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He stopped advancing, exactly as she’d known and feared he would. She knew there was only one way to make Dante walk away—the only solution—because he was stubborn and determined and if he thought he could persuade her … she might still be too weak to resist.
She tipped up her chin in that defiant way that had become so endearing to him but Dante wasn’t aware of the subliminal message. He was battling a cave man instinct to grab Alicia and pull her into the car. And yet something was keeping him from moving—she had said she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
Against his will, he had to ask, ‘What do you mean?’
Alicia took a deep breath. ‘What I mean, Dante … is that I’ve been stupid enough to fall in love with you.’ Her heart stopped for a brief, hopelessly hopeful, second. But when she saw the way his face leached of colour, the vaguely horror struck expression, she hardened her heart. This pain eclipsed anything she jad experienced before, but somehow she stayed standing.
‘You can’t have,’ he breathed, his mind seizing in shock. ‘I never asked you to fall in love with me.’
Alicia would have smiled wryly if she’d had the wherewithal. ‘You can’t make someone fall in love with you, you can’t ask someone to fall in love with you … it’s uncontrollable.’ She didn’t know how she stood in the car park on that cold day and said the following words with such calm.
‘The heart wants what the heart wants … and my heart wants you, Dante. But I want it all, not just a temporary arrangement. I want the works. I want to be married, to have children … to know the joy that Melanie and Paolo know … I want to grow old with you. I want the full package … and I know you don’t want that; it’s glaringly obvious.’
Something cynical lit Dante’s eyes at that moment, as if he’d seized on something in her words, and Alicia reacted with unchecked fury. Her arms dropped, she pointed a trembling finger at him. ‘Oh, no, you don’t, Dante D’Aquanni. Don’t you dare reduce what I’ve said to a cynical justification. I couldn’t care less if you were the king of Italy or that street kid grown up and waiting tables in Naples and you know it. So don’t you dare try that.’ She was shaking with emotion.
His mouth opened and shut. She had caught him—pricelessly. With deadly accuracy. He felt removed from the situation. She was standing there, saying these words and he couldn’t feel anything. Like when he’d watched Lucia only moments before. As if a granite block was weighing him down inside. Yet again someone was asking him to believe, not to be cynical. and the pain of the last time when he had believed was still too memorable. Like a default mode, he went inwards. Self-protection.
He stepped backwards to the car and said with a clipped finality that tore what was left of Alicia’s heart to shreds, ‘You seem to have it all figured out.’
Alicia nodded. An aching sob built inside her. Dante was remote and calm and controlled. He didn’t have a heart. He’d lost it so long ago that now it was irredeemable.
‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?’
Just like that, he was already moving on. Alicia couldn’t stop a half hysterical gurgle of laughter breaking from her lips, and then a wave of weariness came over her. She shook her head. ‘No. Just go, Dante. Go home.’
With barely a backward glance he got into the back of the car. Within seconds the door had shut and it was pulling away out of the car park, leaving her standing there, alone … and contemplating the advantages of very possibly fainting in such close proximity to a clinic.
The mornings were the worst, when she would wake up and reach for Dante, only to find an empty, cold space. And then she would remember. One morning she’d groaned with the pain it had been so acute, and curled up into a ball. And she couldn’t help but go over every last bit of that fight they’d had in Milan; she could see now how fantastically coincidental her own admission that they had shared a similar past must have seemed, coming so close on the heels of his story.
She knew instinctively that he’d believed her though when she’d mentioned records and the orphanage because that would have appealed to the logical side of him that would want proof. And, with his apology to Paolo and Melanie, she knew he’d finally accepted the full truth. How could he have looked at that tiny baby—so like Paolo—and not?
But, despite all that, it was useless to obsess over words. He would never let someone into his heart because it was too late. He was full of demons and contradictions.
That week, Alicia had stayed in a hostel near the clinic and in the mornings would rise and wash and go to visit Mel and Paolo. Even though it was obvious that they wondered what had happened, they never asked about her pale face or where Dante was. And then she would go back to the hostel in the afternoons and cry. Non stop. For being so stupid as to fall for a man as damaged as Dante.
At the weekend she returned to the apartment in Oxford to pack up and move out. On Sunday morning she lay in bed and contemplated the cracks and peeling paint of the ceiling. Melan
ie had asked her to move into the London house with them. But that was Dante’s house; there was no way she could do that. She’d look for somewhere nearby and she would have to start looking for work. The door buzzer sounded and Alicia dragged herself out of bed. She felt about a hundred years old and she knew it would be old Mrs Smith from next door, wondering if she could get her some milk from the corner shop because she always called at the same time every day when they were home. She pulled on faded jeans and a sweatshirt.
Alicia pulled the door back, pasting a fake smile on her face. ‘Good morning, Mrs Smith.’
The old woman smiled at Alicia. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, pet; it’s my hip, in this weather …’
Alicia let her carry on as she pulled on shoes and a coat. ‘It’s no problem.’ Believe me, you’re doing me a favour; I could stay in bed for the rest of my life and never leave …
As she came back into the little lane that led up to their doors, Alicia was looking at the paper she’d bought, unaware of the men standing at her doorway. She only noticed them when she looked up for a split second to see where she was going. She only saw one man, even though somewhere she had registered others too.
The milk fell from suddenly nerveless hands, breaking open and splashing all over the ground and her shoes. The paper followed. Shock and pain slammed into her and she finally moved for sanctuary, to her door, pushing past, willing herself not to be aware of his presence. ‘No … no, leave me alone, Dante. Just leave me be.’
She couldn’t get the key in the lock because her hand was shaking too much. He plucked it from her hand and turned her to face him. He looked awful. He looked grey; deep lines marked his face, his eyes were bloodshot. She hadn’t really taken his appearance in at first, too stunned. All antipathy flew out of the window. She reacted on pure instinct, almost reaching out a hand.
‘Dante … my God, what is it, you look—’
‘About as bad as you, I’d say.’ His voice was hoarse.
She knew she did look bad, after a week of incessant crying over this man who didn’t even deserve it. Pain flooded back. She rediscovered her backbone. ‘If you’ve come here just to insult me—’
‘I haven’t. Dio—’ he ran a hand through his hair, which seemed to have grown longer in just a week ‘—isn’t it obvious?’
