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‘I was only trying to seduce you...’
‘And I wanted to be seduced. I saw glimpses then of the man you really are, the man you want to be. Don’t turn away from me now, simply because you’re afraid.’ She laid her hand against his jaw, her skin silky and cool. ‘Because that is why you’ve been keeping your distance, isn’t it, these last few weeks, and even more so since we went to Naples? Because you’re afraid of being hurt.’
He closed his eyes, not wanting to admit it, knowing it was true. He’d tried to separate his body from his heart but it hadn’t worked. Allegra affected him in every way, right down to his core. And yet still he found himself saying, ‘I didn’t think anyone would love me. That anyone could love me...after my father...’ He shook his head, his eyes closed, and Allegra kissed him again, her lips soft against his jaw. ‘How could he do that? How could he walk away from me and kill himself? I begged him, Allegra. Pleaded with him with everything I had, pounded on the door, and still he did it, knowing the cost of it on me, on my mother and sister. How could he do that?’
The question rang out, the cry of a hurt child. It had festered inside him for twenty years, until his heart was nothing but scar tissue, barely healed over the old, old wound. And Allegra, and her love, had broken it all—him—open.
‘I asked you something similar,’ she whispered, her lips moving against his cheek. ‘Do you remember? And you told me it wasn’t my fault. Now I say the same thing to you, only even more so. Your father was a desperate man, Rafael, driven to terrible things because—because of my father. It wasn’t your fault, just as my father leaving wasn’t mine. Let’s leave the past behind us and make our own future, for the sake of our child and for the sake of us.’
‘But it was my fault,’ Rafael groaned, his voice breaking on the word. ‘Not his death, perhaps, but my mother...my sister...the choices they made, the fact that they felt compelled to make them. That they didn’t trust me to provide for them, to see us through the darkness and the mess. That was my fault. I was the man of the family, I was in charge, and I failed utterly. I can’t forgive myself for that. How can anyone else?’
* * *
Allegra squeezed Rafael’s hands, holding on tight, wanting to imbue him with her strength, her love, because she felt as if everything teetered on this moment. Whether he would pull away for good or if the walls would finally come down for ever.
She recognised the core of honour and compassion that he’d kept hidden for so long, realised now that his withdrawal from her had not been from indifference but because he’d cared too much.
She knew that he now suffered from both guilt and hurt—just as she did, with her father’s abandonment. Because when you were hurting, you assumed it was something in you that drove a person away. Something bad or wrong. And she would give anything now to show Rafael that there wasn’t.
Slowly she leaned forward, still holding his hands, her bump pressing against him as she brushed her lips across his in a kiss of acceptance and healing. A kiss where she offered her whole self, there for the taking.
His body was still, his lips slack under hers, and her heart trembled at the terrible thought of his rejection, but then he opened his mouth and made the kiss his own, one hand coming to rest on the back of her head, and he took what she offered and gave even more back.
Moments later they broke apart and with a shuddering breath Rafael leaned his forehead against hers. ‘When my father died,’ he murmured, his breath fanning her face, ‘I felt like my world had shattered...not just because we lost everything but because I’d lost him. Because he’d been driven to such despair, and I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop him.’
‘I’m so sorry, Rafael...’
‘I felt powerless and out of control. And I never wanted to feel like that again. But then I cruelly inflicted that pain on another family. I killed your father too, Allegra.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If what Caterina said was true...then your father died of a heart attack when he heard the news about me taking over the company. I killed him—’
