Harlequin Presents--April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Dani Collins

  His voice emptied.

  ‘I was Berenice’s target—it was me she wanted to make suffer. But it would have been Amelie who’d be her victim. And I was responsible for that. If I hadn’t shown Berenice how much I’d come to despise her, if I hadn’t sought my freedom from the hell of our marriage, I might have been able to protect Amelie, or at least mitigate Berenice’s damaging influence. But when she knew I was determined to break free from her, she wanted to use Amelie against me. And I could not allow that—could not abandon her to Berenice. I had to fight for her.’

  Something moved in his eyes—a flash of emotion that pierced Jenna to the core. Emotion was rising in her like a tide she could not stop.

  ‘I’ve tried...’ he said, his voice low.

  He was not looking at Jenna, but into himself, and Jenna could see his hands, as viciously scarred as his face, clench over the arms of his chair.

  ‘I’ve tried to be the best father I could to Amelie—even though I’m not her father. To do the best I can for her. Because she deserves whatever even a non-father like me can do for her. Because she has no one else to protect her but me! I know I’m not her father, but—’

  The emotion she could not stop—would not now have stopped for all the world itself—broke in Jenna. She surged forward, carried on that unstoppable emotion, her hands slamming down on the desk.

  Her eyes were blazing, her voice vehement. ‘You are her father! You are her father in every way that counts. Do you think it takes DNA to make a father? My father gave me his DNA and nothing else. He never stood by me. He abandoned my mother, smashed our family to pieces by running off with another woman, and then treated me, when I was forced upon him, with coldness and resentment and rejection. He didn’t care. He never cared about me. But you care. You care about Amelie and you love her—love her in every moment you spend with her, every hug you give her, every smile, each and every one. It is love, Evandro, love that makes you her father. Love.’

  She had to make him believe it, accept what she was saying as true. Her voice was fierce with urging—with urgency.

  ‘Love,’ she said again, more quietly, but no less insistently, her eyes holding his, blazing still. ‘Love and loyalty. The undying, unbreakable loyalty of a father—a true father, as you are, Evandro, and as you always will be—who places his child’s happiness above and beyond everything else. You’ve stood by her through everything Berenice did or tried to do. You are Amelie’s father, Evandro, in every vital meaning of the word—and no power in heaven or earth can say otherwise. None.’

  She knew the blaze was still in her eyes, because she had to make him accept what she had said—it was the most important thing in the world to her. But it was a blaze that was becoming a glow—a glow to fill her heart. And not just hers.

  She saw his eyes close, lashes splayed on his cheeks, and she could see the tension racking his shoulders begin to ease, see the veins standing out on the backs of his scarred hands relieved as his clenched grip loosened. He bowed his head for a moment, then lifted it again, opening his eyes.

  Joltingly, he levered himself to his feet, coming around the desk to her. She turned towards him, but he remained a few feet away.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, his voice low. ‘And thank you for...for understanding.’ The strain in his voice was audible. ‘For knowing why...why I had to choose Amelie—’

  He broke off, and looked away, as if he could not bear to look at her. She felt emotion turn and twist within her.

  ‘I wish you had told me, Evandro. Told me what Berenice was threatening. I would have understood—I would have left at once. You would not have needed to tell me to go.’

  Let alone in the brutal, callous way you did.

  A silent cry sounded within her. She’d told herself, convinced herself while walking by the Thames, that the man who had severed her from his life so dismissively could not be the same man she had found such happiness with. That something was wrong. It had been a feeling so strong and overpowering that it had triggered that terrifying dream last night, compelling her to come here to discover this scene of devastation and destruction.

  But to what purpose?

  The question mocked her, pain stabbing again.

  For herself—none, she realised with bitter pain.

  In my dream he was calling for me. But it was only in my dream—in my own longing. I was foolish to hope it could ever be real.

  Because for all that he had told her now, and for all the longing in her—seeing the terrible scars on his face, the pain from his mangled leg etched in his face—to take him into her arms, to shelter him from what he had endured with all the love she felt for him, he obviously didn’t feel the same way.

  He has not swept me into his arms—taken me back.

  She forced the realisation into her head, cruel though it was.

  He’d moved on from women like Bianca, who’d been necessary for him to regain his freedom after Berenice.

  Moved on to me—because I helped him build the relationship with Amelie he needed to make. Because I brought him comfort after all he’d been through—helped him put his tormented past behind him so that he could move on again—move on from me. He will never love me as I love him. Never want me as I want him.

  It hurt so much to think it, to know it, but she had to face it. Face it and accept it. Anguish filled her, an anguish that she knew she’d carry with her all her life... And then, dimly, she realised he had started to speak.

  ‘But I did need to tell you to go, Jenna,’ he said.

  His voice was still harsh, and she wondered at it.

  ‘I needed to tell you—and in the callous way that I did.’

  She looked at him, not understanding.

  ‘Because,’ he told her, ‘I needed to make you hate me.’

  She stepped back. Expression blank. His words did not make sense.

  ‘Jenna, I didn’t tell you about Berenice’s threat because I knew what you would say—that you would never dream of urging me to do anything but concede to it. You would leave me for Amelie’s sake, never thinking to do otherwise. And there was nothing I could do. Except what I did.’

  He took a scissoring breath, as if forcing himself to go on.

  ‘It was the only way to make sure you left me feeling relief. Relief at being shot of a man who could end his relationship with you in such a brutal manner.’

  He looked away for a moment, as if reluctant to look at her, to see her standing there, hearing what he was telling her. Then his gaze snapped back to her.

  ‘It was the best thing I could do for you, Jenna—make you hate me so that you would be free to find someone worthy of you.’ He stopped, took another scissoring breath. ‘And you will, Jenna. You will find someone worthy of you.’

  His words pierced her, like arrows burying themselves in her twice-broken heart. The heart that had broken when he’d sent her away. The heart that had broken again, just now, when she’d realised that even though Berenice and the threat she posed were gone, he was still sending her away, willing her to meet another man—a man who was not him.

  Cold, empty, bleak despair filled her. She should go—and now. That would be best. She had no place here—not any more. She was unwanted and unloved. Unnecessary to him. He’d made that clear. Was making it clearer still as she heard what he was saying now, his words less halting, more resolute, and her heart tore in two all over again, the grief of it overwhelming her.

  ‘It was good that you returned to England when you did, Jenna. Back to your own life.’

  He placed a hand down on the surface of the desk, as if he needed the support, and went on speaking, though his voice seemed to be coming from very far away. From a distant place that was beyond her reach and always would be.

  ‘A life that is yours and yours alone. A life that, one day, you will share with someone you can give your heart
to.’

  He turned away abruptly, limping with painful strides towards the doors to the terrace, one arm outstretched towards the door jamb to help take the weight off his damaged leg. He looked back towards her, his face strained, sunlight from the terrace throwing into stark relief the livid scarring from his burns, the puckered skin around his half-blind eye.

  And there was something in the expression in his face now, as his eyes went to her, that was like a sudden vice around her broken heart. What was in his face was unbearable to see—and it was not because of his terrible scars.

  ‘Berenice came here that day to gloat,’ he said. ‘To celebrate her victory over me—the fact that I had yielded to her threat. But if her death took that power from her it gave her another. Her final triumph.’

  The bitterness in his voice lacerated Jenna.

  ‘It made me the maimed and crippled wreck that I am now.’

  * * *

  Evandro turned away again, staring half blindly out over the unspoilt gardens of the palazzo, bathed in autumnal sunlight. At the garden’s edge he could see the chestnut that had been struck by lightning the night he had presumed to make Jenna his own. The burnt and sagging limbs had been cut back, but the tree’s blackened, divided trunk was still standing. Scorched and stricken.

  As I am.

  Bitterness assailed him again.

  Even from the grave Berenice’s malignity still reached him.

  He released the door jamb, painfully turned to face into the room again. To face the woman he did not want to face. Whom he wished with all his being had never come here. Had never seen him like this.

  He steeled his jaw. But it was good that she was seeing him like this—so she would know how Berenice had parted them from each other.

  He let his eyes rest on her.

  One last time.

  In the silence he could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantel over the fire. He frowned. Amelie would be home from school soon—and she must not see Jenna. It was imperative that she did not.

  ‘Jenna.’ He spoke abruptly, limping towards her. He needed his damn cane, his leg was aching as he walked without it. ‘You need to leave. Amelie will be back soon and I don’t want her—’ He stopped. ‘I don’t want her seeing you. It would...upset her.’ He took a razoring breath. ‘She would think you had come back. To stay.’

  He saw her swallow, then nod. There seemed to be something wrong with her face. It must be the strain of looking at him, trying not to let her pity and revulsion show. He wanted to laugh—mocking the gods as they now mocked him. Or was it just Berenice mocking him?

  His lawyer’s warning sounded in his ears, as it had so many times.

  ‘You’re giving her the power to destroy your future.’

  His mouth twisted.

  And she has—she has destroyed my future. Destroyed it from the grave.

  Jenna was speaking, her voice low, and as strained as the expression on her face. How slight she looked, how pale. Her face was as white as it had been the night she’d sat in the corner of the salon while Bianca and her friends had partied all around her.

  Looking as though her world had ended.

  ‘I’m sorry, Evandro,’ she was saying now. ‘So very, very sorry. Sorry for all...all this...’ She stumbled on her words. ‘I even wish I could feel sorry for Berenice,’ he heard her say. ‘But I can’t. However dreadful her end—’ She broke off, pressed her hand to her forehead. ‘God must forgive her,’ she whispered, ‘for I can’t. Not for what she caused to happen to you—not just through all the years of your marriage, but now—’

  She broke off again, dipping her head, shutting her eyes.

  Weariness pressed in on him. ‘Jenna, go back to England. Go back and be thankful...’ Something twisted in his voice—he could not stop it. ‘Be thankful you are done with me. For your lucky escape.’

  Her eyes flared open, her head lifting. ‘Escape?’

  There was something in her voice that had not been there before. What it was he didn’t know, but it did not stop him saying what he must say now. Roughly. Brusquely.

  ‘Yes—escape! Go, Jenna. Flee as fast as you can.’

  He wanted her to go. He couldn’t take this any longer. Couldn’t endure seeing her standing there—so close and yet so infinitely far away.

  But she was not moving. She was standing stock-still, and what it was that had filled her voice was now filling her face...

  He saw her think for a moment before speaking again. There was still that difference in her voice that he could not make out. And something different in the way she was looking at him as well. Something he could not comprehend. Her gaze clung to him, the intensity of it piercing.

  ‘Evandro, that day—that day you sent me away. Tell me one thing and one thing only...’

  There was hesitation in her voice now, and again he could not make out why. He saw her take a breath, as if steeling herself, then she spoke again, her voice low, intense. Insistent.

  ‘If Berenice had never threatened to reclaim Amelie would you have sent me away? Oh, perhaps not then, and not in the way you did, but when she started school...? Would you ever have sent me away?’

  Her eyes, so clear, like spring water, were set on him. He could not escape them. Nor escape answering her.

  A single word. All that he could say. All that was in him to say.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  * * *

  Jenna shut her eyes again. Weak with what she had done. Weak with the tumult of emotion pouring through her. So weak she could scarcely lift her eyelids to look at him again.

  He had not moved, still standing by the open doorway, the sunlight still etching the dreadful scars across one side of his face.

  But courage filled her, summoned into being by that single word he’d said. Courage and so much more.

  All the love I have for him.

  ‘So why,’ she said, ‘are you sending me away again?’

  A savage look flashed across his ravaged face. ‘Do you really think I would do anything else now?’ he answered, his voice as low and savage as that look.

  She filled her gaze with that same intensity and pinioned him. ‘Now what?’ she asked. Challenging him. ‘Now that you have a limp and there are scars across your face?’

  She walked towards him. He could send her away now and she would go—but for one reason and one only. The only reason that had any power at all.

  Because he does not love me the way I love him. That is the only reason I would leave him now.

  Emotion fuelled her.

  She went on walking towards where he stood, dark against the sunlight beyond, tension in every line of his body.

  ‘Don’t do this, Jenna,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Don’t waste yourself on me.’

  She ignored him, halting a metre away from him. Never taking her eyes from him. She had something to say and he would hear her.

  ‘Evandro, I will tell you this and you will hear me.’ She made her voice clear—incontestable—as she said the words he had to hear. ‘Of all that I know about you, I know this most of all: you show your love by protecting those you love—even at the cost of your own happiness. You showed it for Amelie, for the daughter you love so much—your daughter—by protecting her from Berenice, whatever it took. You protected me by sending me away, as harshly as you could, because you thought it would set me free to hate you. And now,’ she said, and this was the final, most vital thing she had to say to him, ‘you think this is another gift, don’t you, Evandro? Freeing me from a man who thinks of himself as a “maimed and crippled wreck.”’

  She quoted his own cruel description of himself back at him and her expression changed as she put her final, vital question to him. The question on which depended all the happiness of her life.

  ‘Do you really think, Evandro, that scars and a limp w
ould stop me loving you?’

  She heard her words resonate, heard the declaration that she could not, would not recall.

  ‘I fell in love with you, Evandro. I fell in love with you and I will stay in love with you for ever. And not one of the scars on your face, or anywhere else, for that matter, can make a jot of difference!’

  She took his hand, feeling the damaged scar tissue against her fingers, and looked up at him. She could see nothing in his face, but that did not matter now. She had to make him understand. Had to declare it all. Dare all.

  ‘I love you, Evandro. And I don’t know whether you love me back or not, but right now all I know is this. This!’

  He was still looking at her with an expression she could not read, as she softly, clearly, spoke words written so long ago that still rang true.

  ‘“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds... O no! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken...”’

  She gazed up at him, pouring her heart into her words, her gaze and her hands on his.

  ‘Never, Evandro.’ She spoke with absolute certainty. ‘Hear that word. Understand it. Never.’

  She let his hand fall away from her. In her chest she could feel her heart beating fast as she waited for his reply.

  ‘Send me away or not, Evandro,’ she said quietly, resolutely. ‘It will never stop me loving you.’

  He met her eyes. Melded his gaze with hers. For one long, endless moment he did not speak. And then...