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What, Alessio thought, did she want him to say?
‘If that’s what you feel you have to do, then do it,’ he said.
His voice had cooled. There was only one way of stopping her and that would be to promise things he could never deliver.
He liked her. He respected her. He fancied her as he’d never fancied any woman in his life before. But that was never going to be enough. Because she wanted him to love her and he would never love her.
Fear tore into him. Fear of what life might look like without her in it.
He rejected it before it had time to take root.
‘You want what I will never be able to give you,’ he told her, just in case she’d got the wrong idea...just in case she thought that his silence meant something it didn’t.
Just in case he was drawn into thinking that this might be more than what it was. Just in case...
He stood back and shoved his hands into his pockets, and then he watched as she spun round on her heel and headed towards the door, pausing for less than a couple of seconds before leaving without looking back.
Alessio stood his ground.
He stayed put with gritted determination, conjuring up in his head a scene the likes of which he could never countenance.
Over-emotional behaviour...hand-wringing and breast-beating and tears.
No. Not for him.
But for it to all be over...
Sophie’s confession rang in his ears.
She had fallen in love with him.
He hadn’t asked her to! He’d hadn’t encouraged her. Had he? No. Emphatically not! He didn’tdolove. Love was loss, and loss was something he had scrupulously avoided his entire adult life. He would not sign up to the idiocy of being vulnerable to the whims of someone else. How could you have any control over your life if you foolishly handed the reins to someone else?
Yet she was walking away.
He would never see her again.
The space that opened up at his feet when he thought about that made him suck in a sharp breath, and for a few seconds he was queasy.
Would it hurt to see how this played out? There was no point in trying to stop her, and of course he didn’t want to do that.
A declaration of love was a gauntlet thrown down...it was an ultimatum he had no intention of meeting.
About to pour himself something stiff, Alessio instead padded out of the room. He hesitated...drawn to where the assembled guests would be hearing...What?
He found out soon enough.
He was rooted to the spot by Sophie’s ringing, confident voice.
Leonard had obviously imparted the glad tidings to everyone there that a marriage was imminent. That the prodigal son had returned and was to be married to the perfect woman!
And now Sophie was in the process of gently disabusing them of any such understanding, and Alessio was riveted, struck dumb by her sheer courage and the calm in her voice.
He stood, unseen, and listened for a few moments, his breathing thick, his thoughts in disarray.
Sophie had no idea where Alessio was.
She couldn’t think about that just at the moment because she was too busy playing to a rapt audience.
