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If anything, he looked indignant, and as though he were controlling a temper. ‘Because you weren’t answering your door or your phone, and yet your car is here.’
She frowned. ‘I went for a walk.’
Consternation creased his brow. ‘In this condition?’
‘My legs work fine,’ she said softly.
‘I was concerned,’ he explained.
She struggled not to react. Not to let her heart throb hopefully, not to let her pulse fire. It had only been a week, but it might as well have been three years, for how desperately she wanted to stare at him and touch him. Fresh pain perforated her heart, because she couldn’t give in to those feelings. He was wrong for her, wrong in every way. His hatred would poison their baby—and enough had been lost to the ancient feud. She was done.
‘I could have just been ignoring you, you know,’ she pointed out with a coldness she was proud of.
‘I worried you could be passed out inside,’ he said, and she saw for the first time that his skin was pale, as though he’d been shocked. Worried.
She forced her heart not to register that.
She was pregnant with his child; concern was natural.
‘I wasn’t.’
She moved to the door but he put a hand out, just lightly, brushing her forearm. ‘I need to speak with you.’
Her eyes swept shut at this and she shook her head instinctively. Her voice shook when she spoke. ‘I feel like we’ve said everything that needs saying.’
‘You have,’ he agreed, dropping his hand. ‘But I have some way to go. I want to fix this, Amelia. If you’ll let me.’
She shook her head again and lifted her fingertips to her lips, and then she took another step backwards, almost as though she were afraid of him. ‘Not everything can be fixed.’
* * *
Antonio acknowledged her statement, and the truth behind it. He couldn’t fix everything. Sometimes things were broken beyond repair and whenever he looked back on that last day in Madrid he saw the fractures he had forced into their relationship.
‘I can try.’ His voice was gravelly.
She turned to look at him, huge blue eyes in a face that he knew so very well. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
She was pulling away from him, building up to telling him to get the hell out of her life. He had to make every word count.
‘I’ve just come from Carlo’s.’
And she paled, gasping and lifting her hands to cover her mouth. ‘Oh, Antonio, no. What did you do?’
She was clearly terrified of him setting his plan in action—of what he might say or do to the brother she obviously loved. He’d done this to her—he’d made her think destruction was all he cared about. Wasn’t that true? Destruction at any cost—and he could clearly see the cost his need for revenge had inflicted on the woman he’d married.
Shame at his actions threatened to suffocate him.
‘He and I have come to an agreement.’
This she wasn’t expecting. ‘What kind of agreement?’ Her eyes narrowed and he felt a wave of animosity bounce off her. ‘Have you blackmailed him in some way? Or are you here to offer me a fresh bribe?’
‘I’m here to offer you my heart.’ He waited for the words to sink in. ‘And to beg you to forgive me, Amelia, querida.’ She swallowed, her neck knotting visibly. He fought an urge to reach out to her, to touch her, to comfort her in some way. ‘I had been angry for so long, it was all I knew. I didn’t realise I could feel any other way, until I lost you. You walked out of my life and I was filled with this huge ache, right here.’
He pushed his hand into his chest. ‘I was alone and lonely for the first time in my life—and all the hatred I felt towards your family, my need to make them pay for what they did to my father, Dios mío, it seems so petty now. That I was willing to sacrifice our happiness to an ancient feud... That I laid my actions at my father’s feet, when you were so right about him: the last thing he would have wanted would be for me to push you away.’
She swallowed, the slender column of her neck moving visibly, her chest inflating and deflating at speed. And then, after a moment, with a tiny shake of her head, ‘I’m not giving you my stake in Prim’Aqua, no matter what you say.’
He couldn’t blame her for believing that was all he was after, but her suspicion ripped through him nonetheless, tearing a hole in his chest. ‘Good. I no longer want it.’
