by Lily Zante
His hand brushed hers as she slammed the door shut. “I know you’re capable. It’s how I’ve been brought up. Don’t read too much into it.” He was standing so close to her that, had it been any other time, he would have reached out and touched her. But now he didn’t move an inch.
As the subtle hint of his aftershave reached her, she felt her concerns ebbing away. The temptation to move her face closer to him was thwarted only by his aloofness. “Come on,” he said, taking her lightly by the hand. Gone was his usual tight, comforting grip as he led her toward Juliet’s balcony. He exchanged friendly banter with a man who stood at the entrance before he moved past him.
“Isn’t it closed now?”
“Not for us.” He grinned at the look of disbelief on her face as he led her up the stairs. She had forgotten: this man had the contacts—and the money—to do what he wanted, whenever he wanted. It should not have come as a surprise to her that he could order the Casa di Giulietta to open at a time when it was closed to everyone else.
As she followed Nico into a large dimly lit room, she caught her breath at the sight of a beautifully dressed candlelit table for two, just in front of the balcony. The balcony doors had been pulled wide open revealing the backdrop of an inky night sky studded with stars as sparkly as diamonds.
Her heart leapt for joy before screeching to a sudden stop.
This made her mission harder.
“It’s beautiful,” she gasped. He guided her to the table and pulled out a chair for her. A blur of cream candles and brightly colored flowers dazzled her momentarily, but her heart was heavy. She sat down, trying to still her emotions. This was beautiful. But it was also too much. And it threw her mind into further confusion.
How was she supposed to end it now?
Nico poured her a glass of champagne and handed it to her, gingerly.
“You don’t like it?” he asked, lowering his head.
“I-I-I…” What could she say? She was touched deeply by the effort he had gone to. But she was struggling to marry his actions with the words that rang ever louder in her ears.
Nico is not a one-woman man.
She was torn between which version of Nico was real. More than anything, she feared falling into another messy relationship. Her heart had already been fractured. Getting in deep with Nico spelled disaster.
He would hurt her. It was inevitable, no matter how he tried to explain his way out of it.
“It’s beautiful. It really is,” she breathed, waving her arm toward the table and the rest of the room. “You didn’t have to do any of this, Nico.”
What is it that you’re trying to cover up?
“You really don’t like it.” He seemed downcast and left his glass of champagne on the table.
Now she really did feel awful.
“I don’t need lavish displays of affection, Nico. I don’t need to be wooed and wined and dined.”
“I’m not doing it to win you over,” he said quickly.
“So tell me, what are we celebrating?” She picked up his glass and gave it back to him, trying to make an effort to recover whatever was left of the evening.
Nico sat forward and raised his glass. “To better times for your business.” He chinked his glass with hers and her heart dropped. He had only ever intended the best for her. “And because I remembered that when you first came to the Casa di Giulietta, you ran out in tears.”
Ava swallowed hard. She remembered that time. It was the day after she had arrived in Verona. She had run crying from the Casa di Giulietta because a wedding was due to take place.
Nico continued, his dark brown eyes piercing into hers. “I only wanted you to have happier memories of this place, to take away your sad ones.”
She pressed a hand against her breastbone, her mouth opened but no words came out.
“I’m sorry if this seems like too much, over the top, me showing off. It wasn’t my intention. I wanted things to be better for you. I feel as though things are slowly starting to change for you to happier times. I want this celebration to be something to mark the start of that time for you.”
She placed her hand over his, not daring to meet his eyes. He placed his hand over hers and they sat there, bound together for a brief moment. Ava knew she had to tell him now.
Just as she opened her mouth, he said, “We can get a take away Panini from one of the kiosks, if you’d prefer that instead.”
“No. I love this.” She looked around her, still in awe at what he had planned for her. It was so perfect. The only thing wrong was the timing. She gulped her champagne down.
“Very well.” He nodded his head and it was only when Ava turned around that she saw a waiter standing discreetly at the far end of the room.
“I hope you won’t mind, but I took the liberty of ordering for us, to keep things simple.”
“Simple? You?” she mocked him, while holding her glass up for him to pour more champagne.
“Fish and lots of vegetables?”
She nodded excitedly. He knew her to a tee.
“And lots of champagne. I know.”
She giggled more from relief that the atmosphere had lightened a little. Needing strength quickly, and before the drink made her forget why, she took another big gulp from her glass.
It would be so easy to let this evening roll along as blissfully as it was turning out, but her stomach churned. He had explained away the engagement, but he hadn’t mentioned Andrea. He must have known that she and Andrea had become good friends by now, sharing all sorts of secrets and news. He knew she spent most of her time in Montova. Did she have to pry every piece of information out of him? Would he never willingly offer up any news himself? What was he hiding? Did he hope that if she didn’t ask, she did not know, and therefore there was no need to tell her?
Just like Connor and the woman at the law seminar.
Judging by the way the evening was going, and Nico’s expectations along with it, things would only get worse the longer she kept it all to herself.
“Andrea tells me that you’ve almost bought out her entire store.”
When did he talk to Andrea? How often did they call each other? She guzzled more champagne.
“You love this champagne?” He summoned the waiter to get another bottle.
Great, thought Ava, I’m going to need it.
Courage spilled over. “How do you know? I didn’t realize Andrea kept you so well updated.” The accusation hung in the air like a dank stench.
“Of course we still talk. Why wouldn’t we?”
She wondered what else he still did with Andrea. She had drunk almost three glasses of champagne and she was in no mood to figure out what made sense or did not. It seemed that at every point along their relationship, news of another woman from his past wafted through into her present.
She could not compete, not with this many women. Who knew what other secrets would be uncovered the further she travelled along with him?
“I didn’t know that you and Andrea had a …thing… only a few years ago. You never mentioned it to me.”
His face didn’t hide the surprise. “It’s not a secret and there is nothing to hide. It happened just after my mother passed away. After Silvia, if you really want the timeline. I didn’t think it was pertinent to tell you.” His explanation did nothing to pacify her.
“And you still talk to her? You spoke about me? Are you using her to get to know me better?”
His features darkened along with the mood in the room.
“We’re still good friends. We still care about each other. I know it sounds to you as though I have bedded every woman in Verona—”
“Haven’t you?” she sniped, then regretted her remark immediately. She was beginning to sound more and more like a bitch and that was not her intention.
“No. I haven’t. And no, I didn’t use Andrea to get to know you better. I can get to know you better by myself. I took you to Montova and you liked what she sold. You decided to buy more from her and ge
t more involved. All I have ever done is to support you.”
She hated that everything she said made her seem so ungrateful. The truth of it was that each time she felt closer to Nico and their relationship started to move forward, towards something deeper, news of another woman and another conquest would worm itself out of the woodwork. She didn’t want to spend her life wondering what would come next. She shuddered to think that lurking out there might be another Silvia and Alessa, a woman spurned and another child he had fathered.
She could not deal with his past, nor did she have the strength to want to try.
“Nico, I’m going back home. I’m done with everything here.” She banged down her champagne glass and ran her fingers delicately around the rim of the Murano glass vase in the middle of the table.
“I see,” was all that he said.
Two waiters arrived carrying large silver domes, which they placed before them and lifted the lids off.
“Thank you,” murmured Ava, trying her best to summon up the enthusiasm that had just escaped her body, leaving her like a deflated balloon.
“Grazie,” growled Nico. He looked like a man who had not only lost his appetite for food, but his appetite for life as well.
They faced each other across the table, curls of steam spiraled upwards from colorfully arranged food laid out on huge white porcelain plates. Food that looked so pretty it seemed a shame to eat it. The aroma of lightly sautéed vegetables and fresh fish baked in olive oil made her mouth water. The guilt piled on.
How could she even think about food at a time like this?
She looked at Nico, his eyes downcast and his fingers resting on the edge of the table. Even when he looked down, he had the most beautiful face. Chiseled, with a firm jaw line, and the perfect nose. And a mouth that was made for hours of kissing.
His jaw clenched and she knew he held back from saying something that he wanted.
“We should eat,” he said finally, picking up his fork. “It’s getting late.”
The conversation had died long before they had even arrived here.
Chapter 12
Nico dropped Ava at the pensione and returned to the Casa Adriana.
It would be the first time since their return from Venice that they would not be spending the night together.
It was late enough to go home, but he knew he would not be able to sleep. He sat at his desk with his elbows resting on the table and let his head fall forward into his hands.
This was not the way this evening was supposed to end. Out of nowhere Ava had hit him with the news of her imminent return home. It was only a few days ago that she had mentioned the possibility of staying longer.
He had allowed himself to believe that Ava’s feelings for him were growing stronger. He sensed that she was cautious, and he’d tried to play it cool, not getting too enthusiastic when she mentioned she might prolong her stay.
What had gone wrong so quickly? It couldn’t have been idle gossip about him dating Natale’s sister, could it? Or Andrea? That was a long time ago.
He lifted his head up and sat back, his shoulders drooping. He tapped a pen absent- mindedly on the desk.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
The noise was a welcome relief to him, if only to remind him that he was alive and breathing. His body felt lifeless, and it was all because of this one woman.
No other woman had ever gotten under his skin. Women flocked to him, and once they did, they never left. He had always been the one to ditch them. For all of his life, he had been the man who could pick and choose partners at whim. For a lot of his younger life he had been caught up in the headiness of the wealthy circles he moved in, where there was an abundance of beautiful women all too eager to drop their panties at his command.
He might have been a good-looking rich businessman’s son, but he wasn’t naïve to the point of being stupid. He knew exactly why he was so popular with everyone, not just the women. He was the rich kid and people liked to make connections with him.
But it had all started to wane ever since his mother had fallen ill.
Casual relationships ceased to hold any allure for him once his beloved mother lay dying. He had never felt as helpless as he had when there was nothing he or his father could do to help her live.
No amount of money in the world could make her well again.
The stark reality of life: vulnerable, unpredictable and out of his control, hit him.
When his mother died, his world shattered and no amount of sex and debauchery could save him or make him forget.
Though he had barely tolerated Silvia when they were younger, she was one of the few of his rich friends that came to his aid. She had not been scared off by the tragedy of his mother’s illness and in his grief, he had allowed himself to get close to her. Somehow, she had wormed her way into his life and witnessed firsthand his bare, broken soul.
He had needed her and she had helped him. Looking back now, he realized she had taken that time to use him for her own benefit.
His mother’s death had changed him, he liked to think, for the better.
After that he hadn’t been able to trust anyone else. Apart from Andrea. Silvia had been in his face up close and suffocating. He had managed to push her away, but he still ended up enduring her lies through the years. There were some days when he liked the idea that little Alessa might be his, though he knew the chances of that were very slim. But a man could hope.
In her quiet, unassuming way Andrea had been there for him. She hadn’t asked for anything and had been the one proper relationship, where it mattered, but he had become too consumed by his mother’s death. He was still trying to find meaning in his life and she had already found hers. She was a strong, independent woman who was trying to carve out her way in life. They had been good together but had slowly drifted apart.
Out of that was born a firm friendship. They didn’t see each other much or talk much. But when either of them needed business advice, they helped each other.
Ava Ramirez had flown straight into his life out of the blue. Alone and very much single, she had appeared at the Casa Adriana on what should have been her honeymoon.
Even though she was beautiful, her mixture of beauty and vulnerability, as well as the circumstances surrounding her, had more than piqued his interest. When she’d mistaken him for a driver, he’d been more than happy to go along with her assumption, even at the risk of looking like a fool to the ever-observant Gina.
They’d had a spark of attraction way back when they had first crashed into each other’s lives. One thing had slowly led to another and here he was.
He had started to believe she was falling for him just as surely as he had fallen for her. But just when things were getting better for them both, she had announced her return home.
That a woman would think of leaving him, would pick going back home over him, was not something that Nico Cazale was used to. As pigheaded, and as bigheaded, and as presumptuous as it seemed, this was Nico’s world and this situation that he currently found himself embroiled in was one he simply did not know how to handle.
How could he fall for a woman who did not share the same feelings as he did?
He walked over to the window and stared out at the lights illuminating the gardens around the hotel. He felt a strange comfort in the idea of hiding in that darkness. It was easier to deal with life out there than it was in here, where all his failures stared at him so obviously.
He had wanted to celebrate a small milestone—her decision to stay on a little longer—because she had given him hope. Though that wasn’t what he’d told her. If he’d told her the truth, he feared she would panic. And so he had played it cool when she had mentioned the possibility of staying on longer to look at clothing.
So what had changed? Andrea and Natale. That’s what. Talk, no matter how small, about past relationships and his history would have done the damage. He knew women talked, and there was no denying that none of it was made up. It was all true. This
was what had frightened off Ava.
Ava, who was so sensitive to his past lovers, and his reputation, might have become less enamored after what she heard.
Not for the first time did his reputation precede him. Not for the first time had he come so close to losing her. First over Silvia and Alessa and now this.
Would there always be stories about him? He couldn’t control what people said about his past. And he could no more hide his past than he could change it.
In his experience it was all so easy to dump women. But how in the hell was he supposed to make a woman stay?
He clenched his fists and shoved his hands in his pockets. He could not prove himself to Ava now that she had already made her mind up about him. His heart bristled. She was going back to Denver and she would get busy with her own life. In time she would forget him. And he might try to forget her. He had to let her go.
Except that he wasn’t about to let Ava Ramirez walk away. Not when it had taken him so many years to find what he believed could possibly be the right woman for him.
One slight problem though, he didn’t know, just yet, how he was going to fix this.
Maybe he needed to shift focus for a while, maybe he would focus on his other problem of proving himself to his father.
Chapter 13
It had been days since the romantic dinner at the Casa di Giulietta had crumbled to pieces. Now Ava focused her mind on the return home.
That night, Nico had driven her back to the pensione and left without coming in. He hadn’t spent a night with her since and all contact between them had broken down.
Instead of Nico calling her each morning to ask if she needed a driver, Gina now phoned her instead.
Just like that he wanted nothing more to do with her. She felt bad for the way in which she had handled the evening. He had done everything right, had been so romantic and understanding. His gesture of putting the meal together to take away her sad memories of the Casa di Giulietta would have been enough for most women to let bygones be bygones.