At least before she’d had hope, and she’d had the happiness of her memories—a happiness that might have returned in time.
Now, there was nothing. How could she look back at any of the times they’d been together and not see that what had been an incredibly special moment for her had meant literally nothing to him?
The sound of a taxi door closing had her turning on autopilot and she used the shift as an opportunity to wipe an errant tear from her cheek.
‘Santos, darling, I’m so sorry I’m late.’ A woman—not Maria but cast from the exact same mould, all leggy, slim, tanned with long blonde hair—stepped from the car and sashayed towards his home on sky-high heels. Her dress was like a second skin, moss-green with a deep V at the front and a slit to mid-thigh.
Amelia spun round to face him, the situation only just making itself obvious to her. What a fool! Here she was pouring her heart out to him and he was waiting on his date! His lover?
She was going to be sick. Oh, God.
She wanted to say something pithy. Something that would make light of this whole affair. She wanted the ground to swallow her whole. But her heart was breaking and she couldn’t hide that from him.
The woman came up to them, smiled with curiosity at Amelia then pressed a kiss to Santos’s lips. Bile rose in Amelia’s throat.
‘I don’t think we’ve met.’ The woman extended a manicured hand. Amelia stared at it.
‘No.’ Her voice sounded hollow. She couldn’t look at Santos but politeness had her shaking the other woman’s slim hand. ‘I’m just someone who used to work for Santos.’ She swallowed. Tears were engulfing her. She didn’t—couldn’t—say goodbye. She turned away, gripping the railing for support as she quickly moved down the steps, beyond grateful for her sensible ballet flats. She would never have been able to make a speedy getaway in heels like the other woman’s.
The other woman’s.
The way she’d leaned in and kissed him... They weren’t strangers and this wasn’t a first date. The idea of him being with someone else made her ache all over. The taxi was still there, the driver filling something out in his notebook. Amelia tapped on the window as she pulled the passenger door open. But Santos was right behind her, his hand on the door, his body framing hers as she moved to take a seat.
‘Wait.’ The word was drawn from deep within him, thick and dark. ‘Don’t go yet.’
A sob bubbled from her throat. ‘Why not?’ Her eyes lifted to his house. The front door was closed, his glamorous date no doubt ensconced inside.
‘You told me all of this. You said I wouldn’t matter. You said you’d never love me. You warned me. You haven’t done anything wrong.’
He was so close. She could feel his breath, each one ripped from his body. She had to get out of here. A full-blown breakdown was imminent and she wouldn’t subject him to that. She loved him enough not to want him to suffer unnecessary guilt. After all, what had he really done wrong? He’d warned her from the start.
I don’t believe in love—not romantic love, in any event. I don’t ask you not to love me because I’m arrogant, so much as because it’s utterly futile. I will never return it.
He stared at her and she waited for him to speak, but he didn’t, and the impossibility of all of this just made it worse. She sank into the taxi, her hand on the door. Still he stood there, his frame blocking the door from closing.
‘Please just let me go now.’
He continued to stare at her, his expression dark.
Tears filled her eyes; her heart was breaking. ‘I need to go.’
The plaintive cry did it. He seemed to rouse from something and step backward. A second later she pulled the taxi door closed and it drove away, taking her from his home, away from a scene that would be etched in the fibres of her being for ever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EVERY MORNING FOR the next week, he woke with a feeling of weight bearing down on him, suffocating him. Every day for the next week, he struggled to so much as breathe.
When he slept, he saw Amelia. Her eyes, her smile, her frown, her pain. The moment Pia had arrived and Amelia had seen her, he’d wanted to throttle something, or to reach out and stop time, to undo what had just happened.
How could she fail to believe he was sleeping with Pia? And then Pia had kissed him and stood at his side, as though they were a duo and Amelia a stranger, and he’d been incapable of doing anything but standing there, so blindsided by what she’d said, by the heart she was offering him, that he’d been temporarily immobilised.
It hadn’t been good enough. Amelia had looked at Pia and believed that he was already seeing other women. Hell, hadn’t that been his plan? Hadn’t he thought that taking Pia to the fundraiser ball—an event for which he was on the board—might lead to him feeling something for her? And he would have been relieved if that had been the case. If finally he could have looked at another woman and felt even the slightest flare of interest.
Amelia couldn’t have known that he’d been celibate since Paris. Amelia couldn’t have known that the idea of so much as having dinner with another woman disgusted him. How could he sit across the table from someone else and make small talk when anyone else now bored him senseless?
His father’s announcement—that he was getting divorced again—only added to the weight pressing on Santos’s chest. All these people and their damned belief in ‘love’. It destroyed lives. Look at Amelia and how she was feeling! She’d let herself fall in love with him and now she was suffering.
He focussed on two aspects of his life to the exclusion of all else: Cameron and his work.