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‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s the best bit. ‘Because once you fell in love with me, it would make dumping you so much more satisfying.’
‘But why, when I was leaving anyway?’
‘Do you think I was planning to wait until your flight to cut you loose? Not a chance. And now, after finding out the kind of person you really are, I’m glad to see the back of you.’ He dragged in air. ‘What a fool I was. To think I let you back into my life after what you’d done. What were you hoping this time? To do it all again? To go home with another child in your belly—another child on whom you could exact your own ugly revenge?’
She blinked against the wall of hatred directed her way, as his words flayed her like no whip ever could. They scored her and stung her and ripped at her psyche.
And there was nothing she could say or do, nothing but feel the weight of her futile love for this man sucking her down into the depths of one of Venice’s canals. Knowing there would be no rescue.
‘I’ll go, Luca. You clearly want me gone and I don’t want to stay so I’ll pack up and leave now and consider myself duly dumped.’
She walked to the door, holding her head, if not her heart, high. And then she turned. ‘There’s one more thing I should have told you about our baby. Add it to my list of crimes if you must, I don’t care. I named him Leo.’
* * *
He wandered the palazzo like a caged lion. He felt like a caged lion. He wandered through his bedroom, he wandered past the windows where they’d made love, he wandered out of his home and out through the calles of Venice, past the scaffolding around Eduardo’s old palazzo, where the engineers and builders were already hard at work shoring up the foundations, and back again and still he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
Still she was gone.
But he’d got what he wanted, hadn’t he? He still wanted her gone, given what she had done.
He’d got what he had wanted all along. He’d got rid of her. He’d got even.
So why the hell wasn’t he happy now she was gone?
Why was he so miserable now she was gone?
Damn the woman! He’d almost wanted her to stay. He’d almost figured she’d meant something to him before her betrayal. He’d almost factored in a measure of longevity before he’d learned the truth about what she really was. He didn’t want to think about the kind of person she really was.
He got back to his study and looked at the file someone had placed on his desk while he’d been away. A file he’d asked for. A file that bore a name tag he wasn’t sure he entirely recognised.
Leo Henderson Barbarigo.
Why did that name send shivers down his spine? And then he opened the file and read and realised why he’d felt so sick all this time.
Because it was true that mad in that night of love-making that he and Valentina had conceived a child.
A son.
Because it was true that the child had been lost.
Their son.
But not because Valentina had brought an end to that pregnancy, as he’d so wrongly accused her of.
Valentina had been speaking the truth.
Oh God, what had he done?
Suddenly all the injustice in the world swirled and spun like threads and blame and hope all intermingled and tangled.
And he hoped to God it was not too late to do something to make up for it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LUCA had figured a chartered jet should give him a fighting chance of catching her given a commercial flight’s connections along the route. A chartered jet, a fast car and a GPS set for somewhere called Junee, New South Wales—with any luck he’d be right behind her.
So when he arrived at the gate marked ‘Magpie Springs’ and rattled the car across the cattle grid, he thought he’d done it, that soon he would see her. That soon he would have a chance to make up for it all.
He followed the bumpy dirt track, sheep scattering in his path and increasingly wondering where the hell any house might be and if he’d taken a wrong turn, when he rounded a bend and there was the house, nestled under a stand of old shade trees.
He pulled the BMW to a stop, sending up a cloud of dust that floated on the air. He climbed from the car, never more acutely aware of the expanse of blue sky than at this far-flung end of the world, and an October that felt more like April to him, with its promise of coming heat rather than a final farewell in the sun’s rays.
A screen door opened and a man emerged, letting the door slam shut behind him. Tall, rangy and sun-drenched, he stopped to assess the new arrival, his eyes missing nothing. Her father, he guessed, and felt himself stand taller under his scrutiny.
