by Jennie Lucas
The words it hurts too much hovered between them and Miller’s stomach pitched.
‘Valentino, I’m so sorry.’ She wanted to touch him, but his stiff countenance stole her confidence.
‘You’re not coming with me, are you?’
Miller swallowed heavily. If he had shown any inclination that his feelings might be even close to being as strong as hers she’d stay. She’d...
No. She couldn’t stay for anything less than love. She refused to fall victim to the laws of relationships. She refused to be in an unequal partnership and watch it wither and die. Because it would take her along with it.
‘I can’t. I—’ She hesitated, fear of being ridiculed stopping her from exposing exactly how she felt, but knowing she loved him too much just to walk away without trying. ‘I want more than you’re prepared to give.’
He raked back his hair in frustration. ‘How much more?’
‘I want love. I never thought I did, and I’m still afraid of it, but you’ve made me see that working so hard, cutting myself off from my true passions, from my feelings, is living half a life. I’m sure I won’t be any good at a real relationship, but I’m ready to try.’
He turned his head to the side, his expression hard. ‘I can’t give you that. I don’t do permanence.’
Miller smiled weakly, her heart breaking. ‘I know. That’s why I didn’t ask it of you. But thank you for last weekend. For this week. And good luck tomorrow.’
‘Fine.’ His voice was harsh, grating. He cleared his throat. ‘Tell Mickey when you want to organise the jet.’
Miller felt her lower lip wobble and turned away before the tears in her eyes spilled over. It didn’t get much more definitive than that.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN Miller disappeared from view Tino stalked off without a clear destination in mind, burning with anger. Didn’t she know what a concession he had made for her? What he had just offered her?
Tino stopped when he found himself outside on a tiered balcony, staring sightlessly at the glittering city lights.
Thank God she hadn’t taken him up on his offer. What had he been thinking? He never took a woman on tour.
‘I’m probably not the best person to follow you out here, but I know at least out of respect you won’t walk off on me.’
Valentino turned to find his mother standing behind him.
‘Want to talk about it?’
No, he didn’t want to talk about it.
‘Thanks, but I’m fine, Ma.’
‘Don’t ask me how this works.’ His mother stepped closer. ‘But a mother always knows when one of her children is lying. Even when they’re fully grown.’
Valentino blew out a breath and tipped his head to the starry sky. He really didn’t want his mother bothering him right now, and he cursed himself for not leaving when he’d had the chance.
‘Ma—’
His mother held her hand up in an imperious way that reminded him of Miller. ‘Don’t brush me off, darling. I once let your father go into a race in turmoil, and I won’t let my son do the same if I can help it.’
Valentino stared down at the tiny woman who had the strength and fortitude of an ox, and his anger morphed into something else. Something that felt a little like despair.
She stood beside him and the silence stretched taut until he couldn’t stand it any more. ‘You found it hard to be married to Dad with his job. I know you did.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you ask him to quit?’ Valentino heard the pain in his voice and did his best to mask it. ‘He would have done it for you.’
She regarded him steadily. ‘You’re still angry with him. With me, perhaps?’
He turned back to the lights below; cars like toys were moving in a steady stream along the throughways. Miller had said he was angry and right now he felt angry, so what was the point in denying it?
‘I never realised just how much you closed yourself off from us after your father died.’ His mother’s soft voice penetrated the sluggish fog of his mind. ‘You were always so serious. So controlled. But somehow you were still able to make us laugh.’
She offered him a sad smile that held a wealth of remembered pain.
‘I can see now it was your way of dealing with your pain, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there more for you right after it happened.’
Valentino raked an unsteady hand through his hair. ‘He always acted so bloody invincible and I...’ He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. ‘I stupidly believed him.’
‘Oh, darling. I’m so sorry. And I must have only made it worse by relying on you so heavily after his death because I thought you understood.’
Valentino felt something release and peel open deep inside him. Clasping his mother’s shoulders, he drew her into his arms. ‘I’m not angry at you, Ma.’
‘Not any more, hmmm?’
He heard her sniff and tightened his embrace. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been an ass to you and to Tom. I treated him appallingly when he dutifully drove me to go-cart meets every month, stood in the wings of every damned race.’ He stopped, unable to express his remorse at the way he had treated his mother’s second husband.
His mother hugged him tight. ‘He understood.’
‘Then he’s a better man than I am.’
‘You were only sixteen when we married—a difficult age at the best of times.’
‘I think I resented him because he was around when Dad just never had been.’
‘Your father took his responsibilities seriously, Valentino. His problem was that he’d grown up in a cold household and didn’t know how to express love. He didn’t know how to show you that he loved you, but he was torn. That morning...’ She stopped, swallowed. ‘We’d been talking a lot about him retiring leading up to that awful race, and I think that had he survived he would have quit.’
‘I overheard you both talking about it that morning.’
His mother closed her eyes briefly. ‘Then you must blame me for his death. For putting him off his race.’
Her voice quavered and Tino rushed to reassure her. ‘No. Certainly not. Honestly, I blamed Dad for trying to have it all. I think, if anything, I was just upset that you hadn’t tried to stop him.’
His mother pulled back and gave him a wistful smile. ‘It is what it is. We are each defined by the choices that we make for good and bad. And it wasn’t an easy decision for your father to make. He had sponsors breathing down his neck, the team owner, his fans. He did his best, but fate had other ideas.’ She paused. ‘But life goes on, and I’ve been lucky enough to find love not once, but twice in my life. I hope you get to experience the same thing at least once. I hope all of my children do.’
Jamming his hands in his pockets, Tino wished he could jam a lid on the emotions swirling through his brain.
Damn Miller. She had been right. He had been angry with his mother all this time. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you for telling me.’
He caught a movement in his peripheral vision and saw Tom, his stepfather, about to head back inside, his expression clearly showing that he didn’t want to interrupt.
Valentino beckoned him and Tom approached, putting his arm around his wife, love shining brightly in his eyes. ‘I didn’t want to interrupt.’
Tino drew in a long, unsteady breath. ‘Tom...’ He searched for a way to thank this man he had previously disdained for loving his mother and always being there for him and his siblings.
Tom inclined his head in a brief nod. ‘We’re good.’
Tino felt a parody of a smile twist his mouth. He nodded at Tom, kissed his mother’s cheek and left them to admire the view.
The urge to throw down a finger of whisky was intense. So was the need to find Miller.
Tino did neither.
&nb
sp; Instead, he took the lift to the ground floor and hailed a cab to the only place he’d ever found real peace.
His car.
The tight security team at the Albert Park raceway were surprised to see him, but no one stopped him from entering.
Not ever having been in the pits this late at night, he was surprised with how eerie it felt. Everything was deadly quiet. The monitors were off, the cars tucked away under protective cloth. The air was still, with only a faint trace of gasoline and rubber.
He threw the protective covering off his car, pulled the steering wheel out and climbed in. His body immediately relaxed into the bucket seat designed specifically to fit his shape. The scent of moulded plastic and polish was instantly soothing.
After re-fixing the steering wheel, he did an automatic pre-race check on the buttons and knobs.
Then he thought of his father and the times he’d watched him do the same thing, remembering the connection they had shared.
He released a long breath, realising that he had always felt superior to his father because he’d kept everyone at a safe distance. He’d believed it to be one of his great strengths, but maybe he’d been wrong.
A faint memory flickered at the edges of his mind, and he let his head fall back, stared unseeing at the high metal ceiling. What was his mind trying to tell him...? Oh, yeah—his father had once told him that when love hit you’d better watch out, because you didn’t have any say in the matter. You just had to go for it.
Tino’s hands tensed around the steering wheel. His father hadn’t been weak, as he’d assumed, he’d been strong. He’d dared to have it all. Okay, he’d made mistakes along the way, but did that make him a bad person?
In a moment of true clarity, Tino realised that he was little more than an arrogant, egotistical shmuck. One who didn’t dare love because he was afraid to open himself up to the pain he had experienced at losing his father.
For years he’d truly believed he was unable to experience deep emotion, but now he realised that was just a ruse—because Miller had cracked him open and wormed her way into his head and his heart.
Damn.
Tino banged the steering wheel as the truth of his feelings for her stared him in the face. He loved Miller. Loved her as he’d never wanted to love anyone. And ironically he was now faced with his worst nightmare. Forced to face the same decision he’d held his father to account for so many years ago.
For so long he had resented his father for refusing to quit, but he’d had no right to feel that way. No right to stand in judgement of a man who’d been driven to please everyone.
Like Miller.
Tino felt a stillness settle over him.
He could hear tomorrow’s crowd already, smell the gasoline in the air, the burn of rubber on asphalt, feel the vibration of the car surrounding him, drawing him into a place that was almost spiritual. But despite all that he couldn’t see himself doing it.
He could only see Miller. Miller in the bar in her black suit. Miller tapping her toes by the car as she waited for him to pick her up. Miller completely wild for him on the beach, in his bed, staring at him with wide, hurt eyes in the ballroom as the light from the chandeliers lit sparks in her wavy hair.
God, he was more of an idiot than Caruthers. He’d had her, she’d been his, and he’d pushed her away. Closed her down as he’d done all week whenever the conversation had veered towards anything too personal.
Levering himself out of his car, he knew he was saying goodbye to a part of his life that had sustained him for so long, but one that he didn’t need any more.
He didn’t care what the naysayers would say when he pulled out of the race tomorrow. For the first time ever he had too much to lose to go out onto the track. For the first time ever he wanted something else more.
The signs had been there. Or maybe they hadn’t been signs, maybe they’d just been coincidences. It didn’t matter. When he closed his eyes and thought about his future he wasn’t standing on a podium, holding up yet another trophy. He was with Miller.
Miller who had stalked off with tears behind her eyes.
Where was she?
He doubted she’d organised the jet to fly back to Sydney at this late hour; she was too considerate to disturb his pilot.
Likely she was still at the hotel. But he’d bet everything he owned she’d arranged for another room by now.
* * *
Miller felt terrible. Beyond terrible. Walking away from Valentino’s offer to travel with him had felt like the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. Even harder than leaving her father behind in Queensland all those years ago.
She was in love with Valentino and she was never going to see him again, never going to touch him again. There was something fundamentally wrong with that.
Travel with me. Come to Monaco next week.
Had she made a monumental mistake?
Miller looked down, half expecting to find herself standing on a trapdoor that would open up at any minute and put her out of her misery, but instead all that was there was designer carpet.
She sighed. This morning she had woken in Valentino’s arms and felt that life couldn’t get any better. TJ had signed Oracle to consult for his company before finding out what Valentino’s decision about Real Sport was, and the powers-that-be had requested a meeting with her first thing Monday morning. Which could only mean a promotion because, as Ruby had pointed out, no one got fired on a Monday.
But the idea of a promotion didn’t mean half as much as it once might have. Not only because her priorities had changed over the course of the week, but because she felt as if all the colour had been leached out of her life. Try as she might to pull herself together, it seemed her heart had taken a firm hold of her head and it was miserable. Aching.
She’d known falling in love would be a mistake, and boy had she ever been right about that. Love was terrible. Painful. Horrible.
She had accused Valentino of keeping himself safe from this kind of pain, but of course it was what she had always done as well. Keeping her hair straight, wearing black, hiding herself away at her work in an attempt to control her life. None of it had been real—just like her relationship with Valentino.
Only towards the end it had felt real with him. Had become real without her even noticing... She’d fallen in love and he hadn’t. Which just went to prove the law of relationships: one person always felt more.
And now, sitting on Valentino’s plane as his pilot ran through the preflight check, still wearing her beautiful, frothy dress, she felt like the heroine from a tragic novel.
She sniffed back tears and wondered if she had time to put her casual clothes on. And then she wondered what was taking so long. Surely she’d been sitting on the tarmac for over an hour now?
The whoosh of the outer doors opening brought her head round, and she was startled to see Valentino’s broad shoulders filling the doorway.
Like her, he hadn’t taken the time to change, and he looked impossibly virile: his bow tie was hanging loosely around his neck and the top buttons of his dress shirt were reefed open.
Miller swallowed, her heart thumping in her chest. ‘What are you doing here?’
Valentino stalked inside the small cabin. ‘Looking for you. And I have to say this is the last place I tried.’
‘I told Mickey not to tell you.’
‘He didn’t. My pilot did.’
He looked annoyed.
‘I’m sorry if you’re upset about me commandeering your plane at this hour. I felt terrible doing it. But all the hotel rooms were booked and Mickey insisted...’
‘I don’t care about the plane. And stop moving.’ Miller stopped when she realised she was stepping backwards. ‘Where are you going, anyway?’
‘The pilot stowed my bag in the rear cupboard. I was
just going to get it.’
‘Leave the damn bag.’ He dragged a hand through his hair and Miller realised how tired he looked.
She swallowed heavily. ‘Why were you looking for me?’
Had she forgotten something? Left something in their room?
‘Because I realised after you left that I loved you and I needed to tell you.’
‘You...what?’
He came towards her again and Miller’s back bumped the cabin wall. Her senses were stunned at his announcement.
Valentino stepped into her personal space and cupped her elbows in his hands. ‘You heard right. I love you, Miller. I’ve spent my whole life convincing myself it was the last thing I wanted, but fortunately you came along and proved me wrong.’
Miller tried to still her galloping heart. ‘You told me that racing was all you ever needed.’
‘Which shows you that you need to add stupidity to my list of flaws.’
‘I might have been a bit harsh earlier.’
‘No, you weren’t.’ He hesitated. ‘After my father died I was determined never to love anyone because I convinced myself that I wanted to protect them from the hurt I had experienced. But you were right. I was protecting myself.’ He shook his head. ‘Until you came into my life, Miller, I truly believed that I didn’t have the capacity to love anyone.’
Miller felt her heart swell in her chest. She desperately wanted to believe that he loved her but her old fears wouldn’t let go.
He squeezed her hands gently. ‘You’re thinking something. What is it?’
‘I thought you always knew what I was thinking?’ Miller smiled weakly at her attempt at humour.
‘Usually I do, but right now...I’m too scared to guess.’
Scared? Valentino was scared?
His admission was raw, and unbridled hope sparked deep inside her. ‘You risk your life every time you race.’
He laughed. ‘That’s nothing compared to this. Now tell me what you’re thinking, baby.’
Miller felt as if her heart had a tractor beam of sunlight shining right at it at the softness of his tone. ‘I’m thinking that I may never outgrow my need for certainty, and I don’t know if I can watch you throw yourself around a track every other week without making you feel guilty. Watching you qualify today, I thought I was going to throw up.’