Regret Me Not

by Clare Connelly

  The wave gave way to the heavens and she was flying amongst them, shooting in between stars and galaxies, his breathing, his Italian words, his body the only constants she cared for.

  She was silk beneath his fingertips, soft and smooth and his body craved hers despite the way they’d spent the whole night, wrapped together, limbs entwined, mouths seeking, he was hungry in a way that wouldn’t abate.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d felt like this. Those exact same words had pummelled his brain that night in London, the night they’d met. He’d wanted her in a way that had terrified him and made him alive all at once.

  She dozed in the soft light of dawn, her lips parted, her flesh perfection. He stared at her, the marks on her body made by him, their passion demanding his roughness, his urgency. His stubbled jaw had grazed her sensitive flesh, leaving pale pink patches across her décolletage, and her breasts had been marked by his mouth, little red circles showing where he’d been carried away by the strength of his needs.

  A surge of animalistic pride burst through him at this, proof of what they were to each other, proof of how completely she surrendered to this need, proof of how well they fitted together. His eyes dropped to his own arms which bore the same type of physical proof. Scratches driven over his skin as she’d exploded, her orgasms always so intense, and this one particularly so. Her legs had wrapped around him, her ankles hooking at his back, and her hands had shredded him desperately, perhaps as she tried to make sense of this.

  She couldn’t.

  Nor could he.

  Despite what they both knew to be right and sensible, they were powerless to resist this, powerless to resist each other. Whatever passions had stirred them three years ago, they were as fervent now as ever.

  It was the last thought Fiero had before sleep snatched him, right before dawn. He fell asleep with an arm curved possessively over Elodie’s hip and a smile lifting his lips. He fell asleep uncaring for the sense of what they’d just done, nor with a single worry about the future. There’d be time for that later. In that moment he felt good, and he wanted to cherish it. Life was too short, just as she’d said.

  Chapter 12

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Elodie’s cheeks flushed bright pink. She’d slept in that morning and when she’d awoken – in Fiero’s bed! – he was nowhere to be seen. The house was almost completely silent.

  A quick conversation with his housekeeper explained. Fiero had gone to work and Emilia had taken Master Montebello, as he was referred to by the staff, to the zoo.

  Completely on her own, Elodie had kept herself busy. She’d cooked for pleasure for the first time in a long time. No longer the sole provider of meals for a fussy two year old, she let herself enjoy the experience of being in the kitchen, and powerful memories began to wash over her. Memories of cooking alongside her mother, all the recipes she’d learned as part of her traditions. Anzac biscuits, pavlova, the family’s traditional pudding recipe, profiteroles just like Elodie’s grand-mère had apparently made. She didn’t attempt anything fancy – just a big pasta sauce, but it was nice to stand and chop vegetables, to lose herself in the rhythm of the preparation, to do something physical and useful.

  The only problem with a repetitive task was that it freed her mind up to think so her mind wandered to the night before, and thinking about last night was dangerous and distracting, and so incredibly confusing.

  So when Fiero appeared in the doorjamb looking good enough to eat, heat flushed her body and she found she could barely hold his gaze. “I thought you were at work?” She prompted, turning back to the courgette.

  “I was.”

  She added the rounds to the saucepan, stirring it without looking at Fiero.

  “It occurs to me that if you’re going to live here, you’ll need a car.”

  That had Elodie jerking her face towards his, her expression showing confusion. “But why?”

  “You can’t walk everywhere you want to go,” he said with a shrug, as though it were the most sensible thing in the world.

  “Oh,” she nodded a little unevenly. “But there are busses. Trains.”

  “Si, and I have a driver. But you should still have the option of driving, of stepping into your own car and heading out without needing to coordinate it with staff or consulting the public transportation timetable.”

  “Right,” she frowned. So many questions flooded her mind and she wasn’t in enough command of herself to hold any of them back. “You want me to stay here?”

  Now it was Fiero who frowned. “Isn’t that what you want?”

  Elodie’s heart was racing. She turned the temperature on the saucepan down to a simmer and put the lid in place, then leaned back against the kitchen bench, glad for the extra support.

  “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  Fiero’s expression shifted and suddenly, he was impossible to read. There was a look on his face of both ruthlessness and disinterest – how he could achieve each simultaneously was something to be admired.

  “I thought we discussed this on the day you left hospital.”

  She bit down on her lip. “Right. That you wanted Jack to live here,” she nodded slowly, lifting her fingers to her pulse points in her forehead and rubbing them in a light circular motion. “I just hadn’t worked all the details out yet.”

  She felt his eyes on her, felt the intensity of his gaze, and despite the seriousness and importance of this conversation, desire sparked in her gut.

  This time, though, she didn’t give in to it.

  “What is there to work out?” His shrug was nonchalant bordering on arrogant. He moved deeper into the kitchen. “You will stay here, as you are now. Jack will learn the language and start school here next year. You will integrate – start to learn the language as he does, continue working if you wish, doing your consulting. I presumed this had all been decided.”

  “Did you?” Her heart was thumping hard against her rib cage and she couldn’t say why, when he was offering so many ways to make this work, she felt as though she was drowning.

  “So you will need a car, and a tutor. In the language,” he prompted, moving closer, “though I am willing to give you all the after hours tutoring you require.” He pulled her body to his, buzzing his lips over the sensitive flesh near her earlobe so she trembled automatically. He began to whisper words to her in Italian, words she couldn’t understand but that evinced the desired response from her nonetheless.

  How easy it would have been to succumb to this again, to give her body what it had wanted since she’d woken up that same morning and reached for him, craving him anew, only to find him gone.

  It had hurt, and not just because it was an echo of the morning in London when he’d done the exact same thing.

  No, it hurt because she felt her vulnerability where he was concerned, and she knew the danger that stalked her.

  What she wanted went so far beyond sex. It was so much more than just a physical relationship. She pulled back a little so she could see his face and groaned without intending to, because she looked at Fiero and saw the future she wanted.

  And it wasn’t a sensible, pragmatic future arrived at in an effort to give Jack everything he deserved. This was the life she actively, passionately wanted.

  And he was the man she wanted in it.

  “Until one day you wake up and you no longer desire me?”

  His smile was light, as though he didn’t sense the change in her mood, the shift in her thoughts. “I cannot say for certain that would happen.”

  “Of course it would,” she whispered. “You’ve made it clear to me again and again that this is just sex for you.” She paused, and saw the moment his expression shifted, the moment he realised she wasn’t smiling back at him. “That’s how you feel, right?”

  Consternation flashed in his eyes. “What do you want from me? What would you want me to say?”

  Hurt bubbled in her veins, exploding just beneath her skin. “More than I think you can give.�
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  He frowned. “What else do you want?” His eyes flashed with something like realisation. “Money? You want to know what kind of trust fund I would set up for you?”

  She swore softly and jerked out of his arms. “God, no! Fiero, not for one second have I thought about the fact you could make my life financially easier. I don’t need money. I’m comfortable enough.”

  His expression was perfectly banal once more, only his eyes betrayed a hint of wariness. “You are Jack’s mother and I am his father. I happen to be worth a fortune, which Jack will one day inherit. Naturally I intend to support you as well.”

  Her stomach filled with acid. “I don’t want you to support me.”

  “No?” His eyes narrowed. “Then tell me what you do want.”

  Her swollen heart threatened to break. “I want you to want me.”

  Passion stirred in the depths of his gaze. “You think I don’t?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t mean physically. I know that we’re in the same boat there. I want you, Fiero, to want me, Elodie, to be here in your life. Not because I’m Jack’s mother and not because we have insane chemistry. I want you to want me because you can’t bear to not have me in your life. I want you to want me to stay because…” she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Because?” He prompted, after several seconds had passed.

  She sucked in a breath, reminding herself to be brave, to chase what she wanted in life. It was the promise she’d made to herself after her parents had died: she’d stop wasting time being who she thought she should be and start following her gut. Well, her gut was telling her what she truly wanted, and it was standing right in front of her.

  The realisation had been opening up in her heart for days, for weeks, but now it shone brighter than the sun, it was impossible to ignore.

  “I think I’m in love with you.” The words landed in the room like rocks being thrown into an iced-over lake. There was the shatter as they connected and then the never-ending sinking thud, as well as the sharp shattering of ice into the room.

  He stared at her as though she’d begun to speak in ancient Greek.

  “You’re not.”

  His instantaneous denial made her laugh, but it was a deranged noise, without humour. Because with every second that passed, the more she realised that she was in fact in love with him, completely and utterly.

  Having offered that explanation for her confused feelings, everything began to make sense. The more time that passed, the more certain she became. She loved him. “I beg to differ.”

  He closed his eyes, wiping a hand over his face. So far as gestures went, it was hardly encouraging.

  “I think I probably fell in love with you that night,” she was frowning now too, her expression a bookend to his, her mind running over the sequence of events as she considered them in the light of this realisation. “Why else would I do something so out of character? Why else would you?” Her eyes were huge in her face. “It was never just sex between us. It’s not now, no matter what you say.”

  His throat jerked as he swallowed hard and his expression was one of steel. “It’s all it can be.”

  “No.” She shook her head sadly. “You’re wrong. I’m sure of it.”

  He expelled a long, slow breath. “You are unlike anyone I have ever known. And the way you make me feel is…but Elodie? I just don’t think I can move past this.” He spoke slowly, his accent thicker as he formed the sentence, pushing it into the room like tiny bullets that dug into her chest.

  “For more than two years you raised my son, while I had no idea he existed. I’m trying to move forward from that, to find a way to have you in my life, for his sake, but it’s not love. It can’t be. Not when I also feel an answering degree of…” he didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Of hate?” She whispered stonily, her heart aching.

  “I didn’t say that.” He moved across the room, grabbing her hands and lifting them between them, holding them to his chest. “I don’t want to hate you. But I also cannot give you what you’re asking of me. I can’t. And you shouldn’t expect that.”

  She swallowed but her throat was so sore, as though razor blades had been made to line it.

  “It’s too much.”

  “It’s what I need.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  She nodded, an awkward movement, as she pulled her hands away. “This is such a mess.” She pierced him with her gaze, moving away from him, turning to look out of the window, out into the beautiful Roman streets.

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “No?”

  “When I married Alison, I wasn’t clear. I let her believe there was a fairy tale between us, by omission. I’m trying so hard not to make that mistake with you, Elodie. I hurt one woman I cared for; I won’t hurt you. I won’t do it. Why do you think I have been so crystal clear with you all along?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you do. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never make the mistake of allowing a woman to believe I can give her more than this.”

  “You’re lying to yourself though,” she said, bravely.

  He didn’t answer. Emboldened, she continued.

  “You think this is just sex? Really?”

  Something shifted on his face, a look of surprise and then a small nod. “It has to be.”

  “Because you can’t forgive me?”

  “Because there’s too much on both sides to forgive,” he said gruffly. “We’re both responsible for this, Elodie. You kept my son from me, and I threatened to take Jack away from you. We bring out the worst in each other, not the best.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Am I?” His eyes bore into hers. “Am I really?”

  Elodie stared at him, the man she’d fallen head over heels in love with, and she knew she was fighting a losing battle, but that she had to fight it anyway.

  “Can you honestly tell me there’s no chance you’ll ever care for me like I do you?”

  His expression showed surprise.

  “Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me you don’t care for me now.”

  “Care for you?” He swore angrily, dragging a hand through his hair as though waking from a dream or a nightmare. “Maybe, Elodie, if things between us were different. You’re right – that night in London was about so much more than sex. There was something between us, a strange connection. Yes, I felt it too. Yes, in another time, another place, if I hadn’t had everything going on with Alison and Gianfelice…but life is always a question of timing and ours was bad from the start. Doomed. And it still is. You make me feel as no other woman ever has. If it weren’t for Jack, if it weren’t for the fact you kept my son from me, I think I would already be head over heels in love with you. If things were different.” He was quiet as his words sunk in. “But they’re not. This is the situation we find ourselves in.”

  She sobbed, a wrenching, primal sound that had Fiero whipping his head in immediate response, as though a similar instinct flooded him, making him want to protect her, save her, to speak to her in a way that would fix all of this.

  He didn’t.

  “I know myself too well.” He said the words with cold determination even as his face was slashed with colour. “I can’t move past this, and I can’t lie to you. I won’t have another relationship with a woman who wants more from me than I’m able to give.” His chest moved with the force of his breathing. “Love should be about making someone happy, about living your life for the purpose of bettering theirs and I could never be that for you. Not after everything that’s passed between us.”

  She sobbed again. “Maybe I could be that enough for both of us.”

  “For how long? A year? Two? Before you grew tired of loving me without being loved back? I know you Elodie, as well as I know myself, and I know that would destroy you.” He swore again. “I don’t want that. I don’t want you to be miserable. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have. And I h
ave hurt you. I’m not blameless in any of this – I get that. I see my faults, I see your faults, I see too many faults for us to move past.” He stalked to the other side of the kitchen and stared at the wall, his back shifting as he drew in large, tortured breaths.

  “You have to leave, to go back to London.”

  She couldn’t leave Jack! Surely they weren’t back here again. She made a drowning noise and he whipped around, his eyes travelling the length of her body. There was pity on his face, and regret.

  “I can’t. I will put up with anything rather than leaving Jack.”

  “I know.” He swept his eyes shut but not before she caught the sympathy in their depths. “You will take him with you. Go home, and live just as you were before.”

  “What?” Her ears were ringing. Shock and desperate panic flooded her. Did he want to be rid of her so badly he’d choose to ostracise his son? That made no sense.

  “It’s what we should have done from the beginning. What I should have done. I have headquarters in London,” he spoke slowly, calmly. “I can start to base myself there more, so I can see him regularly. Weekends, and as he gets older, we will build up to fully shared custody. It will be easier for you if we don’t see much of each other, so I will work out a schedule with Emilia initially. Bene?”

  “No,” she wanted to scream, but all she could do was shake her head from side to side so her dark hair whipped her cheeks. “It is not bene. I’m in love with you, Fiero. Wild, free-falling, tumbling off the edge of a cliff love, and I’m asking you to look into your heart and see that maybe what you feel for me isn’t what you think. And instead, you’re calmly making plans to excise me from your life?”

  “For your own sake,” he insisted, his determination and implacability galling.