Читать книгу A Passionate Reunion In Fiji / Cinderella's Scandalous Secret - Мишель Смарт, Michelle Smart - Страница 17

MASSIMO LOCKED THE bathroom door. He didn’t trust Livia not to barge in.

He’d expected her to follow him to the chalet. Every step had been taken with an ear braced for a fresh verbal assault.

But the assault never came.

He turned the shower on and closed his eyes to the hot water spraying over his head.

Livia’s defiant yet stricken face played in his retinas.

Guilt fisted his guts. He’d been cruel. The words had spilled out of him as if a snake had taken possession of his tongue.

Being here…with Livia, with his family, seeing how close to death his grandfather really was…it was all too much.

Hearing accusations of neglectful behaviour towards those he loved had driven like a knife in his heart.

He’d done his best for his family. They might not see him as much as they would like but he made up for his lack of presence in other ways.

And he’d done his best in his marriage. That his best did not live up to his wife’s exacting standards was not his fault. Neglect seemed to suggest that she was a child who needed taking care of when they both knew Livia was more than capable of taking care of herself. This was the woman who’d survived the Secondigliano without being seduced by its violent glamour. This was the woman who’d discovered an affinity for nursing when the local doctor the neighbourhood gangsters visited to fix their gangland wounds recognised her coolness under pressure when one of her cousins got shot in the leg. From the age of fourteen Livia had been paid a flat fee of fifty euros a time to assist the doctor whenever required. Like Massimo, she’d stashed it away. Unlike Massimo, who’d saved his money in a box in his bedroom, never having to worry about his family stealing it from him, she’d kept her cash in a waterproof container under the vase in her father’s grave. As she was the only mourner to place flowers on the grave, it was the only safe place she had for it.

She’d refused to be sucked into a life of crime. The only vice she’d picked up in her years where drugs were cheap and plentiful was cigarette smoking, which she’d quit when she’d achieved the grades needed to study nursing in Rome and taken all her cash and left the life behind her. She was as tough as nails. To suggest she needed caring for was laughable.

Finished showering, he rubbed his body with a towel then wrapped it around his waist. Bracing himself, he unlocked the door and stepped into the bedroom.

He’d been right to brace himself. Livia was sitting on the end of the bed waiting for him. But the fury he expected to be met with was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes, when he met them, were sad. The smudge of mascara was still visible.

After a moment’s silence that felt strangely melancholic, she said, ‘I don’t want it to be like this.’ It was the quietest he’d ever heard her speak.

He ran a hand through his damp hair and grimaced. ‘I thought you wanted me to argue with you. Isn’t that what you’ve always said?’

‘Arguing’s healthy, but this…?’ Her shoulders and chest rose before slumping sharply, her gaze falling to the floor. ‘I don’t want us to be cruel to each other. I knew things would be difficult this weekend but…’ Her voice trailed away before she slowly raised her head to meet his gaze. There was a sheen in her eyes that made his heart clench. ‘This is much harder than I thought it would be.’

Massimo pressed his back against the bathroom door and closed his eyes. ‘It’s harder than I thought it would be too.’

‘It is?’

He nodded and ground his teeth together. ‘I shouldn’t have said the things I said. I’m sorry.’

‘I didn’t know you felt like that.’

‘I don’t.’ At her raised, disbelieving brow, he added, ‘Not in the way I said it.’

‘You made me sound like a fishwife.’

His lips curved involuntarily at the glimmer of humour in her tone. ‘I was lashing out. Being with you…’ The fleeting smile faded away. ‘I can’t explain how it makes me feel.’

‘It just makes me feel sad,’ she admitted with a whisper. Then she rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands and took a deep breath. ‘When the time is right for us to file the divorce papers, I won’t be wanting a settlement.’

‘I didn’t mean it about fighting you. We can come to an—’

Her head shook. ‘No. No settlement. You’ve given me enough money since we married. I’ve hardly spent any of it. I’ve enough to buy an apartment—’

‘You were going to buy one when you went back to Rome,’ he interrupted. ‘You were supposed to let my lawyer know when you’d found somewhere.’ He’d informed his lawyer and accountant that Livia would be purchasing a home in Italy in her sole name and that funds should be made available to her when she got in touch with them about it, no questions asked. He didn’t care what she spent.

He’d specifically told them to go ahead without notifying him. He hadn’t wanted to know when she’d made that last, permanent move out of his life for reasons he couldn’t explain, not even to himself.

Massimo ran his eyes over his finances once a year when it was tax season and that was for scrutiny purposes. He would have noticed then, he supposed, that she hadn’t bought herself a home.

‘I’ve been renting my old place.’ Actually buying herself a home of her own had felt too final, Livia realised. It would have been the ultimate confirmation that their marriage was over for good.

Had she been living in denial? And if so, what had she been holding out for? Miracles didn’t exist. The cruel truth was that she and Massimo were wholly incompatible and she’d been a fool for believing differently. She’d known it when she’d left. It hadn’t stopped her heart skipping every time her phone had buzzed only to plummet when his name didn’t flash on the screen. It hadn’t flashed once since their separation.

‘Once everything’s out in the open, I’m going to go back to nursing,’ she added, fighting back a well of tears. To cry in front of him would be the final indignity.

He rested his head back against the bathroom door with a sigh. ‘You don’t need to work, Liv.’

The simple shortening of her name…oh, but it made her heart ache. Massimo was the only person in the world who’d ever shortened her name. And then he’d stopped calling her Liv and started calling her Livia like everyone else. And then he’d stopped calling her anything.

Blinking away the tears that were still desperately trying to unleash, she sniffed delicately and gave a jerky nod. ‘I need a sense of purpose. I like knowing the money in my pocket is earned by my own endeavours. I never wanted to be a kept woman.’

His throat moved before he gave his own nod. ‘At least let me buy you a home like we agreed I would. The law entitles you to much more.’

And he would give it, everything the law said she was entitled to and more. If only he were as generous with his time as he was with his money…

But those were pointless thoughts to have. Massimo was who he was, just as Livia was who she was. They’d tried. They’d failed.

She just wished she could find a way to stop her heart from hurting so much.

‘Thank you.’ Swallowing hard to dislodge the lump in her throat, she got to her feet. ‘I’ll leave you to get changed. I’m going to make myself a coffee—would you like one?’

‘That would be great, thank you.’

She smiled and left the bedroom and kept smiling as she made the coffee, smiling so hard that eventually the tears sucked themselves dry and her cheeks ached miserably in their place.

It didn’t occur to her until she was standing under the shower an hour later that this was the first real conversation she and Massimo had had that hadn’t descended to insults and recriminations in over a year.

The cloudless sky had turned deep blue, the sun a deep orange shimmering on the horizon when Livia ventured out of the chalet in search of Massimo. She found him on the wrap-around veranda drinking a bottle of beer and looking at his phone, wearing a pair of old battered jeans and a crisp white shirt, a booted foot hooked casually on his thigh.

It was the first time she’d been at the rear of their chalet and she tried hard not to let sadness fill her as she recalled poring over the architect’s designs for it, imagining all the happy times she and Massimo would spend here. This chalet had been the only part of the complex Massimo had taken a real interest in. They’d chosen to build it high on the jutting mound of earth that, when the tide was low, could be walked to along a sandy pathway created by nature at its finest. This was supposed to be their own private hideaway in their private paradise. Their horseshoe swimming pool, garden and veranda were entirely hidden from prying eyes.

She hadn’t been able to bring herself to think about the sleeping arrangements that night. Their chalet only had one bed. It was a huge bed but, still, it was only the one bed. She supposed she could sleep on the sofa. Massimo’s long frame would never fit on it.

His eyes widened slightly when he looked up as she approached and he unhooked his foot and straightened.

The vain part of her bloomed to see his response. Although it was only a family meal they were going to have, she’d applied her make-up and done her hair with care. She’d been mortified to look in the mirror and see a huge smudge of mascara under her left eye.

But it wasn’t vanity that had propelled her to make an effort. It was armoury. When she looked her best it had the effect of boosting her morale and for all the unspoken truce they’d forged, her emotions were all over the place. She needed every piece of armour she could find to hold herself together.

Massimo turned his phone off and tried hard to temper the emotions crashing through him. Livia had dressed casually in a pair of tight white three-quarter-length trousers and a shimmering red strappy top that stopped at her midriff. On her feet were high, white strappy sandals that elongated her frame but did nothing to diminish her natural curves.

A lifetime ago he would have beckoned her over, put his hands on her hips and pulled her to him.

The instant awakening of his loins proved, as if it needed proving, that nothing had changed. He still wanted her with an ache he felt deep in his marrow.

Inhaling deeply through his nose, he willed the thudding of his heart to steady.

‘You’re ready?’ he asked.

She nodded.

He finished his beer and got to his feet.

In silence they walked the veranda to the front of the chalet and headed to the lodge. The tide had risen in the past two hours, the sandy path now mostly submerged beneath the powerful ocean and the colourful, tropical fish that swam in it. Its gentle rhythm was soothing.

His family had beaten them to the lodge and were all sitting around a set dining table chatting noisily. One of his grandfather’s carers sat discreetly in a far corner of the lodge reading a book.

The meal passed quickly. His grandfather was tired and, fed by Massimo’s mother, ate only his soup before retiring for the night. Madeline and Raul quickly followed, taking an increasingly fractious Elizabeth, who’d turned her nose up at all the offerings they’d tried to tempt her with. Considering it looked like mushed vomit, Massimo didn’t blame her for smacking the plastic spoon out of her mother’s hand. When his brother-in-law attempted to feed her, her little face turned bright red with fury. If Massimo had been offered that excuse for food, he’d have been tempted to screw his face up and bawl too.

He was about to rise and retire to the chalet to check in on work, when his father’s suggestion of a game of Scopa, the traditional Italian game played with an Italian forty-card deck, gave him pause.

His mother’s hopeful gaze made his ready refusal stick on his tongue before he could vocalise it.

He didn’t need to look at Livia to know she was beseeching him with her eyes to accept too. Her earlier insistence that his family wanted only to spend time with him kept ringing in his ears.

He stretched his mouth into the semblance of a smile. ‘Sure.’

The beaming grins made his chest tighten.

He signalled to the barman. Soon, a bottle of bourbon, a bucket of ice and four glasses had been taken to the outside table they now sat around. Massimo and his father formed a team and sat opposite each other, the ladies playing as the opposing team. Livia sat beside his father, his mother beside Massimo. He shuffled the cards, dealt them three each and four face up on the table. The first game of Scopa began.

What began as a sop to please his parents turned into a couple of hours’ mindless fun under the warm starry sky. His parents were the most laid-back, easy-going people on the planet but when it came to card games, they became ultra-competitive.

And Livia’s competitive streak came out too. His wife and mother were both determined to beat their spouses and were not above cheating to achieve this. When the women were two nil down, suddenly they both found it necessary to halt the game for frequent bathroom breaks.

Soon after this mysterious onset of bladder issues, he spotted his mother furtively pulling something out of her handbag, which, when she was challenged, turned out to be a king with a value of ten points. Rather than display any shame, his mother giggled. Livia though…her throaty cackle of laughter filled his ears and suddenly he was thrown back to his sister’s wedding and the first time he’d heard it.

It was a sound that speared him.

Firmly dragging his mind away from that fateful first meeting, he confiscated the card but then found he couldn’t stop his own burst of laughter when, barely a minute later, Livia stood to use the bathroom for the fourth time and two high-value cards slipped out of her top.

‘Shameless,’ he chided with a stern shake of his head.

‘All’s fair in love and war,’ she replied, a gleam in her eye he hadn’t seen for so long that suddenly he could fight the swelling emotions no more, body blows of longing and pain ravaging him.

He couldn’t tear his gaze from her.

In the beat of a moment her amusement vanished and her dark brown eyes were swirling with more emotion than there were stars in the sky.

Hardly single-digit seconds passed as their stares remained fixed on each other but those seconds contained so much weight he felt its compression on his chest. He knew with a bone-deep certainty that she was thinking about their first meeting too and that the memory lanced her as deeply as it did him.

Then Livia turned her gaze from him.

‘I really do need to use the bathroom,’ she murmured, reaching down to pick up the illicit cards and placing them on the table.

In the plush ladies’ room, Livia put her hands on the sink and dragged air into her lungs.

For a moment there her heart had felt so full of so many emotions that it had felt as if it could burst out of her chest.

Teaming up with Sera against their husbands had been so wickedly joyful that for a while she had forgotten that she and Massimo were estranged and preparing for a divorce.

For a short, glorious time, it had been like slipping on a pair of shoes that transported them to their early days when there had been as much fun in their marriage as there had been desire and love.

She had adored making Massimo laugh. He was such a serious person that to see his face light up had brought her more joy than anything. Laughter had been in short supply in her childhood so to discover this side of herself with him had been joyful in its own right.

Like the smiles she’d been unable to form in the four months since she’d left him, laughter had become a distant memory too. Until tonight.

Back outside in the warm evening air, she found the cards had been put away and the glasses empty. Sera and Gianni got to their feet as she approached the table and both apologised for having to call it a night. They were tired and needed to get some sleep.

Kissing them both goodnight, Livia poured herself another bourbon and watched them walk away.

The silence they left behind was stark. Apart from the white noise in her ears.

‘I suppose we should go to our chalet too,’ she said, avoiding Massimo’s stare.

They’d spent a whole day travelling between time zones quickly followed by a day out at sea. All of this, when added to her frazzled nerves brought about by being with him again, was a recipe for exhaustion. Yet she felt anything but tired.

When he didn’t answer, she stared up at the sky. The stars were in abundance that night, twinkling like gold diamonds in the vast blackness. She’d thought the sky in LA was big but here, on this island, it seemed to stretch for ever.

‘I’ll sleep on the sofa,’ she added into the silence.

‘No. You take the bed.’ She felt his eyes on her. ‘I’ve work I need to get on with.’

‘The sofa’s too small for you, and you can’t work all night.’ But he could. She knew that. He’d worked through the night on many occasions.

‘I’ll work for a few hours then sleep on the hammock.’

‘We have a hammock?’ That was the first she’d heard of it.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice it earlier. It’s on the veranda by the outside table.’

‘I probably didn’t register it,’ she murmured, taking a hasty sip of her bourbon.

She wouldn’t have noticed any hammock because when she’d stepped out onto the veranda her eyes had been too consumed by Massimo to register anything else.

They finished their drinks and, as silently as they’d made the walk from their chalet to the lodge, walked the return journey together. The incoming tide now lapped the beach noisily, so deep beneath the bridge that if this had been her first sight of the island she would never have believed it could ebb back far enough for a sandy pathway to open up between the main island and their private peninsula.

But as much as she tried to distract herself with their surroundings she couldn’t block out Massimo’s lean frame striding beside her.

When they reached their chalet, he picked up the briefcase he’d left on their dining table.

Everything about this chalet was supposed to be theirs. Everything had been designed to their exact instructions; a love nest they’d imagined themselves escaping to whenever time allowed, designed and dreamed up before Livia had realised time would never allow it. For Massimo, time existed only for work.

He stared at her for a moment before his chest rose sharply. ‘I’ll work on the veranda. Sleep well.’

Her goodnight to him came out as a whisper.

He closed the door quietly behind him.

Massimo powered his laptop but, other than reply to a few urgent emails, found he didn’t have the concentration to work.

Sighing heavily, he ran his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes.

It felt as if he’d slipped into a time loop, taken back to the days when he’d worked from the sprawling building that homed Briatore Technologies and found his concentration fighting a war with himself. Livia had taken back possession of his mind. She’d been all he could think of then. She was all he could think of now.

It didn’t matter, he told himself grimly. One more full day and night and then that would be it for them. She would live her life in Italy and he would live his in LA.

Thinking he could do with another drink before attempting to sleep in the hammock he’d instructed be erected when he’d remembered the chalet he would share with his estranged wife had only one bed, he padded quietly back inside. Before he could switch the light on and head to the bar, he noticed a slant of light coming from beneath the closed bedroom door.

His heart fisted.

He’d left her over an hour ago, plenty of time for her to do her night-time beauty routine and fall asleep. Was she reading?

Was she wearing the cream pyjamas that managed to be both modest and yet revealing…?

He stepped closer to the bedroom door, his ears craning when he heard her voice. She was talking to someone.

A lover?

Hating himself yet unable to stop, he put his ear to the door. The wooden barrier muffled her words.

She laughed. It sounded pained. And then she said something distinguishable even through the muffling.

‘Please. I love you.’