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Numair’s face opened on a smile Richard hadn’t seen since he’d been fourteen. “No, I couldn’t. And I now believe what Rafael kept telling us all these years. That my escape plan wouldn’t have worked, certainly not as perfectly as it had, without your help.” Suddenly a realization dawned in Numair’s eyes. “You waited until we were all out before you left, too, didn’t you?”
Letting him read his answer in his eyes, Richard attempted a smile. “We didn’t do too shabbily for sworn enemies, did we?”
Numair clapped him zealously on the back, imitating his accent. “We did splendidly, old chap.”
The knife embedded in his chest only twisted at Numair’s lightheartedness. “At least, you did. You’re there for the woman you love every moment she needs you, to love and protect her. You’ll share with her every up and down of childbirth and child rearing. You’ll never leave her to face a merciless world alone, like I did with Isabella.”
Numair frowned again. “You had reasons for your actions, and she understands them like I do now. The fact that she let you in your son’s life attests to that.”
“She may understand, even forgive, but she’ll never forget, not what I did in the past, or what I did when I first invaded her life again. She’ll never love me again.”
Numair grabbed his shoulder, turning him fully to him. “When has never been a word in your vocabulary? You keep after something until it happens. So you lost seven years of your son’s life...”
Unable to bear Numair’s placation, he tore his hand off, stepping away from him. “I didn’t lose them, I threw them away. When I didn’t give her the benefit of the doubt, didn’t trust my heart about her, when I left her in the hands of the monster who’d destroyed my family. I almost cost her, and Rico, their lives...”
“Stop it, Richard,” Numair roared, bringing his tirade to an abrupt end. He’d never called him Richard before. “You won’t serve them by wallowing in guilt. From now on, you’ll live to make it up to her, and to your son. From what Rafael tells me, the boy worships you. And she’s trusting you to be around him. This says a lot about her opinion of you as you are now, and of your efforts to atone. Keep at it, prove to her how much you love her and your son. When she realizes the best thing for her is to open her heart to you again, she will. Hang in there. When she bestows her love and trust on you again, nothing will ever touch that blessing. I know.”
Richard only nodded so Numair would let this go. He couldn’t bear one more word on the subject.
Satisfied that he’d talked him down, Numair let Richard divert their conversation to their own shattered relationship. Numair did mo
re than wipe the slate clean. He pushed a restart button where they’d left off as teenagers.
Numair finally let him go two hours later, and only one thing he’d said looped in his mind until it almost pulped it.
When she realizes the best thing for her is to open her heart to you again, she will.
What Numair thought would bolster his hope for a future with Isabella had only pulverized it, since she undoubtedly realized the best thing for her would be to never open her heart to him again, to stay as far away from him as possible.
* * *
When he finally worked up enough nerve to go back to Isabella’s home, it was she who let him in. She’d sent Mauri out with Rose’s family and stayed behind to talk to him.
With foreboding descending on him like a suffocating shroud, he followed her into the living room.
Once they sat, the voice he now lived to hear washed over him, a tremor traversing it.
“I overheard you and Mauri...and Rico...earlier today.”
So she’d heard their son’s desire to be called Rico again. And his demand for Richard to admit that he was his father.
Would she forbid him to do so, revoke his privilege to come to her home and spend time with Rico? Would she cast him out?
Isabella’s hushed words doused his panic. “If you need my blessing to tell Rico the truth, you have it, Richard. I will accommodate your every desire to be with him.”
The delight that detonated within him almost blanked out the world.
She wasn’t casting him out but letting him further in. As Numair had said, she’d grown to trust him with Rico, was giving him the ultimate privilege of claiming his son.
But...was she telling him that was the extent of their relationship? He’d only be Rico’s father, but...nothing to her?
In the past he’d been worse than nothing, her bane, steeping everything between them in deceit and manipulation, then in lust and degradation. If he’d intentionally set out to destroy her feelings for him, he couldn’t have done a more complete job. If she wanted something real and lasting with a man, she’d look for it anywhere else but with him. She deserved the real thing. The best there was. And he wasn’t it. He had sinned against her beyond forgiveness, was tainted beyond retrieval.
But since he was, what right did he have to Rico? Wouldn’t he be better off without a father like him? It was even worse now that his turmoil over them could have gotten him killed today. What would that have done to Rico if he’d already known Richard was his father?
Why had he invaded their lives? What had he been searching for? Redemption? When he’d long known he was beyond that? Love? When he knew he didn’t deserve it?
If he loved them, and he loved them far beyond anything he’d thought possible, he had to make them happy. To keep them safe. There was only one way he could do that.
