whole life. Pushing her away. Seven years ago it had been one night; this time it might be a week, a month, perhaps a little longer. And then? He’d push. He’d walk away just as he had before, without a backwards glance. Without even a thought.
‘I did want to be with you, Angelo,’ she said in a low voice, each word formed with painful effort. ‘Once.’
‘And not now?’
She swallowed, forced the single word past stiff lips. ‘No.’
With her eyes still closed, she didn’t see him turn the steering wheel. She just heard the squeal of the tyres and felt her body flung sideways as he pulled the car onto the side of the dusty road. Her eyes flew open and she stared at him in shock, saw his chest rise and fall with ragged breaths as he stared straight ahead.
‘Damn it, Lucia,’ he said, ‘that is not true.’ He turned to her, his eyes blazing grim determination. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to be with me. Right here, look me in the eye and swear on your mother’s grave—no, on our daughter’s grave that last night meant nothing to you.’
Lucia stared at him, opened her mouth. No words came out. She couldn’t say that, couldn’t mean it, and he knew it. ‘What do you want from me, Angelo?’ she whispered.
‘The truth.’
‘Why?’ she burst out. ‘Does it stroke your ego to know how much I loved you once? How much I still love you?’ She saw shock blaze across his face and his jaw dropped. She laughed, the sound high and wild. ‘Yes, I love you. I’ve always loved you. I loved you when we were children, when I waited for you on my doorstep with a damp cloth for your cuts. I loved you when you told me your dreams of leaving Caltarione, all of Sicily, to make your fortune. I dreamt you’d take me with you, and when you left I still dreamt you’d come back for me. And then you did come back for me—’ She broke off, drew in a clogged breath. She was saying so much more than she’d ever intended to reveal, and yet even now she couldn’t believe he’d never known. It had been so appallingly obvious to her.
‘Lucia—’ he said hoarsely, and she flung up one hand.
‘No. I’ll say this now, only now, only once. Loving you doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make a difference, because I know—I’ve always known—you don’t love me back the same way. You don’t love me at all.’ He opened his mouth to say—what? Was he actually going to deny something that was so blatantly, brutally true? ‘You might think you feel something for me,’ she cut him off, ‘and perhaps you do. Affection, attraction, something so paltry it hardly matters. I mean no more to you than one of your cars or villas or perhaps one of your corporate takeovers. Something to be acquired, enjoyed and then discarded. That’s how you’ve always seen me, Angelo.’
Angelo just stared at her, unspeaking. He still looked dazed.
And he obviously had no answer, for after a few silent seconds he put the car into Drive and swung back onto the motorway, all without a word. Lucia leaned her head back against her seat and closed her eyes. Angelo’s silence hurt her far more than she knew it should. Had she actually been expecting him to deny the truth? Hoping for him to insist she was wrong, he really had changed, and he knew now that he loved her?
Fantasies.
Neither of them spoke for the rest of the trip back to Palermo.
Angelo still didn’t speak as he pulled in front of the hotel and waited for Lucia to get out. He was still spinning from what she’d said. All of it too incredible, too much. He felt too much.
And he’d said too much…more than he’d ever admitted before to anyone ever, and she’d thrown it all back in his face. Fury churned through him, along with the shock and the disbelief.
Lucia hesitated as she climbed out of the Porsche, her face still averted, her head bowed. For a second he thought she’d say something—but what? She’d said everything on the side of the road, when she’d told him she loved him and it didn’t matter.
Because he didn’t love her.
He waited until she’d disappeared into the hotel, and then he pulled away from the kerb with an angry screech of tyres.
His mind a haze, he drove through the crowded