AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His beautiful Rosa. A woman who had known such darkness, yet had thrown off the shackles of fear and reached for the light. A woman who had reached into his black heart and coloured it. The woman whose face was the very one he would want to see when the time came for him to leave this earth.
Mikhail’s eyes were no longer seeing. Even so, Nico held his mother’s picture before him and stroked the cooling forehead, the tears pouring down his cheeks falling like rain, soaking them both.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ROSA READ THE message one more time.
I’ll be back in London early tomorrow evening. There are things we need to discuss. Appreciate you meeting me at the house. Regards, Nico.
‘Tomorrow evening’ had now arrived, and as she punched in the security code at the gate with clammy fingers she felt all bitty—as if the working parts of her body had fragmented and none of the connecting parts knew how to work together any more.
This would be the first time she had seen him since Butterfly Island. He had been in Moscow for the past ten days, dealing with his father’s funeral and sorting out the legalities.
In all the conversations they’d had since he’d left, only one had driven into personal territory. Nico had called her shortly after his father had passed away. He had wanted to thank her. His voice had been so bereft that she had felt any residue of anger vanish on the spot. Well, most of it had. It had been hard to hold on to it after witnessing the sheer devastation in his eyes when he had told her of his father’s stroke.
But she needed that tiny residue. Without it a black pit of despair beckoned, and she couldn’t afford to fall into it.
Even so, she had been unable to hold back the tears. When the call had ended she had sunk onto the floor and cried for them—for the future they would never have—and then she had cried for Nico and his father. The urge to get the soonest flight to Moscow so she could be there for him had at times overwhelmed her. The day of Mikhail Baranski’s funeral had been especially hard to endure. Thinking of Nico grieving alone had cut her like ribbons. She should have been with him.
But he’d relied on her to see the deal with Robert King through, and she had been determined to see it through properly. In any case, he wouldn’t have wanted her there—not his soon-to-be-ex-wife.
In the end, the contracts had been signed without any fuss. Robert had been as determined to see as smooth a progression as she was. Six days later she had returned to the UK to step into Nico’s shoes at his London office. Since then all their conversations had been entirely work-related.
Intuition told her this meeting was not work-related. This was personal. This could only be about their divorce.
She drove through the gate and parked on the gravel at the front of the house.
The front door swung open before she could climb the steps.
‘Hello, Rosa.’
Her heart tripped. She paused and gazed at him. ‘Hello, Nico.’
As all her recent memories were of him wearing shorts and nothing else, it was startling to see him decked out in an impeccably ironed white shirt and grey trousers. They provided a stark contrast with the rumpled look of his face. With large bags under his bloodshot eyes, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in months. His hair was as messy as ever, which she found strangely comforting.
‘Why haven’t you parked in the garage?’
‘It seemed a bit pointless, seeing as I shan’t be staying long.’ At least she hoped she wouldn’t be staying too long. At that moment she was doing an admirable imitation of nonchalance, but it was hurting every sinew in her body to keep it up.
Work, as always, had been her salvation. Throwing herself into the contracts and then ensuring Nico’s empire ran smoothly in his unexpected absence had enabled her to push aside all the pain. And if she’d lived on a diet of strong coffee, unable to stomach food in a belly that ached, then so be it. Anything had to better than having time to think.
Now, standing before him, she was overwhelmed with how badly she had missed him.
He inclined his head and stood aside to admit her.
‘Where’s Gloria?’ she asked, automatically kicking her shoes off as she stepped into the reception room. For a split-second she searched for her slippers, before remembering they were at the hotel she would call home for the next few weeks, until she could move back into her old flat.
She hadn’t been able to face returning to the empty house. Gloria had kindly brought all her possessions to the hotel for her. If she had an opinion on Rosa moving out, she had kept it to herself.
‘I sent her home,’ Nico said.
She followed him into the kitchen, blinking in disbelief. She hadn’t expected them to be alone.
