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‘You’re lying.’
‘And you know this because you know me so well?’
‘Maybe I don’t know you at all,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know the person you’re trying to be right now.’
‘Who am I trying to be?’
‘Cold. Indifferent.’
‘Maybe Iamcold.’ He looked straight through her. ‘Indifferent.’
‘You’re neither of those things.’
He crossed his leg and flicked at a piece of invisible lint. ‘Am I not?’
‘You’re pretending you are,’ she said, slowly joining the dots in her mind. ‘Only with me you haven’t been like that. Not in London. Not on your boat. Only here.’
‘How do you know I haven’t been pretending all this time just to get you here?’
‘Because I know,’ she said without hesitation.
The man beside her was a lie, and the truth she’d experienced with him had been too honest, too raw, for it to come from anyone other than the man he hid beneath his suit.
‘I was there with you. Making promises in the storm. And now that we’re not there you’re pretending you’ve forgotten that we promised each other to give the chaotic chemistry between us a home if we couldn’t burn it out.’
He picked up the hand on his thigh and placed in on hers. ‘But ithasburnt out—like a pinched flame,piccolina.’
‘No, I can feel it still simmering between us. This charge...’ She swallowed down the hurt of his unexpected rejection. ‘You’re running from it,’ she declared. ‘Hiding from me...from yourself. And I’m done with running from the elephant in the room.’ She sat straighter, taller. ‘Stop lying,’ she demanded. ‘To me. To yourself. Because I’m not going in there until I understand what’s happening between us. What’s changed. Why we’re here.’
‘You can’t refuse to get out of a helicopter every time we travel in one,’ he hissed.
‘I can do what I want,’ she countered, heat flushing all the way up from her chest to heat her face. ‘It’s called being a grown-up. Facing the situation presented to you and gathering all the facts, whether or not you want to learn them. Don’t redact the truth with me—I never want to be in the dark again. That list...it overwhelmed me. But I’ve got myself together now. I’ve remembered who I am. The woman I want to be. I want to face the facts—all of them—right here and now. Don’t you?’
He didn’t speak for the longest time. Didn’t move.
‘Tellme,’ she said, her throat dry. Her brain was twisting itself to understand the information he was hiding from her. Find the facts. ‘Explain why we’re here? Why is it so important to you to have your new family—me—in a home where you never knew any genuine sense of family...where you were never shown love, only rejection?’
With a slight shake of his head, Raffaele closed his eyes briefly. ‘We have spoken about origins, Flora. Knowing our roots.’ He shrugged. ‘These are mine. This house was once a place to be avoided. The people inside unimportant. Insignificant. Now it is a beacon of privilege. It is because ofthishouse that Scarlata pulses with life. When our baby grows,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the house, ‘the strength of what its father has become will outweigh the whispers I once endured. Our child will be strong because of these roots.Myroots. This house that was once nothing more than a shell will be a family home.’
He turned to her then.
‘Ourhome,piccolina. I don’t want this love you talk of. I wouldn’t thrust it upon anyone—especially our child. I’ve seen first-hand how love manipulates. Breaks those it claims to care for irreparably.’
‘Your mum?’
‘Love broke my mother. The lie of it. The illusion. She waited all her adult life for love to return to her, and when it didn’t—when her love died—she chose to end her life.’
Horrified, she let her hand fly to her mouth. ‘Love ended her life?’
‘No. Love doesn’t exist. It was the illusion of love that killed her,’ he confirmed, his tone flat. Emotionless.
‘What about her love for you?’
‘She didn’t love me. She provided a bed. A roof.’
‘The same things you’re offering me?’
‘No, I am offering you what I have offered from the very beginning,’ he answered. ‘Nothing has changed.’
