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‘Honestly? It would probably help.’ Seb sighed, slumping down a little on the bench seat of the sleigh. He hadn’t just lost sight of his family goal. He’d never even set it to begin with. ‘Nobody ever taught me this stuff, Maria. I was just expected to know how to be a husband, a father. And I... I don’t.’
The admission hurt. His whole life he’d tried to be ahead of the game, to make his father proud by never messing up, by pretending he already knew everything Salvo was trying to teach him. By studying harder than everyone else, striving for the right experience, the right opportunities. Knowing the answer to every question before it was even asked.
But now...if the only way to win Maria back was by admitting he was clueless?
Then he’d do it. He’d tell her exactly how little he knew—and how much he wanted to learn.
He’d tell her everything.
* * *
Did he think she’d been taken aside as a teenager and given special wife lessons? Instruction in being a great mother, beyond the basic antenatal classes? Hints and tips on how to cuddle a toddler, or how to buck up a husband who’d had a bad day at work, or how to chase away the constant fear that something would happen to one of them?
‘Nobody does, Seb,’ she said, softly. ‘Nobody is born knowing how to...connect to other people. It’s something we all have to learn.’
‘You know.’
Did she? She’d always assumed that what she knew about loving families came mostly from hanging out with the Cattaneos practically since birth. Her father certainly hadn’t given her many clues, and her mother...her mother was the perfect, doting wife, who believed whatever her husband said was law.
Come to think of it, her mother might actually be just as disappointed in Maria as her father was after the collapse of her marriage, only she was too polite to make a scene about it. Marguerite Rossi never made a scene about anything. Not even pulling her daughter out of university and marrying her off to avoid bankruptcy. Even then all she’d done was pat Maria’s hand and say, ‘Your father knows best, dear.’
And anyway, if Maria did know how to be a great wife and mother, why would she be in this position? Estranged from the man she loved because he could never love her back?
‘I’m not sure that I do,’ she murmured.
Seb’s arm was around her shoulders in less than a heartbeat. ‘Maria, I’ve seen you with Frankie—before, and now. Trust me, you’re a wonderful mother.’
‘Even though I took him away from his father?’ And there it was. The guilt that had eaten away at her every single day of the last year.
Did she even deserve Seb’s love now? Maria was well aware that leaving him, and taking Frankie, might have ruined any chance of him loving her, ever.
He still wanted her back; she knew that. But how much of that was pride, or comfort and ease, and how much actual affection?
Seb looked away, out over the serene mountains. ‘I... I understand, I think, why you went. More than I did, anyway. And, no, I don’t like it. But maybe understanding is a good place to start.’
‘Maybe it is.’ Maybe this was what had been missing before.
Maybe they just needed to understand each other better. And hope that once they understood, they still liked, or even loved, each other.
It was possible.
‘But I need you to know...you’re not the only one who’s changed this last year,’ Seb said.
Maria looked at him in surprise, before realising that of course he would have changed. He might seem exactly the same as he’d always been on the outside, but his whole life had been turned upside down over the last twelve months.
‘I know.’
Seb shook his head. ‘I don’t think you do. I don’t think I realised how much I’d changed until last night, when I saw you and Frankie again.’
She’d never heard him talk like this before—open and emotional and honest to a fault. That in itself was evidence he wasn’t the man she’d left. But she needed more. ‘Tell me?’
Seb sighed, taking a moment to find the words. Maria waited.
‘When Frankie turned away from me last night... I can’t explain the loss I felt. The guilt and the pain. It was like a stab to the heart. I realised in an instant how much I’d missed, not even just this last year but before that, when I’d come home from the office after he was asleep and leave before he was awake. I’ve missed so much, Maria, and I know I can never get it back.’
Blinking away unexpected tears, Maria placed her hand over his again, holding on tight. But she didn’t interrupt. She needed to hear all of this.
‘And it got me thinking about my parents, and Leo. How much they missed—his whole life, really. But not through any choice of their own, or Leo’s. They’d have been together if they could. And I just couldn’t bear the thought that I could blink and Frankie would be all grown up, too, and I’d have missed it all. Not when there’s still something I can do about it.’
He turned to her, staring down into her eyes, and she could feel the truth and the hurt behind his words.
‘Losing my parents, finding Leo... It turned my world upside down—even more than you leaving with Frankie. I couldn’t be the same person any more after that, Maria. I’m a different man from the one you married. But I hope I can be one you like and respect more. One who can give you the partnership—the marriage—you need.’
Seb’s arm was still around her shoulders, warm and solid and reassuring. And it would be, oh, so easy to just sink into his embrace. To accept his promises of change and fall back into her old life again. But for all they’d talked more in the last few hours than they had in the eighteen months or more before she’d left, Maria couldn’t help but acknowledge how much more ground they had to cover.
She turned away.
The horses trotted on, heading back from the silent hills into Mont Coeur, and Maria knew that they weren’t going to fix things with just one date. Maybe Seb had changed enough to be a better father. She certainly hoped so.
But the question still remained: could they really fix their marriage?
‘Maria?’ Seb whispered her name like snowflakes on the breeze, soft and fragile, as if he didn’t want her to blow away. ‘I want to get this right. I want to get back to where we used to be.’
His words were colder than the ice wind. Because wasn’t that just the problem? The point at which he’d been happiest—when they were married, had Frankie, were living together, and he could have his work and his easy family life—was when she’d felt most lost and alone. When she’d felt unloved and unlovable, and he hadn’t even noticed. Even if he had changed, would that feeling ever go away without his love?
Did she really want to go back to that? Never.
‘I don’t want to go backwards,’ she said, her voice sharp. ‘If I give you another chance—if, Seb—then I want it to be because we’re moving forward to something new.’
A new family dynamic maybe. Because as much as she needed to protect her heart, she needed to protect Frankie, too. To give him the family—and maybe now the father—that he needed. She couldn’t put her own feelings above her son’s happiness. She just couldn’t.
‘And are you? Giving me another chance?’ Seb was so close now that if the sleigh jolted even slightly she’d be in his arms, kissing him. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek, could see the hope in those green eyes she knew so well.
She pulled back. ‘I don’t know yet. Let me sleep on it?’
Disappointment flared in Seb’s eyes, but he covered it quickly. He wasn’t used to not getting what he wanted, Maria thought before she realised that was wrong. He just wasn’t used to things not going to plan, to not getting what he worked for.
But she wasn’t a business deal, and their family wasn’t a merger he could manage through contracts and a good business plan.
Unless.
..unless that was the only way to get Seb to understand what she needed from him—what Frankie needed from him—while still protecting her heart.
He’d said he wanted them to be a family again. And maybe, just maybe, she could live without his love as long as she knew she had his respect, his partnership, and that he valued their family above his work.
It wasn’t the dream, but it was close. And in twelve months away—not to mention all the years before that—she’d never met a man who made her heart beat like Sebastian Cattaneo did.
She owed it to Frankie to try to save their marriage, if it could be saved. She owed him a chance to be with his father.
And if it didn’t work, at least she could walk away guilt-free, knowing she’d given it everything she could. Knowing that Frankie would be happier with two parents who loved him but not each other, because she would be happier, too. And Seb would have the chance to find someone he could love.
She’d know, at least. As much as it might hurt. She’d know that seeking her own future was the right path—the one thing in the last year she’d never quite been certain of.
‘You have an alarming look on your face,’ Seb observed, from the other side of the sleigh. ‘Like you’re plotting my downfall.’
‘Shh,’ Maria said. ‘I’m thinking.’
And, besides, he was only partly right. Yes, she was plotting.
But she was plotting survival, not downfall. And if she could figure out a way to get this right, they could both get what they needed.
Or close, anyway. And sometimes good enough could be enough, right?
