Читать книгу Secret Heirs Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Коллектив авторов - Страница 73

AFTER HE’D GONE, a wave of desolation swept over Darcy—a desolation so bleak that it felt as if she were standing on the seashore in the depths of winter, being buffeted by the lashing sea. As his car disappeared from view she stumbled away from the window, trying to keep her wits about her, telling herself that her baby was her primary focus—her only focus—and she needed to protect the innocent life inside her. Briefly she closed her eyes as she thought about what Renzo had just found out—the shameful truth about her mother being a common prostitute. Would she be forced to tell her son about the kind of woman his grandmother had been? Yet surely if there was enough love and trust between her and her little boy, then anything was possible.

She swallowed because nothing seemed certain—not any more. She could understand her husband’s anger but it had been impossible to penetrate. It had been a controlled reaction which shouldn’t have surprised her—but another aspect of it had and that was what was confusing her. Because he hadn’t threatened her with the full force of his wealth and power after making his sordid discovery, had he? Wouldn’t another man—a more ruthless man—have pressured her with exposure if she didn’t relinquish her role as primary carer to their baby?

Brushing away the sweat which was beading her brow, she knew she ought to sit down but she couldn’t stop pacing the room as her jumbled thoughts tried to assemble themselves into something approaching clarity. His voice had been bitter when he’d spoken to her—almost as if he’d been hurt. But Renzo didn’t do hurt, did he? Just as he didn’t do emotion.

Surely he must recognise why she’d kept her terrible secret to herself—why the shame of the past had left her unable to trust anyone, just as he had been unable to trust anyone.

But Renzo had trusted her, hadn’t he?

The thought hit her hard.

How many times had he trusted her?

He’d trusted her to take the pill and, even though that method of birth control had failed, he’d trusted her enough to believe her explanation.

He’d trusted her enough to confide in her when he first took her out to Tuscany and told her things he need never have said. And then, when they’d got back to England, he’d trusted her enough to give her the key to his apartment. He might not have wooed her with words but words were cheap, weren’t they? Anyone could say stuff to please a woman and not mean it. But Renzo’s actions had demonstrated trust and regard and that was pretty amazing. It might not have been love but it came a pretty close second. And she had blown it.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she stared at the yellow blur of daffodils in the vase. She had blown it by refusing to trust him—by not lowering the defences she’d erected all those years ago, when the police had asked her questions and she’d been too frightened to tell the truth, for fear her mother would go to jail. Renzo hadn’t judged her because her mother had been an addict and he wouldn’t have judged her because she’d been a prostitute—what had made him turn away with that tight-lipped face was the fact that she’d lied to him. Again and again, she’d kept her secrets to herself.

So what was she going to do about it? She looked at the bright blue sky outside, which seemed to mock her. Stay here with the midwife on standby, while she waited for the baby to arrive? Day following day with remorse and regret and the feeling that she’d just thrown away the best thing which had ever happened to her? Or have the courage to go to Renzo. Not to plead or beg but to put her feelings on the line and tell him what she should have told him a long time ago. It might be too late for him to take her back, but surely he could find it in his heart to forgive her?

Picking up the car keys, she went to the garage and manoeuvred the car out on the lane, sucking in lots of deep and calming breaths just as they’d taught her in the prenatal relaxation classes. Because she had a very precious passenger on board and there was no way she should attempt to drive to London if she was going to drive badly.

She let out the clutch and pulled away, thinking that she should have been scared but she’d never felt so strong or so focussed. She kept her mind fixed firmly on the traffic as the country roads gave way to the city and she entered the busy streets of London, glad she was able to follow the robotic instructions of the satnav. But her hands were shaking as eventually she drew up outside the towering skyscraper headquarters of Sabatini International. She left the car by the kerb and walked into the foyer, where a security guard bustled up importantly, barring her way.

‘I’m afraid you can’t park there, miss.’

‘Oh, yes, I can. And it’s Mrs, actually—or Signora, if you prefer. My husband owns this building. So if you wouldn’t mind?’ Giving a tight smile at his goggle-eyed expression, she handed him her car keys. ‘Doing something with my car? I’d hate Renzo to get a ticket.’

She was aware of people staring at her as she headed for the penthouse lift but maybe that wasn’t surprising. Among the cool and geeky workers milling around, she guessed a heavily pregnant woman with untidy hair would be a bit of a talking point. The elevator zoomed her straight up to the thirty-second floor, where one of Renzo’s assistants must have been forewarned because she stood directly in Darcy’s path, her fixed smile not quite meeting her eyes.

‘Mrs Sabatini.’ She inclined her head. ‘I can’t let you disturb him. I’m afraid your husband is tied up right now.’

Suddenly tempted by a wild impulse to ask whether Renzo had suddenly been converted to the pleasures of bondage, Darcy looked at her and nodded, but she didn’t feel anger or irritation. The woman was only doing her job, after all. In the past she might have crumbled—gone scuttling back downstairs with a request that Renzo contact her when he had a free moment. But that was then and this was now. She’d overcome so much in her life. Seen stuff no child should ever see. She’d come through the other side of all that and yet…

Yet she had still let it define her, hadn’t she? Instead of shutting the door on the past and walking away from it, she had let it influence her life.

Well, not any more.

‘Watch me,’ Darcy said as she walked across the carpeted office towards Renzo’s office, ignoring the woman’s raised voice of protest.

She pushed open the door to see Renzo seated at the top of a long boardroom table with six other people listening to what he was saying, but his words died away the moment he glanced up and saw her. Comically, every head swivelled in her direction but Darcy didn’t pay them any attention; she was too busy gazing into the eyes of her husband and finding nothing in their ebony depths but ice. But she was going to be strong. As strong as she knew she could be.

‘Darcy,’ he said, his eyes narrowing.

‘I know this isn’t a convenient time,’ she said, pre-empting his dismissal and drawing herself up as tall as she could. ‘But I really do need to speak to you, Renzo. So if you people wouldn’t mind giving us five, we’ll make sure this meeting is rescheduled.’

Almost as if they were being controlled by some unseen puppet master, six heads turned to Renzo for affirmation.

He shrugged. ‘You heard what the lady said.’

Darcy’s heart was pounding as they all trooped out, shooting her curious looks on their way, but Renzo still hadn’t moved. His expression remained completely impassive and only the sudden movement of his fingers as he slammed his pen onto the table gave any indication that he might be angry at her interruption.

‘So what are you doing here?’ he questioned coolly. ‘I thought we’d said everything there is to say.’

She shook her head. ‘But we haven’t. Or rather, I haven’t. You did a lot of talking earlier only I was too shocked and upset to answer.’

‘Don’t bother,’ he said, sounding almost…bored. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of your lies. You want to hold on to your precious secrets, Darcy? Then go right ahead! Or maybe find a man you trust enough to tell the truth.’

She let out a shuddered breath, struggling to get out the words she knew she needed to say. ‘I trust you, Renzo. It’s taken me this long to dare admit it, but I do. I trust you enough to tell you that I’ve been scared…and I’ve been stupid. You see, I couldn’t believe someone as good as you could ever be part of my life and I thought…’ Her voice stumbled but somehow she kept the tears at bay. ‘I thought the only way I could hold on to it was to be the person I thought you’d want me to be. I was terrified that if you knew who I really was, that you would send me away—baby or no baby—’

‘You can’t—’

‘No,’ she said fiercely, and now the tears had started and she scrubbed them away furiously with the back of her fist. ‘Let me finish. I should have celebrated my freedom from the kind of life I’d grown up in. I should have rejoiced that I had found a man who was prepared to care for me, and to care for our baby. I should have realised that it was a pretty big deal for you to tell me stuff about your past and give me a key to your apartment. I should have looked for the meaning behind those gestures instead of being too blind and too scared to dare. And rather than keeping my feelings locked away, I should have told you the biggest secret of all.’

He froze. ‘Not another one?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘The final one—and I’m about to let you in on it. Not because I want something in return or because I’m expecting something back, but because you need to know.’ Her voice trembled but she didn’t care. This was her chance to put something right but it was also the truth—shining, bold and very certain, no matter the consequences. ‘I love you, Renzo. I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you, when the thunderbolt hit me, too. Because that feeling never went away. It just grew and grew. When we made love that first time, it was so powerful—it blew me away. I’ve never wanted to be intimate with a man before you and I know that, if you don’t want me, I won’t ever find somebody who makes me feel the way you do.’

There was a silence when all Darcy could hear was the fierce pounding of her heart and she could hardly bear to look at him for fear that she might read rejection in his face. But she had to look at him. If she had learned anything it was that she had to face up to the truth, no matter how painful that might be.

‘How did you get here?’ he demanded.

She blinked at him in confusion. ‘I…drove.’

He nodded. ‘You parked your car in the middle of the city when you’ve only recently passed your test?’

‘I gave the keys to the security guard.’ She licked her lips. ‘I told him I was your wife.’

‘So you thought you’d just drive up here and burst into my building and disrupt my meeting with a few pretty words and make it all better?’

‘I did…’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘I did what I thought was best.’

‘Best for you, you mean?’

‘Renzo—’

‘No!’ he interrupted savagely and now all the coldness had gone—to be replaced with a flickering fire and fury which burned in the depths of his black eyes. ‘I don’t want this. Capisci? I meant what I said, Darcy. I don’t want to live this way, wondering what the hell I’m going to find out about you next. Never knowing what you’re hiding from me, what secrets you’re concealing behind those witchy green eyes.’

She searched his face for some kind of softening but there was none. And who could blame him? She’d known about his trust issues and she’d tested those issues to the limit. Broken them beyond repair so that they lay in shattered ruins between them. The hope which had been building inside her withered and died. Her lips pressed in on themselves but she would not cry. She would not cry.

She nodded. ‘Then there’s nothing more to be said, is there? I’ll leave you so that you can get on with your meeting. You’re right. I should have rung ahead beforehand, but I was afraid you wouldn’t see me. I guess I would have been right.’ She swallowed. ‘Still, I’m sure we can work something out. The best and most amicable deal for our baby. I’m sure we both want that.’ There was a pause as she took one long last look at him, drinking in the carved olive features, the sensual lips and the gleam of his black eyes. ‘Goodbye, Renzo. Take…take good care of yourself.’

And then, with her head held very high, she walked out of his office.

Renzo stared at her retreating form, his mind spinning, aware of the door closing before opening again and his assistant rushing in.

‘I’m sorry about that, Renzo—’

But he waved an impatient hand of dismissal until the woman left him alone again. He paced the floor space of his vast office, trying to concentrate on his latest project, but all he could think about was the luminous light of Darcy’s green eyes and the brimming suggestion of unshed tears. And suddenly he found himself imagining what her life must have been like. How unbearable it must have been. All the sordid things she must have witnessed—and yet she had come through it all, hadn’t she? He thought how she’d overcome her humble circumstances and what she had achieved. Not in some majorly high-powered capacity—she’d ended up waitressing rather than sitting on the board of some big company. But she’d done it with integrity. She’d financed her studies and read lots of novels while working two jobs—yet even when she’d been poured into that tight satin cocktail dress she had demonstrated a fierce kind of pride and independence. She’d never wanted to take a single thing from him, had she? She’d refused much more than she’d accepted and it hadn’t been an act, had it? It had been genuine. From the heart. A big heart, which she’d been scared to expose for fear that she’d be knocked back, just as she must have been knocked back so many times before.

And he had done that to her. Knocked her back and let her go, right after she’d fiercely declared her love for him.

Her love for him.

He was prepared to give up that, along with her beauty and her energy, and for what?

For what?

A cold dread iced his skin as swiftly he left his office, passing his assistant’s desk without saying a word as he urgently punched the button of the elevator. But the journey down to the basement seemed to take for ever, and Renzo’s fist clenched as he glanced at his watch, because surely she would have left by now.

It took a moment for his eyes to focus in the gloomy light of the subterranean car park but he couldn’t see her. Only now it wasn’t his fist which clenched but his heart—a tight spear of pain which made him feel momentarily winded. What if she’d driven off after his callous rejection and was negotiating the busy roads to Brighton as she made her way back towards an empty house?

Pain and guilt washed over him as his eyes continued to scan the rows of cars and hope withered away inside him. And then he saw her on the other side of the car park in the ridiculously modest vehicle she’d insisted she wanted, in that stubborn way which often infuriated him but more often made his blood sing. He weaved his way through the cars, seeing her white face looking up at him as he placed the palm of his hand against the glass of the windscreen.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mouthed, but she shook her head.

‘Let me in,’ he said, but she shook her head again and began putting the key in the ignition with shaking fingers.

He didn’t move, but placed his face closer to the window, barely noticing that someone from the IT department had just got out of the lift and was staring at him in open-mouthed disbelief. ‘Open the door,’ he said loudly. ‘Or I’ll rip the damned thing off its hinges.’

She must have believed him because the lock clicked and he opened the door and sat in the passenger seat before she could change her mind. ‘Darcy,’ he said.

‘Whatever it is you want to say,’ she declared fiercely, ‘I don’t want to hear it. Not right now.’

She’d been crying. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red-rimmed and he realised that he’d never seen her cry—not once—she, who probably had more reason to cry than any other woman he’d known.

He wanted to take her in his arms. To feel her warmth and her connection. To kiss away those drying tears as their flesh melted against each other as it had done so many times in the past. But touching was cheating—it was avoiding the main issue and he needed to address that. To face up to what else was wrong. Not in her, but in him. Because how could she have ever trusted him completely when he kept so much of himself locked away?

‘Just hear me out,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘And let me tell you what I should have told you a long time ago. Which is that you’ve transformed my life in every which way. You’ve made me feel stuff I never thought I’d feel. Stuff I didn’t want to feel, because I was scared of what it might do to me, because I’d seen hurt and I’d seen pain in relationships and I didn’t want any part of that. Only I’ve just realised…’ He drew in a deep breath and maybe she thought he wasn’t going to continue, because her eyes had narrowed.

‘Realised what?’ she questioned cautiously.

‘That the worst pain of all is the pain of not having you in my life. When you walked out of my office just now I got a glimpse of just what that could be like—and it felt like the sun had been blotted from the sky.’

‘Very poetic,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Maybe your next girlfriend will hear it before it’s too late.’

She wasn’t budging an inch but he respected her for that, too. If it had been anyone else he wouldn’t have stayed or persisted or cared. But he was fighting for something here. Something he’d never really thought about in concrete terms before.

His future.

‘And there’s something else you need to know,’ he said softly. ‘And before you look at me in that stubborn way, just listen. All those things I did for you, things I’ve never done for anyone else—why do you think they happened? Because those thunderbolt feelings never left me either, no matter how much I sometimes wished they would. Because I wanted our baby and I wanted you. I like being with you. Being married to you. Waking up to you each morning and kissing you to sleep every night. And I love you,’ he finished simply. ‘I love you so much, Darcy. Choose what you do or don’t believe, but please believe that.’

As she listened to his low declaration of love, Darcy started to cry. At first it was the trickle of a solitary tear which streaked down her cheek and ended up in a salty drip at the corner of her mouth. She licked it away but then more came, until suddenly they were streaming her face but the crazy thing was that she didn’t care.

In the close confines of the car she stared at him through blurry vision and as that vision cleared the dark beauty of his face no longer seemed shuttered. It seemed open and alight with a look she’d always longed to see there, but never thought she would. It was shining from his eyes as a lighthouse shone out to all the nearby ships on the darkest of nights. ‘Yes, I believe you,’ she whispered. ‘And now you need to hold me very tightly—just to convince me I’m not dreaming.’

With a soft and exultant laugh Renzo pulled her into his arms, smoothing away the tangle of curls before bending his head to kiss away the tears which had made her cheeks so wet. She clung to him as their mouths groped blindly together and kissed as they’d never really kissed before. It was passionate and it was emotional—but it was superseded by a feeling so powerful that Darcy’s heart felt as if it were going to spill over with joy, until she suddenly jerked away—tossing her head back like a startled horse.

‘Oh, I love you, my beautiful little firecracker,’ he murmured as she dug her fingers into his arms.

‘The feeling is mutual,’ she said urgently. ‘Only we have to get out of here.’

He frowned. ‘You want to go back to Sussex?’

She flinched and closed her eyes as another fierce contraction gripped her and she shook her head. ‘I don’t think we’re going to make it as far as Sussex. I know it’s another two weeks away, but I think I’m going into labour.’

It was a quick and easy birth—well, that was what the cooing midwives told her, though Darcy would never have described such a seismic experience as easy. But she had Renzo beside her every step along the way. Renzo holding her hand and mopping her brow and whispering things to her in Italian which—in her more lucid moments—she knew she shouldn’t understand, but somehow she did. Because the words of love were universal. People could say them and not mean them. But they could also say them in a foreign language and you knew—you just knew—what they meant and that they were true.

It was an emotional moment when they put Luca Lorenzo Sabatini to her breast and he began to suckle eagerly, gazing up at her with black eyes so like his daddy’s. And when the midwives and the doctor had all left them, she glanced up into Renzo’s face and saw that his own eyes were unusually bright. She lifted her hand to the dark shadow of growth at his unshaven jaw and he met her wondering gaze with a shrug of his powerful shoulders. Was he crying?

‘Scusi,’ he murmured, bending down to drop a kiss on his son’s downy black head before briefly brushing his lips over Darcy’s. ‘I’m not going to be a lot of use to you, am I—if I start letting emotion get the better of me?’

And Darcy smiled as she shook her head. ‘Bring it on,’ she said softly. ‘I like seeing my strong and powerful man reduced to putty by the sight of his newborn baby.’

‘It seems as if my son has the same power over me as his mother,’ Renzo responded drily. He smoothed back her wild red curls. ‘Now. Do you want me to leave and let you get some rest?’

‘No way,’ she said firmly, shifting across to make space for him, her heart thudding as he manoeuvred his powerful frame onto the narrow hospital bed. And Darcy felt as if she’d never known such joy as when Renzo put his arm around her and hugged her and Luca close. As if she’d spent her life walking along a path—much of the time in darkness—only to emerge into a place full of beautiful light.

‘It’s not the most comfortable bed in the world, but there’s room on it for the three of us. And I want you beside me, Renzo. Here with me and here with Luca.’ And that was when her voice cracked with the emotion which had been building up inside her since he’d told her he loved her. ‘In fact, we’re never going to let you go.’