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“Okay,” he said. “I’ll have the Grand contact you. When is your flight?”
The shattered look in her eyes almost unmanned him. “It’s a red-eye tonight. I was going to take a cab. There’s no need for you to drive me.”
Tonight? A sharp stab of pain lanced through him. “I’ll drive you,” he said roughly. “Tell me when you’re ready.”
Traffic was surprisingly light for a weekday evening. They got to the airport in record time. Nate pulled the car up in front of the busy departures entrance and got out to help a pale Mina with her luggage.
“Are you sure you’re fit to travel?”
“I have the medicine the doctor gave me in my purse.” Mina reached up to press a kiss against his cheek, looking so small and vulnerable it was all he could do not to haul her against him and forbid her to go. “I’ll text you when I get to Celia’s.”
Don’t let her go. A voice inside his head said it would be the biggest mistake he ever made. But the survival instinct in him was stronger. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but she was already turning on her heel and walking away.
She did not look back.
He got into the car and watched her disappear into the terminal. Thought about that day she’d opened up the door to him in Palermo, a vision in white in her beautiful wedding dress. His for the taking. How he wasn’t man enough to claim the gift that she was.
* * *
Nate finished his second Scotch in the quiet, oppressive confines of the penthouse and considered a third. Splayed out in his favorite chair, his eyes on the New York skyline, he tried to block out the delicate scent of Mina’s perfume still lingering in the air. How her presence seemed to be everywhere. In his head. In his heart.
When the valet had asked after her tonight upon his return, he’d just looked at him dumbly as if the young college student had asked him why the moon was yellow.
He was in love with her. Had been for weeks. He who didn’t even believe in the concept of the word. Or perhaps, more accurately, rejected it for what it had come to symbolize. Pain, rejection, heartache.
The emptiness he felt now was different from the constant, recurring version of it that had characterized his life. The knowledge that perhaps he could be whole if he had Mina made it particularly acute. Because he had been happy with her for the first time in his life.
He’d embarked on this three-act play of a marriage with her with the caveat it wasn’t real. It was all about the end goal—a ring for his grandfather to make him happy in his dying days, and a new life for Mina. When, in fact, everything about them had been real.
Instead of facing the truth—instead of facing his feelings for Mina head-on—he’d decided to allow the story to run to its inevitable conclusion. Hoping he’d never have to make a conscious decision, an admission about how he felt about his wife.
Except Mina had called his bluff. He might have taught her how to be a warrior, but she had taught him survivors like them had to fight their inner battles, too. Disarm the defenses they’d constructed to have a chance at a future that transcended their past. In that, she was way ahead of him.
She had given him precious months with Giovanni, had taught him to acknowledge his feelings would not destroy him—they would free him. And yet he had let her walk away. As if he could exist without her now. Hell. He scowled and reached for the bottle.
He had the cap off before he stopped, screwed it back on and picked up the phone.
“Nate.” Surprise edged Alex’s voice. “What’s up?”
“Can we meet for a drink?”
“Now?”
“Now. Tomorrow. Whatever works.”
A pause. “Sure. You want to meet at that new place in the Ritz?”
Thirty minutes later, he was sliding into a chair opposite his elder brother in the upscale bar that overlooked Central Park.
“Nate.” Alex nodded at him in that measured way of his.
“Alex.”
As dark-featured as he was, with the same designer stubble and hard edge, the resemblance between the two of them was unmistakable. But it went deeper than the cosmetics—right down to their personalities, which tended toward the moodier side of the spectrum.
Alex moved his gaze over Nate’s rumpled shirt and hair. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“Might as well continue my momentum.”
