Her mind running this way and that, Anna got to her feet and started throwing her stuff into her beach bag. ‘I need to go back.’
Melissa hastily slid off her sun-lounger. ‘I’ll come with you.’
In less than a minute they’d gathered all their stuff together and thrown their shorts and T-shirts back on and Anna was steaming along the beach, unwittingly spraying sand in sunbathers’ faces, while Melissa struggled to keep up.
‘Slow down,’ she pleaded. ‘The house isn’t going anywhere.’
This time Anna did find a proper smile. ‘I’m not going back to the house, I’m going to the airport.’
‘What?’
‘I’m going home.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Watch me.’
‘No, you idiot, I mean you can’t go to the airport—your passport’s at Mum’s.’
‘Oh. Yes. Right.’ But it only slowed her for a moment and then she walked even faster, mentally calculating how quickly she could get to the airport. Her return flight was booked for a week from now. She was sure the airline had fixed flights so that would mean a plane would be leaving for London that evening. She needed to be on it.
‘What do you want to go home for?’
‘I need to see Stefano.’
‘Anna, no...’
‘Yes.’
‘You were going to wait. Let things settle a bit more before telling him.’
‘It’s nothing to do with that.’
Melissa grabbed her arm and forced her to stop. ‘Anna, will you listen to me? Please? Whatever you’re thinking, don’t do it.’
‘Mel... I love him.’ Totally. Utterly. Irreversibly.
‘That man destroyed you.’
‘No,’ she contradicted. ‘I think we’ve destroyed each other. And maybe we can fix each other.’
It was a fifteen-minute fast walk back to the house. Melissa was puffing behind her as Anna rushed through the front door, her adrenaline levels too high to need to catch a breath.
She hurried up the hallway to the stairs, about to go to her room and get her flight details so she could get straight on the phone to the airline...
‘Anna, is that you?’ came her mother’s voice.
‘Yes, sorry, give me a minute.’
Her mother appeared at the kitchen doorway, her face flushed. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’
‘Me?’ Who would be visiting her? She didn’t know anyone here apart from her mum’s friends and family.
She stepped into the kitchen, turned her head to the large table and froze.
After several long, long moments she closed her eyes then slowly opened them again.
Stefano was sitting at the kitchen table. Her mum’s golden retriever, George, had his head on his lap.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered, placing a hand to her chest to stop her heart from jumping out of it.
‘Visiting you.’ Slowly he rose to his feet.
She inched closer and drank in the face she hadn’t seen in what felt like for ever until she was only a foot away.
A mere two weeks apart had left marked changes in him. He was paler than she remembered. His hair needed cutting. He looked as if he’d slept in his canvas shorts and crumpled shirt.
As if he could read her mind, one side of his mouth curved up and he said, ‘It was a long flight.’
She couldn’t think clearly. The joy bursting into life inside her was marred with caution.
He’d flown across the world to see her just as she’d been gearing up to fly across the world to see him and to find out if there was any chance of a future together for them.
But what if he was here for a different reason? What if he only wanted to discuss their divorce?
Every morning since she’d left San Francisco she’d promised herself that today would be the day she would call her lawyer in England and start proper divorce proceedings. After all, they’d been married for a full year. There was nothing to stop them.
And yet, for all her anger and misery, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it.
Had the time apart that had been so painful to her only been a healer for him?
Until he told her his reasons for being there she would not allow the screaming excitement running through her to take control.
‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’ he asked, breaking the silence that had formed while she stood there trying to catch a coherent thought.
Her mum and sister quickly shuffled out of sight but Anna didn’t trust that they wouldn’t listen in to what was going on.
‘The garden?’
He nodded and, on legs that had gone from having bones supporting them to what felt like overcooked noodles, she led him outside. George slipped out with them before she could close the door.
Her mum’s garden was a lovingly tended spot with a good-sized swimming pool. They sat carefully on the large swing chair with a canopy to shade them from the blazing sun, both making sure not to sit too close to the other. They were still close enough that Anna’s body vibrated at his nearness and she had to fold her hands tightly together to stop them stretching out to touch him and feel for herself that she wasn’t dreaming this.
George sat himself at Stefano’s feet and he leaned down to rub the dog’s head.
‘I think you’ve made a friend,’ Anna commented softly.
‘I like dogs.’
She hadn’t known that. ‘You should get one.’
‘One day. He’s your mother’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘How are things with her?’
‘Better than I thought they’d be.’
‘You’ve forgiven her?’
‘Just about.’ She would never be less than honest with him. ‘It’s so hard to let the past go but I have to. If I’ve learnt anything in recent months it’s that holding onto anger destroys you as much as the other. She’s made mistakes—massive ones—but I have too and I know she’s genuinely sorry. I am too. I just want her back in my life.’
They lapsed into silence that stretched so unbearably tight that Anna couldn’t endure it a moment longer. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Because I’m falling apart without you.’ His shoulders rose and he turned his head to look at her. ‘I want you to think about coming back. Not to me, I know you won’t do that, but back to Moretti’s. The staff are on the verge of mutiny because without you there I have lost my conscience. You can have your own office so you don’t have to see me if you don’t want to. You can boss me around just as well by email as in person. Name your terms and your price.’
Stefano didn’t take his gaze off her. He sought every tiny flicker of reaction on her face.
Her forehead furrowed. ‘You want me to come back to work?’
‘I know I’m asking a lot of you.’
‘You’re not wrong.’
‘Please. Hear me out. Anna, it’s not just Moretti’s that’s falling apart, is me. I’m falling apart. I know you won’t come back as my wife but I miss having you in my life. You keep me sane. You help me see things clearly. I need you.’
He’d never said that before to anyone. He’d learned at too young an age that people were too often faithless and cruel to each other to allow himself to ever need someone. The only person he’d ever needed was himself.
Much of the colour had left her face.
‘If you come back then it will be on whatever terms you choose. Having you close by will be enough for me.’ He ran his fingers through his hair to stop them from touching her. ‘I know it’s over for us. How I took advantage of your amnesia was unforgivable. I was furious about your assumptions that I was having an affair but I made assumptions of my own. I swore you had to be a gold-digger because I couldn’t face the truth that you were in love with me and I was in love with you.’
She sucked in a breath and he grimaced. ‘I know it’s too late for you to hear that but, please, allow me to explain. I know I won’t have your forgiveness but I would like yo
ur understanding.
‘Your instincts about your promotion were right—I did give it to you so I could be rid of you—you were the best person for the job but that was secondary—but it wasn’t because I was bored with you. You were scared I would leave you but I was already scared you would leave me. I’ve never been wanted for myself before, not since Nonno died. The rest of my family didn’t want me and you know as well as I do that they treated me like dirt. When I left them to fend for myself, people didn’t want me, they wanted to use me; bosses exploiting my age to try and underpay me, drunk women seeing me as nothing but a handsome face to have sex with. When I finally made my fortune people didn’t want me for myself, they wanted my fame and money. You were the first person to see through the expensive suits and see the man inside. How could you like that man when no one else had ever liked or wanted him? I deliberately pushed you away because I was too much of a coward to acknowledge that I loved you. I pushed you away before you could push me.’
His soul laid bare, Stefano took a long breath and covered her hands. A glimmer of hope fluttered in him when she didn’t resist, her eyes still on his face, wide and glistening.
‘I can’t be without you,’ he said, willing for her to believe him. ‘I can’t even breathe normally. Days without you are an eternity. Please come back. If all you can offer is to take your place in Moretti’s again then that’s enough.’
Time itself seemed to morph into eternity while he waited for her to respond.
When she moved her hands out of his hold his heart sank so sharply it caused physical pain.
But then she placed one on his cheek and moved her face a little closer and his heart dared to rise back up.
‘After all you’ve just said are you only offering me my job back?’
He trapped the hand palmed against his cheek. ‘Anna, you have my heart. Whatever you can give I will accept. I need you and I will take whatever you can give.’
‘But what do you want?’
Something in her expression sent warmth into blood that had been cold for weeks. ‘I want you to ask me to make that promise I made to you again so that I can tell you I don’t need to make it because there will never be anyone else but you for me.’
Slowly her face moved to his and then her eyes closed and her lips pressed gently against his.
He hardly dared to breathe. He’d flown out here knowing he needed to make that one last move and strip himself bare for her. He’d reconciled himself to them being over but had been unable to reconcile with Anna being out of his life for good. She was so much a part of him that her not being there had been like living with a piece of himself missing.
‘I don’t want to come back to London as your employee,’ she whispered into his mouth. ‘I want to come back as your wife.’
This was more than he had dared hope for. Far more. ‘You do?’
Her nose brushed his as she nodded. ‘I love you.’
A boulder settled in his throat and he swallowed it away. ‘But can you forgive me?’
‘We’ve both made mistakes. If we can’t draw a line under them and make a fresh start then we’ll both suffer for it.’ She smiled, though her chin wobbled. ‘It’s been agony for me without you. I’d already decided to come home and see if there was any chance for us.’
‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘That’s why I came back early from the beach. It had all suddenly become clear for me. I thought my love for you had died but that was my hurt and pride talking, not my heart.’
‘I swear I will never do anything to hurt you again.’
‘We’re both stubborn and fiery. We’ll probably spend the rest of our lives arguing with each other.’
‘As long as we spend the rest of it making up then I can live with that.’ And to prove his point he put a hand round the back of her head and pulled her in for another kiss, this one deep and full of all the love and desire he felt for this beautiful woman without whom he was nothing but a shell of himself.
She was everything to him, his lover, his confidante and his sparring partner. It would be easier to live without a limb than without her.
‘How do you feel about us becoming parents?’ she asked him between kisses.
He put his finger under her chin.
For all that they’d forgiven each other everything, Anna being alone when she miscarried their child was something he would never forgive himself for.
‘When the time is right we can try for a child. I want us to have a football team of bambinos and a couple of dogs for them to play with but not until you’re ready for it.’
He thought he would see sadness in her eyes but they were bright and...knowing.
‘Anna?’
Suddenly the most enormous grin beamed from her face.
‘You’re not?’
‘I am.’ She snuggled into him, her head on his chest. ‘I took the test last week.’
‘With Melissa?’ he asked drily. This was unbelievable. He’d left London feeling as if he were drowning, seeking Anna as a life raft, and now felt as if the sun were shining especially for them.
‘Yes.’
‘And one for luck?’
‘Yes.’ She pressed herself even tighter to him. ‘Neither of us knew it at the time but I wasn’t protected when we were in Santa Cruz—I never had another injection after I lost...’ The kiss on her head and the tightening of the arms around her showed that Stefano understood what she was struggling to vocalise. ‘I’m sorry for not telling you sooner,’ she whispered into his chest. ‘I was trying to get my head around it and I knew it was something I had to tell you to your face. But I was going to tell you as soon as I got back to London. I swear.’
He ran his fingers through her hair. ‘Don’t apologise. I know you would have told me. How are you feeling?’
‘A little sick at times but nothing to complain about.’ Her face shone as she gazed up at him. ‘And you?’
He kissed her. ‘I feel that you’ve given me all my birthday and Christmas presents in one go.’
And speaking of presents...
He disentangled himself just enough to pull out the small black square box he’d carried on his person since he’d opened it a week ago.
She recognised it at once, her eyes widening and somehow brightening further. ‘I was going to give you that...’
‘On our wedding anniversary,’ he finished for her.
She held out her left hand for him and he slid the smaller ring onto her wedding finger then kissed it. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ she whispered before taking the larger ring and sliding it onto his finger and kissing it in turn.
It took a long time for Stefano to comprehend the magnitude of all that had happened, how his last throw of the dice had brought him rewards he’d not allowed himself to dream of.
He had his wife back and this time he would honour and cherish her until his dying breath.
EPILOGUE
ANNA SAT ON the side of the bath watching Stefano, who was leaning against the wall looking at his watch, light bouncing off his gold wedding band, a white oblong stick in his hand.
The bathroom door was shoved open and Cecily, their three-year-old daughter, came flying in followed in quick succession by her four-year-old brother and their slower, sappy King Charles spaniel, Alfie.
Cecily threw her arms around Anna’s legs. ‘Mario hit me,’ she wailed.
‘She threw my ice cream on the floor!’ he hollered indignantly.
‘Behave, the pair of you,’ Stefano scolded, amusement lurking in his eyes. ‘And no hitting.’
‘But...!’
‘If you can’t play nicely together we won’t go to the beach,’ Anna cut in. With Mario due to start school in England that September, they’d decided to spend the summer in their Santa Cruz beach house, the unanimous family favourite of all their homes.
Two months before Mario had been born, they’d left their London apartment and moved into a rambling manor house in Ox
fordshire surrounded by acres of land for their football team of children to play in. It was an idyllic existence. Picture perfect. Apart from having two children who liked nothing more than fighting furiously, of course.
‘No fair!’ they both shouted together. Still bickering, the pair of them toddled off to their playroom, no doubt leaving a trail of chaos and destruction in their wake. She found it remarkable that their mess didn’t bother her at all.
‘Are you sure you want another one?’ Stefano asked, laughing.
She grinned. Their football team hadn’t quite materialised. After having two children with a gap of less than a year between them, they’d decided to wait and enjoy them before having any more.
She’d come off the pill a month ago.
‘I think we can cope.’
‘That’s a relief.’ He passed the stick to her, his grin now as wide as his face. ‘Because according to this, we’re having another one.’
Anna read the blue plus sign, her own grin widening to match her husband’s.
With a whoop of delight, Stefano picked her up and planted kisses all over her face.
Wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, Anna returned the kisses. Even with two children and another on the way, their desire and love for each other remained undiminished. There wasn’t a single aspect of her life she would change. Together they’d created a family filled with love and laughter, arguments and lots of making up.
‘Daddy! What are you doing to my mummy?’ Cecily was standing in the bathroom doorway, her arms folded and the same expression on her face that Stefano always used when he wasn’t amused by something. ‘Put her down at once!’
Stefano put Anna down, gave her one last kiss for luck, then scooped his daughter up and carried her, screaming with laughter, upside down to the playroom.
* * * * *
EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT
Persuading plain Jane to marry him was easy enough – but Shiekh Zayed Al Zawba hadn’t bargained on the irresistible curves hidden under her clothes, or that she is deliciously untouched. When Jane begins to tempt him beyond his wildest dreams, leaving their marriage unconsummated becomes impossible…
Read on for a sneak preview of
Once a Moretti Wife Page 15