven days. Unable to face work when she was liable to burst into tears without warning, she’d requested another week’s leave. She’d gone to Wales to talk to her parents because in the midst of her agony it had struck her that she’d never told them she didn’t hold them responsible for what had happened to her and she’d needed to rectify that. There’d been conversation and hugs and even more tears and she’d invited them to come and stay any time before leaving, feeling as if a great weight had lifted from her shoulders.
If only the same could be said for the weight in her heart.
She’d tried so hard to talk herself out of her feelings for Rico. She’d been one hundred per cent mistaken in her conviction he did feel something for her, she’d told herself resolutely. She’d had no indication that what they’d shared had been anything other than casual. He’d considered her a tourist, someone who by definition was transient. For all she knew, he shared his past with all his lovers. She might be the only one he’d ever invited to stay on his island but that had just been circumstance. She hadn’t been special and she’d been a fool to think otherwise.
But even if she had been special, none of it had been real. For the brief period they’d been together, they’d existed in a bubble. Neither of them had been living their real life. He was based in Venice, while she lived here in London. He was a billionaire, while she was most definitely not. He owned funds and islands, private jets and helicopters and who knew what else? She owned a one-bedroom top-floor flat in Zone 3 and a six-year-old second-hand car.
What she thought she’d been doing giving him that fridge magnet she had no idea. He’d looked at it as if he’d never seen such an awful thing in his life. Clearly the sun had got to her because what on earth would a worldly billionaire with scars and an edge want with a fridge magnet? He, the man who didn’t do trinkets of any kind, let alone seriously tasteless ones, was hardly going to have had a revelation about something she’d given him. No doubt it had gone in the bin the minute she’d left.
In fact, she’d had a lucky escape, she’d just about managed to convince herself. If things had carried on in the same vein, with that intensity, how long would it have been before she found herself so wrapped up in him she didn’t want to be anywhere else? Before her identity and her independence completely disappeared? Before she became wholly reliant on him for her happiness and well-being and everything else? And see how she’d feared putting her emotions into the hands of a man? Well, she’d been right to.
She was glad he hadn’t asked her to stay, and even gladder he’d been honest, even if it had been brutal. He’d saved her from a world of torment. Except he hadn’t, because she was in torment now, and she didn’t believe any of the stuff she’d been trying to tell herself anyway.
But the pain would subside eventually, she told herself wretchedly, as yet another wave of sadness washed over her, pricking her eyes and tightening her throat. She’d get over him and this endless misery. She’d got over far worse. The excruciating longing she felt when she thought about everything Georgie had would fade with time. Of course it would. She had work. She had friends. And now family. She wasn’t alone.
On Monday she’d send his phone back. She had to rid herself of her ridiculous obsession with scrolling through all the photos of him she’d taken. It wasn’t healthy. The amount of wine she’d consumed over the last week wasn’t particularly healthy either. And as for the linguine alla vongole she ordered night after night from her local Italian restaurant, well, that had to stop too.
Tonight’s delivery, she vowed, despondently getting to her feet in response to the buzzer and heading into the kitchen to let her favourite delivery guy in, would be the last. Because what choice did she have but to move on, however much it broke her heart?
But when she opened the door and found Rico standing there, actually there on her doorstep, holding her bag of food and looking so handsome he took her breath away, she realised she could no more move on than she could fly to the moon. She was rooted to the spot, her heart suddenly thundering and her head spinning.
‘May I come in?’
His voice was gruff, and he looked as tired as she felt, and she desperately wanted to take him in her arms and smooth the exhaustion away because God, she’d missed him so much. But she didn’t know why he was here, and he’d hurt her badly, so instead she lifted her chin and straightened her spine. She had to be so careful around this man.