The Italian's Rightful Bride - By Lucy Gordon Page 0,57

you didn’t care. You outfaced them because that was how much you loved her. So why can’t you outface people for me?’

‘Darling—’

‘Don’t call me darling, you hypocrite.’

‘I love you, and I’ll damned well call you what I like. Or doesn’t it mean anything that I love you?’

There! He’d said it!

After all these years he’d said that he loved her, and instead of being the sweet, glorious moment she’d dreamed of, it had come as part of a stupid quarrel.

But it wasn’t stupid. It struck at the heart of her love and what that love meant to her.

‘It would have meant something if you did love me,’ she said slowly. ‘But actually I come some way down your list of priorities.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said distractedly. ‘I know this isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen—’

‘To hell with what’s supposed to happen!’ she cried. ‘You’ve spent so much of your life doing what you were supposed to do that you’ve forgotten how to do anything else. Why can’t you just follow your heart, like you did with her?’

‘I wish you’d leave her out of it.’

‘How can I? You loved her so much that you didn’t care what anyone thought, or even what you thought of yourself. Now it’s different. Your priorities are first, your pride; second, your reputation; third, me.’

‘That’s unfair.’

‘The truth is often unfair, and it is the truth. Well, it’s not good enough. I don’t want a half-love. I want one that matters so much that you’ll trample everything else down for me, like you did before. And I can’t have it, not from you, anyway. I even got better from Freddy.’

‘Freddy was a fortune-hunter.’

She sighed. ‘Gustavo, if I started worrying about the motives of men who had less than me I’d die an old maid. It includes most of them. I have my own standards, and that doesn’t include a man’s bank balance, or lack of it. I don’t care! I only care how much he loves me.’

‘And I’ve told you that I do.’

‘No, you don’t. What you love is your own opinion of yourself as a decent man.’

‘And you? You don’t love me at all, do you?’

‘How the hell do you know?’

‘Because you’re finding excuses to back off, just like last time. Isn’t that true?’

She was about to tell him everything, but her temper had risen and hell would freeze over before she made a declaration of love here and now. Her heart was bitter with disappointment that it had come to this.

‘I think we should go home now,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the time or place.’

‘I think it is.’

‘Don’t try to talk to me, Gustavo. I’m so angry I may never want to talk to you again.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘No, you don’t, do you? That’s one thing we can agree on. You’ve never understood anything about me. Not then, not now.’

She stormed off, climbed out of the dig in a rage, ran to the car and drove away.

She got halfway back to the house before common sense returned and she remembered that he had no means of transport. Groaning, she turned back and drove until she saw him.

‘Get in,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘And don’t say a word to me, ever again, do you understand?’

‘No,’ he said in a hollow voice. ‘I don’t understand anything.’

‘Then just keep quiet anyway.’

Over the next few days the full extent of the treasure was revealed, and it was greater than anyone’s hopes.

Joanna’s professional pride warred with her personal frustration and misery.

She could have had it all and she’d thrown it away because of some stupid, niggling bother.

No, she stopped herself there. It hadn’t been stupid. And she couldn’t have had it all. She could have had only the small portion Gustavo had been willing to offer. He could love her if…

And that ‘if’ damned him. If everything else was right. If he could keep his pride as well. With Crystal he’d thrown all other thoughts to the winds. With her there was an ‘if’. And though it broke her heart a second time, she would not accept a conditional love in return for her wholehearted one.

There were plenty of other things to think of. It was time for Billy to go back to England and the boarding-school he attended. He liked being there, but she knew everything would have been happier if she’d settled in Italy and brought him to live here.

Freddy was taking him to England and staying a couple of days before returning