Ariana saw his expression change, the acknowledging nod of his head, and though there was no reason for it that she would allow, it was like a knife twisting in an unhealable wound.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Regret has been my dominant emotion, I agree. Regret for a great deal. But most of all...’ his dark, obsidian eyes rested on hers ‘...for my own blind stupidity.’
And mine!she wanted to cry—but what would be the purpose? Everything between her and Luca had been a mistake. Causing nothing but misery and the loss of an innocent life that should never have existed, and so very nearly maiming a man to whom she had been, and always would be, nothing.
She heard his words in her head, still twisting that knife in her side.‘We can never be close—you are the last woman I would ever want to marry.’
He was speaking again, his voice cutting across her bleak and painful thoughts.
‘Blind stupidity,’ she heard him repeat. ‘The blind and unforgivable stupidity of my denial of what has been there from the very first.’
His eyes were on her, opaque, unreadable, yet there was something in them that held hers to them as unbreakably as steel.
‘My desire for you.’ He drew a breath, harsh and heavy. ‘A desire, Ariana, that I forced myself to deny from the moment I realised its overwhelming power.’
Her face contorted. ‘And I know you hated yourself for it! You didn’t want to want me! You said that to me! God, Luca, I know that—I know I meant nothing to you!’
‘Because I would allow nothing else!’ His voice slashed across hers and he took a breath, a shuddering one, that heaved in his chest as he exhaled again. ‘Ariana,whydo you think I walked out on you that morning in New York? If I’d stayed with you I would have been lost—’
He shifted position, a flicker of pain showing in his face as he did so. Abruptly, he spoke again. His voice was different now. Edged and guarded.
‘Do you never wonder what made me want to marry Mia? Quiet and gentle and sweet and passionless.’
His expression changed again. There was a distant look in his eyes now, and they were shifting again, a bleakness in them.
‘Because that was what I valued. Craved. To make a quiet, placid marriage! Totally unlike my own parents’ marriage—’ He broke off, his gaze turning inward. Then, ‘Their marriage was hell. Thanks to my mother. She revelled in making scenes, raging at my hapless father, not caring what people thought, how they stared at her, shocked. She would make furious accusations, denunciations, storming at my father with her endless demands and complaints, and always,alwaysmy father tried to placate and appease her. He never, ever stood up to her—because he was besotted by her, abjectly in her thrall. And Ivowedthat I would never be like him! Never entrust myself to a woman who had any power over me.’
His voice hardened and his gaze opened to hers, returning to the present.
‘Least of all sexual power.’
He drew a breath, harsh and heavy, his mouth compressing.
‘And then I encountered you. And I found that my desire for you—which I could not resist that night in New York, though I knew...knew... I should—had the power to make me betray the quiet, gentle woman I had found in Italy, whom I had thought the ideal wife for me.’
His voice was condemning.
His face darkened.
‘Everything you threw at me that morning...every accusation as I walked out on you...was true. And it burned like a brand on my skin that it should be so! I used that burn to tell myself how your rage and fury was the very proof of how impossible you were for me! How right I was to walk away...to go back to Mia thinking I would find the peace with her that I thought was what I craved.’
The expression in his eyes changed.
‘It was the worst decision of my life.’
Ariana stood there, hearing him speak, unable to move a muscle. A pulse started to throb in her constricted throat. She saw Luca turn away, walk haltingly to his wheelchair, sink down in it. Pain flashed across his face as his legs bent, then relief as the pressure on them was lifted.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I cannot stand for long yet.’
He lifted his face to look at her, and in his eyes was an openness she had never seen before. And his next words were an admission she had never heard before.
‘Mia was a mirage, conjured out of my own fears. She was never real.’ He looked away, out over the distant sea He paused, then spoke again with difficulty. ‘I... I never knew her. Not the person she was. And...’ he took a breath, also with difficulty ‘...and I nearly ruined her life as well.’ He frowned, looking back at Ariana. ‘I... I am glad she has found her own happy ending—her husband Matt was with her when she came to see me in the hospital. But as for me—’ He broke off. Then, ‘I should have stayed with you,’ he said. ‘I should have stayed, after our night together, and faced up to what had happened.’
His voice was harsh, and Ariana felt herself swallow, as painfully as if a stone were lodged there. ‘We had sex, Luca, that was all.’
‘No.’ It was a blunt, one-word contradiction. ‘That was not all.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, then they flashed open again. ‘You know it was not all, Ariana! You know that had I not walked out I would never have gone back to Italy to marry Mia. She would have become meaningless.’
And now his voice was different again, and his eyes fastened on hers with so dark a power she could not break it, so dark a power she could no longer breathe.