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He looked at her with those storm-tossed grey eyes and said, ‘You did.’
Sensation zippered down her spine as the air was sucked from her lungs.
‘How?’ she whispered.
‘I’m not sure. But when I went back to Italy, I couldn’t settle at my desk. So I worked with the pickers on the harvest. We sat together for lunch in the shade of the vines. We talked and laughed and ate together, and that was better and I told myself I was happier, but still there was this heaviness in my chest that would not go away.
‘I thought it was emptiness, because my kidney scar aches and my kidney is gone. I convinced myself it was emptiness because I didn’t want to find another explanation.
‘Except that didn’t explain why it hurt more when I thought of you. If there was no heart, if I was just empty, I should feel nothing. And so I tried to put you out of my mind. I tried to forget, but there was no putting you out of my mind, just as there was no forgetting, and every time I thought of you, it hurt more and more.
‘Then I realised it hurt because my heart was there. Because, slowly and inexorably, you had put the pieces of my heart back together.’
He looked at her and shrugged. ‘And I don’t even know how it happened. I told myself you weren’t my type and still I wanted you. I warned you not to be needy but if anyone is needy here it’s me. I needed you so much I had to come back, to find out if you could ever forgive me for what I did. To find out if you might feel a fraction of what I do.’
Could a heart possibly thud any louder?
‘What do you feel?’
‘Empty without you. Because I need you by my side. I need you in my bed. I want you for my wife. And all because I love you, Holly. I want to be whole again and I cannot see how I can be whole without you, without a lifetime of you by my side.’
The silence weighed heavily between them, while the ocean between them leached away and let her pass, until she was in his arms, her arms around his neck, his around her as he whirled her into a kiss, their first kiss as more than mere lovers. Their first kiss as a couple in love.
She let that kiss speak for her and wipe away the hurt and the pain, let that kiss show him her love and her hopes and her dreams she hadn’t dare dream.
Until this very moment.
When finally they stopped to draw breath, and to smile at each other and to laugh and kiss again, she put her hands to the beautiful face of the man she loved and found the words she needed to say. ‘I love you, Franco Chatsfield. And a lifetime spent with you sounds just about perfect.’
And it was.
