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The hell she had. The temper he’d been trying to muster came surging back to life.
‘What guy? What’s his name?’ He’d strangle the bastard.
She couldn’t have got over him so easily—not when he wasn’t over her.
‘It’s…’ The girl hesitated. ‘It’s Bill and he’s a…’ Another slight pause. ‘A computer programmer.’
A computer programmer called Bill! What the…?
No way. Eva wouldn’t be happy with someone like that. She needed adventure. She needed passion and excitement in her life. She was like a beautiful flower burst into bloom. And she’d damn well bloomed with him. Which meant she didn’t get to bloom with anyone else.
‘The hell with that,’ he snarled under his breath. Then turned and walked out of the art gallery, the emotion burning his throat bursting into flames.
So she thought she could just take up with someone else?
I don’t think so.
It wasn’t over. Not till he said so. He’d done the decent thing and given her a damn choice. And she’d thrown it back in his face. He still wanted her. And he needed her. And she needed him. Not some computer nerd called Bill. End of story.
Hailing a cab, Nick shouted at the driver as he launched himself into the back seat. ‘Take me to the airport. I’ve got a plane to catch.’
He’d been through six long weeks of torture and now she thought she could just blow him off. Well, she could forget it. He was through hanging around. And he was through pretending to be a nice guy.
‘Eva, it’s me, Tess. We
need to talk.’
‘Tess?’ Eva glanced at the clock on her computer—just past two o’clock in the afternoon London time on a Saturday afternoon. ‘Is everything all right?’ Why was Tess calling so early in the morning? She never got up before noon on a weekend.
‘Everything’s wonderful,’ Tess’s voice came down the phone line, but she didn’t sound too sure.
‘Okay,’ Eva said carefully. Tess could be a bit of a drama queen, but she sounded genuinely worried. ‘So what do we need to talk about?’
‘I did something a tiny bit rash last night. And I thought I should let you know.’ There was a long pause. ‘In case there are consequences.’
‘Consequences?’ That didn’t sound good. ‘What did you do?’
‘I bumped into Nick Delisantro at the Union Square gallery.’
‘Oh.’ Eva felt the sharp tug of grief at the mention of his name, and hated herself for it. ‘I see’ she said dully, forcing the words out.
She was over him. She had to be. It had been over a month and a half since she’d woken up in the master suite in the palazzo to find him gone. And she’d changed beyond all recognition from that devastated woman who had cried herself hoarse for two solid weeks, until she was hollowed out and exhausted and simply had no tears left in her.
Admittedly, it had taken her even longer to call a halt to her pity party and put her wild fling with Nick Delisantro into its proper perspective.
Yes she’d fallen for him. Hard and fast and far too easily. And once she’d finally got past the howling grief of losing him, it had been pathetically obvious to figure out why.
In his own way, Nick Delisantro had been everything she’d always fantasised about in her dream man. Tough and untamed, unconventional and wildly exciting on the outside but surprisingly tender and thoughtful and troubled on the inside. He’d made her feel beautiful and exciting and vivid. He’d lifted her life out of the ordinary and made it extraordinary. And most of all he’d made her feel important. The way her parents never had.
But it wasn’t until she’d received an email from Don Vincenzo a little over a month ago that she’d realised the bold, exciting person she had believed herself to be with Nick was as much of a fraud as the timid, mouse-like person she had been before she met him.
The duca had been as devastated as she was to find Nick gone that morning without a word. But unlike her, he hadn’t been willing to simply accept Nick’s departure. According to the email the duca had sent her a fortnight later, Nick had refused to acknowledge his many attempts to contact him and Eva could tell that had devastated the elderly man. But the duca had finished by thanking her for her part in his reunion with his grandson and stating that he hadn’t given up hope—assuring her that however stubborn Nick was, the Duca D’Alegria was more so.
Eva hadn’t doubted the old man for a moment, and as she’d read the email at her cluttered desk in Roots Registry she’d felt the first stirrings of something other than misery.
A fragile glimmer of hope had peeped through the fog of despair and then she’d had a devastating moment of enlightenment. Nick wasn’t responsible for her courage, or her lack of it. She was. He couldn’t give her the guts to be herself. To be the bright, bold, confident woman she’d always wanted to be. Only she could do that. And even though she couldn’t make Nick Delisantro love her or make him accept the love she had for him in return, she could still be that woman.
And so she’d walked into Henry Crenshawe’s office that afternoon and handed in her notice.
