LITMIR.BIZ

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the truth, no matter how painful that might be.

      ‘How did you get here?’ he demanded.

      She blinked at him in confusion. ‘I…drove.’

      He nodded. ‘You parked your car in the middle of the city when you’ve only recently passed your test?’

      ‘I gave the keys to the security guard.’ She licked her lips. ‘I told him I was your wife.’

      ‘So you thought you’d just drive up here and burst into my building and disrupt my meeting with a few pretty words and make it all better?’

      ‘I did…’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘I did what I thought was best.’

      ‘Best for you, you mean?’

      ‘Renzo—’

      ‘No!’ he interrupted savagely and now all the coldness had gone—to be replaced with a flickering fire and fury which burned in the depths of his black eyes. ‘I don’t want this. Capisci? I meant what I said, Darcy. I don’t want to live this way, wondering what the hell I’m going to find out about you next. Never knowing what you’re hiding from me, what secrets you’re concealing behind those witchy green eyes.’

      She searched his face for some kind of softening but there was none. And who could blame him? She’d known about his trust issues and she’d tested those issues to the limit. Broken them beyond repair so that they lay in shattered ruins between them. The hope which had been building inside her withered and died. Her lips pressed in on themselves but she would not cry. She would not cry.

      She nodded. ‘Then there’s nothing more to be said, is there? I’ll leave you so that you can get on with your meeting. You’re right. I should have rung ahead beforehand, but I was afraid you wouldn’t see me. I guess I would have been right.’ She swallowed. ‘Still, I’m sure we can work something out. The best and most amicable deal for our baby. I’m sure we both want that.’ There was a pause as she took one long last look at him, drinking in the carved olive features, the sensual lips and the gleam of his black eyes. ‘Goodbye, Renzo. Take…take good care of yourself.’

      And then, with her head held very high, she walked out of his office.

      Renzo stared at her retreating form, his mind spinning, aware of the door closing before opening again and his assistant rushing in.

      ‘I’m sorry about that, Renzo—’

      But he waved an impatient hand of dismissal until the woman left him alone again. He paced the floor space of his vast office, trying to concentrate on his latest project, but all he could think about was the luminous light of Darcy’s green eyes and the brimming suggestion of unshed tears. And suddenly he found himself imagining what her life must have been like. How unbearable it must have been. All the sordid things she must have witnessed—and yet she had come through it all, hadn’t she? He thought how she’d overcome her humble circumstances and what she had achieved. Not in some majorly high-powered capacity—she’d ended up waitressing rather than sitting on the board of some big company. But she’d done it with integrity. She’d financed her studies and read lots of novels while working two jobs—yet even when she’d been poured into that tight satin cocktail dress she had demonstrated a fierce kind of pride and independence. She’d never wanted to take a single thing from him, had she? She’d refused much more than she’d accepted and it hadn’t been an act, had it? It had been genuine. From the heart. A big heart, which she’d been scared to expose for fear that she’d be knocked back, just as she must have been knocked back so many times before.

      And he had done that to her. Knocked her back and let her go, right after she’d fiercely declared her love for him.

      Her love for him.

      He was prepared to give up that, along with her beauty and her energy, and for what?

      For what?

      A cold dread iced his skin as swiftly he left his office, passing his assistant’s desk without saying a word as he urgently punched the button of the elevator. But the journey down to the basement seemed to take for ever, and Renzo’s fist clenched as he glanced at his watch, because surely she would have left by now.

      It took a moment for his eyes to focus in the gloomy light of the subterranean car park but he couldn’t see her. Only now it wasn’t his fist which clenched but his heart—a tight spear of pain which made him feel momentarily winded. What if she’d driven off after his callous rejection and was negotiating the busy roads to Brighton as she made her way back towards an empty house?

      Pain and guilt washed over him as his eyes continued to scan the rows of cars and hope withered away inside him. And then he saw her on the other side of the car park in the ridiculously modest vehicle she’d insisted she wanted, in that stubborn way which often infuriated him but more often made his blood sing. He weaved his way through the cars, seeing her white face looking up at him as he placed the palm of his hand against the glass of the windscreen.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he mouthed, but she shook her head.

      ‘Let me in,’ he said, but she shook her head again and began putting the key in the ignition with shaking fingers.

      He didn’t move, but placed his face closer to the window, barely noticing that someone from the IT department had just got out of the lift and was staring at him in open-mouthed disbelief. ‘Open the door,’ he said loudly. ‘Or I’ll rip the damned thing off its hinges.’

      She must have believed him because the lock clicked and he opened the door and sat in the passenger seat before she could change her mind. ‘Darcy,’ he said.

      ‘Whatever it is you want to say,’ she declared fiercely, ‘I don’t want to hear it. Not right now.’

      She’d been crying. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red-rimmed and he realised that he’d never seen her cry—not once—she, who probably had more reason to cry than any other woman he’d known.

      He wanted to take her in his arms. To feel her warmth and her connection. To kiss away those drying tears as their flesh melted against each other as it had done so many times in the past. But touching was cheating—it was avoiding the main issue and he needed to address that. To face up to what else was wrong. Not in her, but in him. Because how could she have ever trusted him completely when he kept so much of himself locked away?

      ‘Just hear me out,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘And let me tell you what I should have told you a long time ago. Which is that you’ve transformed my life in every which way. You’ve made me feel stuff I never thought I’d feel. Stuff I didn’t want to feel, because I was scared of what it might do to me, because I’d seen hurt and I’d seen pain in relationships and I didn’t want any part of that. Only I’ve just realised…’ He drew in a deep breath and maybe she thought he wasn’t going to continue, because her eyes had narrowed.

      ‘Realised what?’ she questioned cautiously.

      ‘That the worst pain of all is the pain of not having you in my life. When you walked out of my office just now I got a glimpse of just what that could be like—and it felt like the sun had been blotted from the sky.’

      ‘Very poetic,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Maybe your next girlfriend will hear it before it’s too late.’

      She wasn’t budging an inch but he respected her for that, too. If it had been anyone else he wouldn’t have stayed or persisted or cared. But he was fighting for something here. Something he’d never really thought about in concrete terms before.

      His future.

      ‘And there’s something else you need to know,’ he said softly. ‘And before you look at me in that stubborn way, just listen. All those things I did for you, things I’ve never done for anyone else—why do you think they happened? Because those thunderbolt feelings never left me either, no matter how much I sometimes wished they would. Because I wanted our baby and I wanted you. I like being with you. Being married to you. Waking up to you each morning and kissing you to sleep

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