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He could hardly take in the fact that she was here, one foot away, her face showing as much surprise as he felt, before someone pushed his shoulder so hard he staggered back and almost fell into the door. His coffee splashed all over him, soaking his black-and-white floral button-down and burning his chest.
“Are you kidding me?” a woman’s voice said, but it wasn’t Megan’s. She was still staring at him, her eyes huge.
“Megan,” he could only say. His hand reached out to her. Was she real?
“Don’t touch her,” the other woman said. “Not before I’ve kicked your ass, anyway.”
He didn’t want to stop gazing at Megan lest she disappear, but the other woman pushed in between them, and Alessandro had to look up at her.
Yes, up, because she was taller than Megan, with wiry copper hair and skin that looked as though she spent most of her time outside. Unlike the chic clothes of everyone around her, she was in a Humboldt Redwoods T-shirt, cargo pants, and walking boots. And she wore no makeup.
This collection of clues came together in his mind. “You are Sam,” he said.
“Yeah.” She put her hands on her hips. “I am Sam. And you”—she poked him in the shoulder again and,cazzo, did she do exercises with her fingers or something? Because that hurt—“are high on my shit list, buddy.”
No more than he was on his own shit list. He glanced back at Megan. “Don’t leave. Please.”
“Why not?” Sam said for her. “Give me one good reason why she shouldn’t be leaving you and everything here after what you did to her?”
Megan’s eyes were boring into him. Alessandro waited, and she said, “Yes, Alessandro. Why not?”
The entire office was looking at them. If people had been behind glass walls or in offices, they weren’t anymore. Alessandro was in a hallway with no way out. And he couldn’t ask her to come into the conference room with him. That would be the coward’s way.
But if he was going to speak directly from his heart, he had to use the language he’d grown up with. “Perché,” he said, guiding Sam out of the way with his hand while the other pulled Megan toward him. “Perché, cara—”
Megan’s eyes filled with tears.
“Shit, dude. I’m gonna kill you,” Sam said.
Megan slumped against the wall behind her, breaking Alessandro’s hold on her. Sam elbowed Alessandro out of the way and put her arm around her sister’s, pulling her away from him so firmly that Megan stumbled.
♦
Why? Why did he have to find her here? She’d had no time to fortify herself against seeing him again. They were both still Yasmin’s clients, so one day she’d known it might happen. But today? When she’d just flown in and Sam had come from New Mexico to help her begin the next chapter of her life? If he hadn’t seen the photo of her in the Boston airport, this was proof that he’d been right, that she’d run back to her family as soon as things got hard.
This morning, she and Sam had taken a regular ole cab from the airport hotel into the city to sign the lease on the warehouse Megan would be using for her charity. Sam was the perfect travel companion: nonjudgmental, ready to trash Alessandro as soon as Megan got teary, and enthusiastic about Megan’s future without him.
More enthusiastic than Megan was, for sure.
But now Alessandro was here. And he was looking at her, those gray eyes back to the ocean storm she’d always loved. They held no anger, no ice. Nothing of what he’d given her three days ago.
And Megan wasn’t ready for it.
Alessandro followed them back to the waiting room, where Sam made for a couch and deposited Megan into it. “You don’t have to do this,” Sam said to her. “We can come back later.”
“No, don’t go,” Alessandro said—begged. And then he really begged, dropping to his knees in front of her. “Mi dispiace tanto, cara. E colpa mia. Mi dispiace tanto.”
Megan looked away from his face in front of hers. She tried not to cry in front of him, because who the hell did he think he was? But she couldn’t stop her shoulders from hitching, and she’d forgotten her wet cheeks.
“I am so, so sorry,” he went on in English. “You were right, and I didn’t want to listen. I have spoken with my brothers. We are going to try to be… family again. And you were right that I am better when I try to heal those wounds rather than ignore them.”
Well, she sure the hell wasn’t able to stop crying now. He’d talked to his brothers. He’d changed his mind. Because she’d asked him to.
He moved to wipe her tears, but she couldn’t have it yet. She could not let him touch her again. Not before he suffered as she had. He could have talked to his brothers days ago, and she wouldn’t have had to go through this.
She blocked his hand with hers. “Not the face!” a voice somewhere in the room said. Yasmin. Megan couldn’t help tilting her mouth, just a little. Maybe her hand was a little close to his perfect face.
“You can hit me if you like,” he said, taking her fist and holding it to his chest. “I chose wrong. I gave you pain, and I will pay for it for the rest of my life. I should have chosen you. I will always choose you. Forgive me,cara. I am an idiot, an asshole. A dumbass.”
