by Penny Jordan
He was stroking the little dog with both hands now, soothing it and calming it and now saying nice things. She just didn’t get him—never, ever would she get him!
‘Should you ring Martha?’ she asked and watched him freeze for a moment.
‘She left him,’ he snapped. ‘It’s not her dog any more.’
‘Why did you two break up?’ she asked curiously. Now maybe wasn’t the right time for this discussion, but it was the only window she had, the only possible time to ask the question she had for so long wondered about.
‘Things weren’t going too well,’ Luca said. ‘Here’s the vet now—let him in and then go.’
‘Or they were going too well?’ Emma stood up. ‘What, you were too happy, Luca, so you had to break it off with her?’
‘Just leave.’
But she couldn’t, instead she said what was on her mind. ‘Are you worried you might turn out like your dad?’ His face was black with anger as he turned to her, except he didn’t scare her. ‘You’re not your father, Luca.’
‘Don’t practise your high-school psychology on me,’ Luca sneered. ‘I don’t love you, Emma—in fact, I don’t actually like you.’ His words were very deliberate and aimed straight for her heart. ‘I slept with you because you wanted it, because you begged me for it. I warned you from the start an affair was all it could be. Now, when I tell you, as I did from the start, that it would not last, you have to find a reason why I ended it.’
‘Okay, Luca,’ she said, feeling sick, ‘I get the message.’
‘No, you ask, I answer—the reason I ended it is because, like the rest, you got too clingy, too needy…and frankly—’ all his attention was on Pepper now ‘—you’re not that interesting in bed.’
She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet.
‘Out,’ he said, without turning his head.
This time Emma went.
* * *
It was quick and it was painless and it absolutely had to be done.
Even with a dog-sitter and a housekeeper, there had always been a small dash of guilt at leaving him so much—but as the vet had often pointed out on increasingly regular visits, finding a home for a geriatric poodle with dementia would be a tough task.
It was his time.
‘Do you want me to take him?’ the vet asked.
‘Please.’
‘Do you want his collar?’
‘No, thank you.’
He shook the vet’s hand and thanked him, saw him out, and then spent ten minutes trying to find where Rita kept the bin liners. Walking around the apartment, he filled it with Pepper’s things, kneeling and checking under the bed, in the laundry, under the sofa, making sure that every last thing of his was gone, then throwing the bag down the chute. Annoyed at the dog hair on his favourite suit, he stripped it off and changed, then threw his suit down the chute too.
Only when every last trace of Pepper was gone did Luca head back to the office.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘I’M SURE I’m pregnant,’ Evelyn said firmly. If she said it assuredly enough then the universe wouldn’t dare to argue.
‘Let’s just wait and see what the clinic says.’ Emma attempted caution. ‘You’ll know tomorrow.’
‘I’ve got all the symptoms,’ Evelyn insisted. ‘I mean, I feel sick all the time, my breasts are hurting…’ It was like water torture—drip by drip, Evelyn listed her symptoms, each one causing a further stab of unease in Emma. ‘I just want to know now.’
So too did Emma.
‘Evelyn…’ Emma picked up her bag. ‘I’m going out for my lunch break, okay?’
‘Out?’ Evelyn frowned, as well she might. There was no such thing as a lunch break—it was either out with Luca and taking notes or a quick sandwich at the desk. The requisite lunch break in this place was non-existent. ‘I’ve got some things I need to do…’ Emma slung her bag over her shoulder ‘…and I doubt I’ll be out of here by five.’
The public toilets in a department store wasn’t the best place to find out the news, but somehow she needed to be away from Luca for this. Leaning against the wall, the short wait was interminable. Picking up the indicator, she stared at it, not trying to work out the hows or whys, as the internet had already told her that—new job, lots of travel, different time zones… She had been vigilant taking her Pill but sometimes, apparently, these things happened. Picking up the instruction leaflet, she didn’t need to check it as the answer was perfectly clear—whether or not it was to her liking was another matter entirely.
She walked back to work, her heart in her mouth, not even attempting to fathom Luca’s reaction to the news—she was having enough trouble fathoming her own!
‘Where the hell have you been?’
Luca was not in the best of moods—in fact, he hadn’t been in the best of moods for a long time. Since his return from Sicily the pretence of business as usual had soon worn thin, but since Pepper’s death his mood had darkened further. Still, as she slipped off her jacket his harsh tone had no impact on Emma.
‘I asked where you’d been,’ Luca said. ‘I’ve been ringing your mobile.’
‘At lunch,’ Emma said, ‘and I forgot to charge my phone.’
‘You went to lunch two hours ago.’
‘And I stayed here till eleven p.m. last night,’ Emma retorted, her head too full of the sudden news to feel threatened by Luca’s tone.
Maybe she should just tell him now. Oh, I just took a pregnancy test and was building up to giving you the happy news!
God, men had it easy at times.
She looked up at him, at a face that had once appeared to adore her, at the stern lips that had kissed her, at the hands that had soothed her, and wondered how he could have changed so. How she could possibly ever work up the courage to tell him.
She couldn’t.
So, instead of explaining herself, she peeled off her jacket and then made her way to the desk, not that her lack of response deterred him. Luca rattled off a list of orders that had even Evelyn frowning at the impossibility of it all.
But Emma just set to work, dealing with the most pressing emails and telephone calls, as Evelyn dealt with Luca.
His temper was palpable, she could hear it in the impatient buzz of her intercom, could feel it from behind the thick oak door, could see it when she knocked and entered and gave him the most recent list of figures he had demanded that she pull from thin air and that though deemed urgent were given nothing more than a cursory glance.
‘And remember the midday meeting tonight,’ he called to her departing back. ‘Make sure I’ve got all the documentation I need.’
‘Midday meeting tonight?’
‘With the Los Angeles office.’ He bared his teeth in a sarcastic smile. ‘Evelyn has to leave at six tonight, so if you want your break, could you take it before then?’
‘I’ve got plans tonight.’ She did have plans, important plans—like seeing a doctor and trying to work out what the hell she was going to do. ‘I really need to leave.’
‘Would you excuse us a moment, please, Evelyn?’ His voice was dark and Emma was grateful for the sympathetic smile Evelyn gave her on the way out.
‘When you were offered the position…’ Each word came in clipped tones, his eyes never leaving her face as he spoke, but Emma wasn’t going to take this.
‘I know what you’re doing!’
‘When you were offered the position,’ Luca said again, his voice icily calm, ‘it was clearly stipulated there would be extensive travel and late nights.’
‘You’re trying to push me into resigning.’ With every interruption, with every rise in her voice, Luca leant back further in his chair, a cruel glimmer of a smile on his lips as he calmly spoke over her.
‘It was clearly outlined that the reason you were being hired,’ Luca smoothly continued, ‘was to lighten Evelyn’s workload. I value Evelyn—’
‘Unlike me,’ Emma spat.
‘I value all my staff,’ Luca responded, �
�but Evelyn is vital—that is why I have been so accommodating with her doctor’s appointments and schedules. That is why you are here—to lighten her load so that she doesn’t hand in her notice.’
‘Which is what you want me to do?’
‘Why would I want you to leave?’ He was smiling now—utterly boxing her into a corner. ‘If Evelyn gets good news tomorrow, we’ll need you on board even more. It might even mean a promotion for you!’
He kept her at the office till ten p.m., and exhausted she fell into bed, but sleep evaded her. Her mind was a whir of scattered thoughts—that she was carrying his child was just too big and too scary to contemplate. Imagining telling him, dealing with him—telling the man who so clearly didn’t want her in his life that she would be in it now for ever. Whether that meant monthly maintenance payments or access visits, there was a link now that couldn’t be severed.
She lay there and wondered.
He had changed, yet so had she.
It had been like a beautiful seamless dance, and somehow she had tripped—had forgotten the rules, had tipped the scales from trusting to wary almost imperceptibly.
So she lay there, trying to pinpoint the moment it had ended, when, for Luca, the light had gone out on their relationship.
Trying not to ponder what she had done wrong.
Because she had done nothing wrong, Emma knew that.
It wasn’t about wrong or right, or trying to please, or bending to fit—she had known from the start it would be short-lived, that Luca, by his own clear admission, would never loan his heart to anyone for long.
She had accepted the rules of the game, had gone into it utterly prepared—and had come out of it utterly broken.
Had been so sure that she could handle it.
Change him. Be the one.
Glimpse a future for them.
So, instead of sleeping, she lay there, rueing her own carelessness, because she had been taught, and she had learnt, and yet she had chosen to forget.
What a fool she’d been…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE call when it came was unexpected. Luca had won, Emma finally decided. She had her notice typed up and printed off and it sat waiting in her bag for when the right moment presented itself. She simply couldn’t do it any longer.
Evelyn had had her blood test that morning and the bad news that very afternoon. Luca had offered to let her go home, but Evelyn had declined. ‘This will not be the last time,’ he had said to her, as Emma had sat with her arm around Evelyn.
‘Maybe it’s time to see someone else. I have found out about a very good clinic. Their success rate with IVF is high.’ He handed his PA a thick glossy brochure.
‘We can’t afford to go there,’ Evelyn sobbed.
‘I am to be sent the bills,’ Luca said, ‘and this time you will take the time off that you need and rest properly while you wait for the results.’
‘Why would you do this for me?’ Evelyn wailed as Emma wondered the same thing—he could be so nice, so charming, so very, very kind. Ah, but Evelyn was vital to Luca, she thought cynically, the last thing he must privately want was for his esteemed PA to be leaving—but his show of kindness had caught her off guard.
As he always did.
Her throat thickened with tears as he spoke to Evelyn, as she heard again the rare tenderness that she craved from him. ‘Because you do so much for me, because always you have been loyal to me. Because I know that when your baby is here—and it will be here, Evelyn—that even if you come back to work for me part time, or even if you decide to never work again, I will be able to call on you, perhaps to train someone up, perhaps to help for a few days. And more than that, we are friends. I know I can count on you, and you can count on me too.’
When he was nice, there was no one nicer, Emma realised.
No one.
Evelyn was perhaps the one woman he could sustain a relationship with because there was no sex involved, no attraction, just mutual liking and respect.
Emma would kill to have the latter two from him.
Later, sitting at her desk, staring out at the grey autumnal sky that declared summer over, when Luca strode past her desk and to his office and slammed the door behind him, she felt like one of the trees waving in the streets below. Slight, every breeze exposing the bare truth beneath, and she couldn’t do it to herself any longer.
Couldn’t cling on when there was nothing left—couldn’t stave off winter.
She didn’t hate him after all, she only hated his behaviour.
Hated it that he didn’t love her.
And she must remember this, Emma realised, when she told him about the baby.
If she told him.
She let out a slow breath at the immoral choice she was considering taking—denying him the knowledge of the child that she was carrying.
That she would carry until she gave birth to it.
Oh, she would love to be one of those stoic women, one who had never considered the alternatives to giving birth—except she had. Had scoured her magazines for information, had searched on the internet, had made a couple of phone calls—and yet it was Evelyn who had unwittingly halted that thought process. Evelyn’s very real grief at what had just been lost that had reminded Emma of the miracle that had occurred.
That despite precautions, despite a man who wanted nothing more than a short-lived affair, despite a woman who’d had other plans, a life had been created. A life that she would cherish for ever.
It was taking some getting used to, that was all.
She had never felt closer to understanding her mother. She finally understood now how her mother could have felt trapped inside her role of wife and mother. Hopefully, for Emma, that feeling would one day soon be diminished by the overwhelming love she would feel for her child.
Would Luca feel the same?
Tears stung her eyes as she tried to predict his likely reaction—no doubt he would assume she was just after a monthly support cheque or, even worse, a wedding ring.
Well, a loveless marriage wasn’t on her agenda—she was the product of one after all and would never expose her own child to it. So now she just had to tell him, only exactly which piece of information Emma didn’t know yet—that she was leaving for good or that they had created a child together.
And so busy was Emma, wrestling with her decision, that when the call came, although it was not entirely unexpected, it was like a bolt from the blue.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘SIGNORA D’AMATO. COMESTA?’ Emma responded to the familiar voice in very new Italian but the greeting faded as her mind registered Luca’s mother’s voice, and heard the effort and emotion behind the thickly accented English when she asked if Luca was in the office.
‘I’ll put you through.’
‘No!’ Mia’s voice was urgent. ‘Emma, please—the news is not good.’ A strangled sob from Mia had Emma closing her eyes at the raw sound of pain. ‘Rico has gone.’ Emma held the phone and her eyes remained closed as Mia wept for a moment before speaking again. ‘I do not know Luca’s reaction, they were not close, but can you tell him…gently for me?’ Emma could feel the beads of sweat on her forehead, as it wasn’t her job to do something so personal. Except it wasn’t about her job role—Mia thought they were in love.
But only one of them was.
‘I will see you both soon for the funeral.’ Mia’s assumption had Emma’s heart pounding, and more so when she continued talking, giving Emma details that only a fiancée should know. She concluded. ‘Emma, this will be hard for Luca—I am so glad that he has you.’
The walk to his office was impossibly long, yet all too soon she was there. As were her instructions, she knocked and waited for his bored voice to summon her inside.
Had he looked up, maybe he would have seen her pale face and realised something was seriously wrong, but he was deep in the middle of a phone call, his long legs on the desk and crossed at the ankles, and he waved her to sit down, which Emma did, sitting
quietly, going over and over in her head how she should break it to him.
‘Yes?’ As he replaced the receiver he also pulled his legs from the desk and adopted a more formal position, his curt word reminding her that Luca liked to be brought straight to the point—only she truly didn’t know how to just come out and say it.
‘I have something to tell you.’
‘So tell me.’
‘It’s difficult.’ Emma swallowed, then opened her mouth to speak, but Luca overrode her.
‘Then let me make it easy for you—you’ve come to hand in your notice.’ He opened a drawer and handed her a thick cream envelope, his relief evident. ‘I have written a reference, as we agreed—’
‘Luca—’
‘There will be a bonus in your pay.’ Again he spoke over her. In fact, for Luca the words were tumbling out. He had known this moment was coming, had engineered it, wanted it, needed it to happen, only when the moment had arrived, it was unusually hard, painful even, and he noticed just the smallest shake to his usually steady hand as he held out the envelope. ‘It is for the best,’ Luca said, more for his benefit than hers.
‘Luca, will you please just listen?’ she begged, wringing her hands in her lap. ‘I just took a call from your mother.’ And he could hear her voice, see her mouth move, only he couldn’t quite process the words, his hand still holding out the envelope as somewhere he computed that his father was dead, that finally it was over… He had wished for this moment, Luca reminded himself as something catapulted him from his seat, had him striding to the window and turning his back to Emma. He had wanted this, wished for so long that it would be over, but he had never imagined mourning, grieving. He had never considered that it actually might hurt him.
He was dead, he was gone, it was over. Finally it was over, finally he should be able to breathe, only he couldn’t. He actually couldn’t drag in the air or push it out, even thought he might fold over in two, because it was all there in front of him—every memory, good and bad, playing out before his closed eyes, and futile questions playing over and over like a mantra in his pounding head.