The Italian's Final Redemption - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,66

after she’d got off the jet, giving her all the information she needed and showing her to some accommodation in the Village where she could spend a couple of days acclimatising.

She didn’t remember that either.

All she remembered was the hollow feeling inside her. Which made sense in a lot of ways, since she’d left her heart in Capri, in Vincenzo de Santi’s strong and capable hands.

You just let him have it. You gave it to him and then you walked away.

Lucy bent and picked up a shell, brushing the sand off it.

Of course she had. He’d wanted her to leave and even telling him that she loved him hadn’t changed his mind. And not because he didn’t want her, but for all those lies he was telling himself. About keeping her safe. About being distracted. About justice.

It was fear and she knew all about fear, how it could get inside you, trap you. And she’d confronted him with his own. But he’d refused to see it. And if he refused to see it, what more could she do? There was nothing.

She stared at the shell, her chest aching. Her throat tight with grief for the lonely path he’d chosen and the life he’d trapped himself in. He was a prisoner just as much as she’d once been, but his cell was one of his own choosing.

It made her ache.

She lifted her wet face to the sky, letting the tears dry on her cheeks in the wind. And then her gaze narrowed as she saw the tall figure of a man coming down the beach towards her.

It looked like... But no. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be Vincenzo.

She should walk on. The sun would be going down soon and she needed to get home. Yet she didn’t move, watching the man walk towards her instead.

Her heart began to speed up, beating wildly in her chest, because it knew who he was, even as her mind balked. And her body tightened, because it knew too. The easy, powerful way he walked. The darkness of his hair. The hard, carved angles of his face...

Lucy stilled. Afraid to move in case he disappeared. Because surely he couldn’t be real. Surely he couldn’t be here on a beach in Cape Cod. With her.

But he came closer and closer and soon it was apparent that it was him, and he was here, and her heart raged behind her breastbone and she couldn’t breathe.

All she could do was stand there as he came to her and, without saying a single word, swept her into his arms.

She stiffened, pushing hard against his solid chest. This couldn’t be real. She was dreaming. She’d offered him her heart and he’d refused it.

‘Vincenzo? What are you doing here?’ And then anger in a cleansing fire hit her and she struggled. ‘Let me go.’

He shuddered, as if in pain, and then abruptly his arms opened and she was free. His face was taut with some vast, passionate emotion burning just beneath the surface of his skin, his black eyes blazing with it.

‘I need to say something, Lucy,’ he said, his voice raw and rough. ‘Will you let me?’

She was trembling now, half of her desperate to throw herself back into his arms while the other half was desperate to send him away.

‘Say what?’ she demanded, shaken and unable to hide it. ‘Didn’t you say everything you needed to back on Capri?’

‘No.’ The word was hoarse. ‘I didn’t. What I said to you then were lies.’

Shock washed through her, the trembling getting worse. ‘What lies?’

Vincenzo’s gaze was full of something hot and vital, burning steady as the fire at the centre of the earth. ‘That you were a distraction. That I didn’t care. That I wanted you to leave... You were right, civetta. Right about so many things. And it took me a while to see them, to accept what you were trying to tell me, but I know now.’ His hands were in fists at his sides, his whole body radiating a familiar tension. ‘You told me I was afraid, and you were right. I was. And if you want to know why, it’s because of this.’ He paused, his great, powerful chest heaving as he sucked in a breath. ‘My mother betrayed me. She manipulated me. She took my trust in her, my love for her, and she broke it. She broke me. I was the tool she used to make herself powerful. Not her heir and not her son.