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Remembered words enticed her to speak, encouraged her to share the feelings so strong they had overwhelmed her.
‘How could they?’ she whispered. ‘How could they have left us like that?’ she asked him, even then knowing it was not his place to answer. ‘I’m so...angry,’ she said, realising the truth of the feeling thundering through her veins. ‘I’m furious,’ she cried, her hands fisting against the fact that the two people in the world who should have protected her and her sister had been so utterly selfish.
‘We lost so much,’ she said as the tears dampened Alessandro’s linen shirt and her heart buckled beneath the onslaught of her feelings. ‘Not money, or houses or friends. We lostthem.’And for the first time she opened the door to the room where she had locked all that anger and all that resentment—not at having to look after and care for her sister, but resentment of her parents’ utter neglect. And as her hurts poured out into the sea around them, Amelia let herself be comforted by the man who had, only days before, been her enemy.
Alessandro whispered to her in Italian; words of comfort to the incredible woman in his arms, until the storm of emotions that had gripped her had passed enough for him to talk to her about it. He knew that fury, he knew how hard it was to keep it controlled—he struggled with that himself. But Amelia, it seemed, had not realised what she had been fighting, her revenge plan keeping her and her sister from realising who had hurt them the most.
In that moment Alessandro wanted to destroy Thomas Seymore all over again. But if he had the chance to do so all over again, would he have? Knowing what it had done to Amelia and Isabelle? He could not take it back, and he could not apologise for it either. It had been a fundamental part of what had made him and Gianni who they were today and he was not, and would not be, ashamed of the men they had become. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t recognise the damage that had been done to Amelia and Isabelle Seymore’s lives by his and Gianni’s own need for revenge.
The sigh building deep in his chest was tired and heavy with thoughts of the past, clashing with the hopes he knew Amelia had for the future. A hope to do and be better. And he wanted it. He wanted it so damn much it terrified him. Because he’d had that same look, that same hope, once before and when that hope had been betrayed it had taken him decades to recover. He didn’t think he’d survive it again. As if noticing the edge of darkness to his thoughts, Amelia stiffened in his embrace, until he forced the thought from his mind. Determined, instead, to soothe her hurts in this moment.
‘Amelia,’ he said, pulling back so that she could read the truth of his words. ‘I really am truly sorry for what happened to your family. That was never an outcome we intended.’
She nodded her head, but he could still see the upset in her eyes. An almost violent urge to conquer any hurt she faced, any pain, and remove it from her path rocked him to his core. Despite the shocking power of that emotion, he gently swept back a sleek chestnut tendril of hair from her face. ‘I’m sorry that you struggled and I’m sorry that you didn’t have people there to look after you and take care of you when you needed it most. I’m sorry you had to do so much on your own.’
As he said the words, his own heart turned—like a sunflower following the sun—as if his words were trying to heal a hurt of his own, as if they were just as relevant to his childhood as hers. And this time when tears flowed freely down her cheeks, he knew that they were good tears, healing tears, necessary, so that she could be freer than she had been before. He placed a gentle kiss on a watery smile, and a little laugh escaped her.
‘You can’t kiss me now, I’m all...gross from crying.’
And Alessandro barked out a laugh. ‘Amelia,cara, you are many things, but gross is not and never will be one of them.’
‘I have a feeling,’ she replied ruefully, ‘that the next seven months might test that statement.’
For a moment they were caught up in a shared smile, his gaze dropping to her stomach where their child was slowly growing. Amelia, bottom lip pinned by a flash of white teeth, reached for his hand slowly—as if giving him enough time to back away. He felt hypnotised, unable to move—unsure whether he wanted this or not, scared in a way that he only vaguely remembered from a very long time ago. He let her take his hand and she placed it over her abdomen.
Surely, he wouldn’t be able to feel the flare of her stomach this early on in the pregnancy, but he imagined that he did. Imagined that in there was the best part of both him and Amelia. They stayed like that for a while, lost in thoughts and hopes and dreams of a future they both wanted too much to say, until the blare of a passenger ferry startled them apart, and they turned to find tourists waving and yelling their greetings across the stretch of water.
Alessandro smiled, to cover the disquiet the moment had brought him, and said instead, ‘Shall we go home?’
Amelia would remember the next few days with the hazy glow of summer and heat and a softness that she hadn’t encountered before—from Alessandro or anyone other than her sister, for that matter. Alessandro could be funny, she discovered, enjoying the way that she could tease his ego without denting it or provoking a retaliation. He’d made her laugh as he’d answered another paper task to tell her something about Gianni that no one else knew.
She’d not been able to hold back the tears of laughter as Alessandro described in great detail, and a not inconsiderate delight, the time Gianni had tried to ‘frost’ the tips of his hair with bleach, only to have to shave his head and wait for his hair to grow back.
In exchange she’d told Alessandro about the time that Issy had fallen off her ‘Gianni diet’, ordered four pizzas, ice cream, garlic bread and sides, then got so scared about what her evil gym instructor would say the next day, she’d been too upset to eat it all, and she’d taken the entire lot downstairs to their neighbour.
Alessandro surprised her again with his impressive cooking and the fact that he was a secret foodie was almost one of her favourite things about him. From the incredible ingredients in the fully stocked fridge, Alessandro would create dinners at an almost gourmet level. After which, they continued to explore the passion they had discovered in Morocco. Amelia’s nights were full of a heady sensuality that left her breathless and wanting in the daylight. Slowly they learned each other’s pleasures, indulging in pleasing and receiving in ways that she could never have imagined.
But that, Amelia would later recognise, was the end of that brief momentary paradise they had together. Because the evening they returned from an idyllic day in Umbria, Alessandro received a message from work that had him locked in his office until long past midnight. And when he’d come to their shared bed that night, tiptoeing and trying to be so quiet, she let him think she was still asleep because she didn’t have the courage to ask him about it.
The following morning, he was gone from the bed before she woke. But by the time she came down for breakfast, she was surprised to find him waiting for her. When he saw her, he put his phone away and offered her the decaffeinated coffee he had made for her and a slip of torn paper and it didn’t matter what the paper said, just that he was still willing to do the silly tasks she had hoped would bring them together.
They were barely twenty minutes’ drive away from the estate when he received another call and he cursed.
‘You can put it on speaker if you like?’ she offered, hoping that way he might be able to continue driving. And maybe, even, that she’d discover what was wrong and see if she could help.
‘No, it’s okay,’ he replied, not meeting her gaze and signalling to pull over.
He got out of the car and took the call, pacing up and down the side of a dusty road. She tried to catch some of the conversation in between the roar from passing cars but it was useless. And she felt...frustrated and cut out. Even if it wasn’t the Aurora project, she had worked with him for two years—she was good at her job. She could help if he would let her, but he wouldn’t.
‘I’m sorry, I have to go back,’ he announced when he returned to the car.
The sudden engine ignition and the sweep of the U-turn prevented any further response from her. Only it turned out that Alessandro hadn’t meant back to the villa, but back to London. Without her.
He returned that evening and Amelia clung harder to him that night than she had done before, as if sensing that he was slipping through her fingers, just as she had begun to realise that she loved him. It hadn’t been quick, or sudden, it hadn’t hit her like a punch, or stolen her breath. It had grown, piece by piece, as she’d uncovered little bits of him, like precious stones on a beach, hidden beneath sand and sea.
The loyalty he had to Gianni, the integrity he’d had with his business and his staff, the standard he held himself to, and the drive and determination to succeed. Those had all made him admirable in her mind even as she’d tried to sabotage him. And the physical connection they’d had? The strength of it had overpowered her own mind—her own determination to hate him, to make him pay for what had been done to her family. But his concern and care for her when she had collapsed, and then when she had emotionally broken on the way to Capri, made her feel as if she was seeing therealAlessandro Rossi. The way that he made her coffee, made her favourite dishes, those things had built in her heart. He had considered her in a way that no one had ever done before and it made her realise what she would lose if he walked away from her.
She worried about him when he went to London again the next day. The entire time he was away, her focus was on him and what he was doing, what was going wrong to take so much of his focus. And she could hear it, the whispered warning in the back of her mind. That he was cutting her out because he didn’t trust her. That she was relying on him too much. That restless feeling creeping up on her grated on raw nerves and pacing inside the villa wasn’t helping. Instead, she looked out across the pool and knew where she wanted to go.
