For a second, Luca had a vivid image of the girl she must have been over the years, sitting just like that, gazing out of a window, dreaming of adventure.
‘Cordelia,’ he husked, moving quickly towards her. ‘No, please don’t turn me away. I’ve come...you’re right...’
Luca, she thought, heart leaping, an instinctive reaction to seeing him, to hearing the deep, velvety tone of his voice.
‘What do you want?’ She edged away from him because he’d perched right next to her, crowding her and sending her nervous system into frantic free fall. She wished she’d turned the lights on because it was too dark in the room. It had, somehow, felt more comforting to be in the dark when she had entered the room half an hour previously.
‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
‘Forget it.’
‘You surprised me. I... I wasn’t expecting you...when you walked into my office...’
‘So I gathered,’ Cordelia said icily. ‘As you can see, I don’t want to have anything to do with you or this gala. I just want you to leave me alone. Dad is going to be here pretty soon and I shall tell him about the pregnancy and then I intend to get a taxi to the nearest hotel for the night. You want to have fun with your ex? Then, by all means, go ahead, but don’t think that I’m going to be hanging around in the background, putting up with unacceptable behaviour. I’m very sorry if this means you’re going to have to do what most modern-day couples do who share children but aren’t together. You’re going to have to arrange visiting rights and get a lawyer to sort out maintenance payments. Apologies for putting you in the terrible position of having to behave like a twenty-first-century man, but that’s life.’
‘I... I’m sorry, mi tesoro.’
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘But it’s what you are,’ Luca said softly. ‘You’re my treasure.’
‘Don’t!’ She looked away quickly and made a determined effort to staunch her foolish desire to burst out crying.
‘Look at me. Please.’
‘Go away, Luca.’
‘You think I was doing something in there with Isabella?’
‘Why would I think that?’ Her voice dripped sarcasm. It hurt. It hurt looking at him and it hurt not looking at him. Everything hurt but she knew that this was a turning point. She had to stick to her guns and walk away or else get lost in a relationship that would eat her up and spit her out.
‘What you saw...’
‘I don’t want to hear.’
‘I was comforting her, my darling.’ He reached for her hand and, predictably, she snatched her hand away and he couldn’t blame her.
He honestly couldn’t blame her if she walked away and never looked back. He had lied to her about his identity when they had first met; he had questioned her arrival on his doorstep, immediately suspecting the worst. He had lectured her with monotonous regularity on his inability to give her anything beyond what was demanded by duty. He had held himself aloof when he had known that what she wanted and what she deserved was a guy completely committed to her for all the right reasons.
He had presented her with marriage, a union shorn of all the things that should define it, and he had blithely expected her to fall in line.
And then tonight...
When Luca thought about what she must have felt when she’d walked into that room, he wanted to punch something.
And his reaction when she’d pinned him to the spot? He’d brushed aside her very valid concerns because he hadn’t seen why he had to explain himself.
On every level he had laid down the rules and expected her to fall in line because that was what everyone did. What he’d seen in her was an opportunity for getting hurt. He’d fallen for her but, instead of facing up to it, he’d rejected it and pushed her back because he’d been afraid.
How could he now expect her to hear him out and give him one last chance?
Why would she not react the way anyone would react and assume that he was fabricating a story simply to get things back to where he wanted them to be?
Why wouldn’t she treat whatever he had to say with the cynicism he so richly deserved?
Luca went from pale to sickly ashen as his mind began running away with possible outcomes.
She’d wanted love and marriage and all that stuff he had spent a lifetime writing off as unreasonable nonsense. It was hers for the taking now, but would she believe him or would it be too little, too late?
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you refused to listen to a word I have to say,’ he told her with wrenching honesty. ‘And even if you did hear me out, I wouldn’t blame you if you sent me packing, but I really...need...to...explain myself.’
‘But I thought you never explained yourself to anyone, Luca,’ Cordelia said coldly. ‘I thought that if you said “believe me” it was my duty to ask no more questions.’
‘Once upon a time, I may have thought like that. I gave orders and people followed them without question,’ Luca said quietly, ‘but then I met you and it seems that everything changed. I don’t know when and I’m not sure how, I just know that I am not the man I once was.’
‘Oh, please.’ She turned to look away because she could feel his words dragging her back to a place she didn’t want to revisit, but he placed one finger on her chin and tilted her back to look at him and she couldn’t resist.
‘You are the best thing that ever happened to me and I was an idiot for not realising that sooner.’ He looked at her and breathed in deeply. This was foreign territory and he had to grope his way to find the right words. ‘I met
