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“Whatever it is, I like it. It suits you.” Marco pulled to the side of the road and parked. “Neither of us had lunch. I’m sure you’re starving. Let’s grab a quick bite to eat.”
At the restaurant Payton excused herself to use the ladies’ room and wash up, and Marco watched her walk away. He saw, too, how nearly every head in the restaurant turned to watch her pass.
Payton had a certain magic. She was beautiful, yes, but it wasn’t merely her prettiness that caught people’s attention. It was her energy. The light in her eyes. The way she seemed to sparkle.
She sparkled tonight.
Payton returned to the table, and he stood up to seat her.
“Have you ever thought about moving back to Milan?” he asked her, signaling to the wine steward to fill their glasses.
“Move back?”
He nodded. “You’d have no problem finding work.”
“That’s not the issue.”
“In fact, I’d be open to discussing having you return to d’Angelo.”
“Marco.” He looked up and she shook her head. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I don’t want to lose them,” he said abruptly, referring to their daughters. “There has to be a better way to do this, Payton. A better way for us to share responsibility.”
“You mean custody?”
“Yes. Exactly. I want more than holidays. I want to be their father, not a stranger.”
She swallowed with difficulty. This is what she wanted for the children, too. This is why she’d come here with them, but it terrified her, the prospect of spending less time with them. “Maybe the girls can spend the next couple weeks here—”
“And then take them away from me again? No. I can’t bear these huge separations. They’re not good for the girls. They’re not good for me. They’re not good for any of us.”
“I agree.”
“That’s why I want you to at least consider moving back here. You speak Italian. You know the city. You know fashion. This is the perfect place for you.” He leaned forward on the table. “The girls would be happy. I know it. And so would I.”
Her heart jumped a little at the last part. The girls would be happy, and so would I.
What did he mean by happy? Did he ever wish they’d stayed together, that they’d tried to work things out? She wished she had the courage to ask him, but it was such a personal question, one that didn’t seem appropriate now that he was engaged to another woman.
Yet his words made her wistful, nonetheless. Many times she’d thought life would be simpler if she and Marco had stayed together.
What made relationships work? Why did some people click and others didn’t? What could she have done differently?
A platter of antipasto arrived and the conversation stalled while they ate. But once they finished their pasta and salad, and the waiter had cleared their dishes, Marco returned to the discussion.
“There’s no reason we can’t raise the girls together,” he said, intense, earnest. “We both love them. We both want what is best for them.”
Payton pushed her wineglass across the tablecloth. “It’ll just get the girls’ hopes up,” she said after a long moment, her voice husky. “They’ll think we might get back together.”
“Not if I’m married to Marilena.”
“Children don’t understand things like that. They understand Mommy, Daddy. Family.”
He shifted impatiently. “Then we’ll tell them they have two mommies, just like someday they might have two daddies.”
Payton flinched. She couldn’t imagine ever falling in love with anyone else. Even as impossible as Marco was, she loved him. She’d always loved him, from the very beginning.
“I never even asked,” Marco said. “But is there someone else? Has there been someone else?”
Her throat thickened. “No.”
“Too busy?”
She struggled to smile. “Something like that.”
Marco reached across the table and took her hand. Payton shivered at the unexpected touch. “I don’t know how we happened,” he said quietly. “I don’t understand how we started or how we ended, but I don’t hate you, Payton. I’m not your enemy. I never have been.”
Payton’s heart felt brittle. “You hated me for getting pregnant.”
“I didn’t hate you. I liked you. A great deal. But there were logistics.”
“Ah, logistics. Right.” She felt her mouth tremble and she bit into her lower keep to keep her emotions in control. “You and Princess Marilena worked things out and I was in the middle.”
He sighed. “We’d been involved for years, Payton.”
“I know.”
“I owed it to her.”
“Of course. You loved her.” She swallowed around the lump filling her throat. “And you didn’t love me—”
“It’s not that simple.”
“But you didn’t love me. You said you liked me. And it’s true. I was convenient and fun. I was a…fling.”
He swore beneath his breath. “I hate that word.”
“It fits,” Payton replied.
“It has ugly connotations.”
“And that fits, too, doesn’t it?” she said, holding his gaze.
CHAPTER FIVE
HIS dark eyes met hers and held. He looked at her as if he could see all the way through her and this time there was no coldness, no anger, no mockery.
He looked at her as if looking back to the way it had happened, the two of them, as if he could see the black-tie party and Payton trying desperately to avoid the drunken advances of another designer twice her age.
“I had good intentions,” he said after a long taut silence, his jawbone almost white, his tension palpable. “I only meant to help you.”
She struggled with the clash of the past and present, of the knowledge that in that moment he assisted her he’d changed both their lives forever. “You did help me.”
Marco’s intense gaze never wavered. “Maybe you were better off—”
“Ravished by your arch rival?” She attempted a laugh. It came out thin, rather stricken.
He nearly smiled. “You made me laugh that night. I was so angry with Carlo, so angry that he’d tried to take advantage of one of my young interns, but then you made me forget my anger. We talked. We danced—” He broke off, shook his head. “We were naive.”
His smile faded. A small muscle popped in his jaw. “We should have known there’d be repercussions. Should have known that even a dance can be dangerous.
At least I should have known.”
Payton knew Marco had been set to marry the princess, had planned it a long time before that night at the Trussardi’s, back before they’d ever talked, danced, kissed.
She’d heard Marco was promised, no official engagement, just a long-standing agreement. She’d heard the rumors and yet that night after the opera it somehow didn’t seem to matter. She’d been so infatuated for so long, so enamored that when he asked her to dance, and his arm slid around her and his hand rested on her waist, she felt like the luckiest woman alive.
“I should have known better, too,” she said faintly, looking away, feeling painfully exposed. “I’d heard you were promised to the princess, and I don’t know if I didn’t believe it, or if I didn’t care, but I got swept away by the magic that night. First the opera at La Scala, and then the party at the Trussardi palace, and then you.”
He was looking at her, his brows pulled, his expression intense.
“I felt like Cinderella at the ball,” she said. She’d been a virgin and embarrassingly inexperienced but when Marco started kissing her something happened inside her. There was no stopping, no thinking, no control. She just wanted to feel more. She wanted to feel everything. “I got carried away and I didn’t think until it was all over.”
His mouth twisted. “Was I that good?”
Payton’s face burned hot. Her heart beat wildly. He was better than good. He was brilliant. She sucked in a quick breath, fought to control her emotions. “It was perfect and it was my first time.”
Marco paid the dinner bill and they returned to his car and headed home.
They drove through the dark streets in silence and Payton stared out her window at the blur of passing buildings.
He’d said they were naive and he was right. She, especially. She’d never bought into auras and mystical elements but the night she saw him at the La Scala mingling with the glittering crowd during the intermission, everything felt so clear and bright. It was as if fate and the future had come together in a gorgeous glaze of light.
She’d never forget the moment he turned his head and looked at her, directly at her.
