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And so he let her go, when it was the very last thing he wanted.
When it felt as though he were being beaten over the head. He let her go because he knew it would be best for her. And she deserved that.
* * *
Three days later and he hadn’t acted. He held the shares in his portfolio and the ability to crush Carlo, and yet he still hadn’t dropped the axe. Renowned for his ruthless instincts, he was hesitating at the final hurdle of a plan that he’d formed long ago. Long before he’d even met Amelia and seen her smile.
And the reason was simple.
Every time he imagined the crushing destruction of diSalvo Industries, instead of the rush of jubilation he’d expected, he felt only pain. Pain at how Amelia would respond, at how she’d judge him. Pain at how it would be the death knell to any future with her and their child.
And so he waited, and he wondered about her.
He didn’t go to work. He had no interest in his office. Instead, he stalked through his home, seeing her in every room, the memories—though happy—slicing through him with thei
r perfection. She had been everywhere, taken over everything, so that after such a short time he felt her absence completely.
The fresh flowers she had arranged in every room were beginning to wilt—that never happened while she was in the house. She always changed them before they could grow limp.
Antonio was a man who had rebuilt his crumbling family empire from the ground up; he didn’t take defeat easily. But this pain was unlike any he had ever encountered.
He had failed in the one thing that mattered to him almost as much as destroying the diSalvos. He had wanted to be a good father, a great husband, yet he’d driven his wife away.
He closed his eyes and tried to picture her in Bumblebee Cottage, imagined her with all those fairy lights and her pregnant stomach, and he cursed loud and clear into the emptiness of their home. Outside, a bleak winter’s day threatened rain, just like that first night he’d gone to Amelia, back in England. Only then he’d been so sure of himself, sure of his plan of attack.
Now? He knew only one thing with certainty: he couldn’t let this be the end of it. He couldn’t accept that their marriage was over.
* * *
Amelia would have liked to stay in bed all day, every day. She would have liked to ignore the demands of her body, to refuse to eat, to sob until her broken heart finally grieved and became light again.
Were it not for the baby inside her hugely rounded stomach, she would have indulged every single maudlin fantasy and abandoned herself completely to the grief that had saturated her soul.
She would have wept until her tear ducts dried up and her throat was red raw.
Only for her baby did she give up on self-indulgent mourning. For their baby, on a cold yet sunny winter’s day, she forced herself to eat a piece of toast and a banana, to sip a cup of tea and then to dress warmly so she could go for a walk.
A small walk, she promised herself, and then she could go back to bed. Curl up as though the day weren’t happening, and ignore the fact that in a matter of weeks she would have a baby, and would have to face the rest of her life without Antonio.
Her heart gave a painful squeeze as his image floated into her mind and she gasped audibly, hating how much she missed him. Hating how tempted she was to throw caution and common sense to the wind and return to Madrid, tail between her legs, pride in tatters, and tell him she would take him—on whatever terms he offered.
But she couldn’t do that.
She weaved down a lane, reaching above her and grabbing a twig of jasmine as she went, lifting it to her nose and smelling it, the fragrance so perfectly intoxicating that the ghost of a smile crossed her face.
Not for long, though. Sadness and bleakness were back and she dropped the flower a few steps further.
It was colder than she’d realised and her face was icy, despite the winter sunshine. After a couple of miles, she turned back towards her cottage, already relishing the idea of being back in bed and blotting out this world for a while longer.
A sudden movement when she approached her house caught her eye and she squinted, wondering if she were hallucinating.
A man at her door looked almost exactly like... Antonio. She breathed in sharply just as he pulled his body from the door and then slammed himself against it, in an attempt to break through the ancient timber.
‘Antonio!’ she said sharply, moving up the small path towards the front door. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Dios mío, you are okay?’
‘Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?’
