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She finished her packing methodically, aware of him moving around the room until she could bear it no more. ‘Will you please stop pacing?’
‘Will you stop messing with those clothes?’ he retorted, grabbing a silk shirt out of her hand and dropping it to the floor. It landed on his foot.
‘That was childish,’ she said when he ground it into the floor.
He looked at her for a long moment, his chest lifting as if the effort of forming the words were an effort akin to running a marathon.
‘Are you coming back?’
The silence stretched. She could feel the pressure of it pounding in her ears. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted quietly.
‘So you’ve thought about it!’
‘Don’t take that tone with me. I’m not one of your minions,’ she snapped back, ignoring the fact she had never heard him be less than scrupulously polite to people who couldn’t answer back.
‘Of course I’ve thought about it.’
‘I thought so!’
‘You sound like you’ve caught me stealing the silver. Obviously, I’ve thought about it. I’m going and I don’t know for how long. It’s a natural break, a clean break.’
The thought of returning only to discover that he had moved on with someone else or just no longer wanted her was too horrifying to contemplate.
To simply slide back into the nanny role was not an option.
‘Freya...’
‘No!’ She shoved her clenched hands in the pockets of her already snug-fitting jeans simply to stop herself hitting him as she advanced on him, making Marco think of a stalking feral cat, elegant and hissing. Even at that moment he could not but help appreciate the tight rounded curves of her bottom.
‘Do not dare use Freya,’ she hissed.
His head reared at the suggestion he would use his daughter, then he saw the tears standing out in her golden eyes and his antagonism fled, leaving behind an aching, abewilderingneed to hold her, kiss away the tears.
‘And do not try and guilt me out!’ she snapped back.
‘I wasn’t. I was simply going to say that we both will miss you,’ he said, not quite meeting her eyes. ‘But if you want to go nobody is stopping you.’
She moistened her lips. How much, she wanted to yell, how much willyoumiss me?
The depressing answer was probably not much and not for long, whereas she would miss him for ever. Even thinking of it made the world lose its colour. The thought of her Marco-free sepia-tinged future.
‘Well, it was going to happen some time, you said so yourself.’
‘Did I?’
‘Self-limiting? Natural lifespan? Should I go on?’ She might have been flattered by his sudden desire to keep her with him had she not been fully aware the thing he objected to was not her going, but her going at a time that wasn’t one of his choosing. When he was done with her there would be no long goodbye. She knew that Marco didn’t do sentiment. He could be utterly ruthless.
‘I will miss Freya too,’ she said, her voice thick with emotion and unshed tears. ‘I love her.’
She saw something flare in his eyes but a moment later they were shielded by his long, extravagant lashes. ‘I know you do.’
‘But we both know that when you...we...move on, my position here would be untenable. People know...the little looks. I walk into a room and they stop talking. They know, so it’s going to happen some time.’ Her shoulders lifted in a fake philosophical shrug. ‘So why not now? I don’t want to turn into Rosa.’
‘I have no desire to move on, as you so euphemistically put it.’ His slate-hard eyes held hers. ‘Do you?’ he challenged. ‘You showed no desire to move on last night or—’
‘Fine, point taken and no,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t want to drift into a situation where...’ Frustration welled up inside her and the words burst out of her. ‘I do want to move on to something...more...but you won’t, Marco, youcan’t, not while you are in love with a ghost!’ she finished breathlessly.
The breath hissed through his teeth as his jaw clenched. ‘You know nothing about my wife or my marriage.’ His voice, low and quivering with emotion, held more anger than a bellow of fury.
