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Why had he said such things to her? But he knew. He had woken to find her creeping away from him, when he had made himself vulnerable before her with that nursery without even meaning to—
And hadn’t his father told him directly that this would happen?
Had it been made clear that he would hurt her if he loved her?
He nearly staggered at the truth of that.
A truth he had not been able to face when he’d found her on the stairs, leaving himyet again—
The lights blazed on in the villa behind him and in the stables ahead of him. He barely felt the cold or noticed the dark outside until he was shouldering his way into the stables, shouting for the doctor and nurse. Only the heat inside made him realize it had been frigid out there.
But he didn’t care, because Victoria wasn’t conscious and that was impossible.
This wasimpossible.
The medical staff came running then.
And everything sped up again.
He was unaware of the hour, or how long things took. For every moment was an agony, both too quick and too long, and none of it mattered anyway, because Victoria did not wake up.
She did not wake and he had only himself to blame.
The medical team did what they could. But when she was stabilized, Ago had her taken to the airfield on his property, loaded as carefully as possible on his plane, and then flew her to England.
Where, by morning, he had her under the care of the finest neonatal doctors in Britain.
What did he care if it was their Boxing Day?
They threw all kinds of alarming words at him.Preeclampsia. Potential fetal distress.And though he took it in, asked questions, and demanded that his staff research it all so that he became an expert as quickly as possible—none of that wasdoinganything.
Because there was nothing to do.
There was nothing at all for Ago Accardi, for whom mountains usually moved at a single soft command, but the endless waiting.
And nothing but self-flagellation to go with it.
It was unbearable.
For forty-eight hours, he did not move from her bedside. He maintained his vigil, as if the simple fact of his presence would make her wake up when the doctors assured him shecould.That there was no medical reason for her to remain unconscious when they had stabilized her condition and made sure the baby was safe.
But she didn’t.
And on the third day, Ago left the hospital because it was that or start physically accosting the doctors who did not seem to understand that he needed his wife to wake up, immediately. He took the hospital’s private exit, because his staff had informed him that there were already too many paparazzi gathered at the usual entrance.
Because word had apparently got out that Ago Accardi had rushed into hospital, bearing a pregnant woman who was rumored to be his wife.
A woman who had once beenthis closeto being engaged to his brother.
It was the very nightmare Ago had been hoping to avoid this whole time, and yet he found that he didn’t care.
The only thing that mattered was Victoria waking up, and there was literally nothing he could do to make that happen. If the paparazzi and their dirty little tabloids could have helped her, he would have gone out and fed them anything and everything he wanted to hear.
And instead of sitting in his excruciatingly pedigreed house in Belgravia and driving himself up his elegantly appointed walls, Ago found himself driving out of London entirely.
Then heading for a part of England he had never visited. Because touring the idyllic Cotswolds, swooning over wisteria and pretty limestone cottages, had never appealed to a man who knew his primary purpose on this earth was to expand an empire. Not to enjoy weekends away like some kind of regular person. Perish the thought.
In fact, the closest thing he’d had to a holiday in as long as he could remember were these last weeks with Victoria. And it was true that he’d spent almost every day of them working in some capacity or another, but when he wasn’t working, he hadn’t been thinking about work at all. That was the difference.
