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How lost had he been to slap a price on his heart?
She had been right about everything.
He had given her everything except himself.
And the woman she had grown into these past couple of months, she would settle for nothing less than all of him.
He must have said something because suddenly the conference room was empty around him.
Picking up his cell, he made a call, his heart in his throat.
His voice muddled in sleep, Rocco answered. “Stefan?”
“Where is she, Rocco?” he said without preamble
His oldest friend understood immediately. “In New York.”
“I know that. But not where. I know that Olivia knows. I know that Clio went to her. I need to see her, Rocco. Now.”
After what seemed like an eternity, Rocco sighed. “I’m sorry, Stefan. Believe it or not, my stubborn wife hasn’t told even me where Clio is.”
“She is your damn wife, why the hell not?”
“Because she takes standing by her friends seriously. If you want to know where Clio is, you have to ask Liv. Stefan...take care, fratello.”
Stefan barely heard Rocco’s warning. In two minutes he instructed his pilot to fuel the jet, ordered his secretary to cancel everything indefinitely.
Nothing in his life had any meaning without her.
He needed his wife, his friend, his lover back. He needed the woman who had made him live again, smile again, made him feel so much again that he couldn’t breathe for the ache of it. And he would beg if that’s what it took to bring her back into his life.
* * *
As Clio stared at Stefan, standing at Olivia’s friend’s doorstep, his face haggard and covered in stubble, his thick hair rumpled, his collar askew, her entire world tilted and shook. Her gut folded on itself, her breath balling up in her throat.
She pulled the edges of the threadbare cardigan together defensively as his perusal, hungry and invasive, continued.
Without a word, he entered the flat and closed the door with an arrogant kick of his handmade Italian shoe. Wandered soundlessly through the small flat.
Every inch of her stilled in panic as he picked up the cardboard box she had discarded carelessly on one of the sofas.
Anger flashed in his green gaze and then cycled to fury and then to utter powerlessness. He turned the box around and around with those long fingers.
Her breath quivered in her throat noisily as she stared at the expression she thought she never would see. The box was crushed in his hand, his knuckles showing white.
“When did you take the test?” he finally said, something so desperately painful in his tone that she just stared at him.
“Clio?”
Recovering, she fought the urge to go to him. “Yesterday morning.”
Another silence ensued, stretching her nerves so tight that a breath of wind could tear them apart.
“Yesterday morning...”
A quiet sound fell from his lips, shock marring his features. “And?”
The tiny room reverberated with the sound of his question, all the more unnerving for the whispered entreaty that it was.
Clio swallowed and instinctively wrapped her arms around her still-flat tummy. She had expected him to give her a display of that fierce Sicilian temper. This silently obvious conflict rattled her on so many levels. “It was positive. I made an appointment to see a doctor in two days to have it confirmed, but I...I’m pregnant.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” came the instant retort. He pushed his fingers through his hair, paced the small room. Let out a string of angry curses. Came to a standstill within touching distance, his features wreathed in torturous agony. “Dio, Clio... Would you have hid this from me if I hadn’t come today? Would you have...”
Hands tucked in the pockets of his trousers, he turned away from her abruptly. As if he couldn’t bear the sight of her. The tension in his vibrating frame sent her into a panic.
She knew that final thread of his control had unraveled, the last piece of his armor was broken. Knew that he was hurting and that he would attack at any moment. Knew what families and children and the bonds of kin would mean to his Sicilian blood.
Knew that his vulnerability, beneath the hard shell he had acquired all these years, lay in the depth and intensity with which he had once wanted love and family and laughter in his life.
Knew that he was made for it, that he would make a fantastic father. Knew that she was weakening already after facing the truth about the pregnancy, and seeing him so close by, remembering how good it had felt to give herself over to him...
