Liam tensed to move. Then he remembered Penn’s words. I thought Jules needed a shoulder and it didn’t look as if she’d open up with you around.
Shooting a look at Penn, he shook his head at his brother. Okay. Give her the chance to share with her sister her concerns over Stevie.
“She can’t lose the baby,” Giuliana finally said, her voice tight. He could imagine her fingers clenched in a white-knuckled igloo on the table.
“We can hope she won’t,” Allie replied. “But no matter what, Stevie will—”
“Don’t say she’ll be fine. Don’t say she’ll be fine like it won’t matter if there’s no Fabulosa Magnifica or Myauntiescool Andspoilsme.”
“Of course it would matter,” Allie said soothingly. “But it wouldn’t be the end—”
“It would be the end of the world!” Giuliana interrupted. “It would be the end of the world as she knows it.”
Liam went to stone. Only inside him was movement. His heart beating in a jagged rhythm. His blood lurching through his veins in hot, caustic bursts.
“Jules.” Chair legs scraped. “I was going to say it wouldn’t be the end of her hopes for a family with Jack.”
Penn’s gaze went from the open window to Liam. His Hollywood half brother’s face was guarded, a mirror image of what he suspected was his own expression. Liam had learned to be cautious, cagey even, when he was ten years old and started lying for his father. Never give away the truth.
Chair legs scraped again and he imagined Allie taking the seat beside her sister. Her voice softened. “What’s going on, Jules?”
“Stevie—”
“This isn’t about Stevie.” Allie was going into scary-Baci-girl mode—tenacious and demanding. “Don’t. Don’t turn away from me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Don’t tell her. Liam’s heart rate spiked. Don’t say it out loud. Please don’t make me hear it. He could feel the weight of Penn’s gaze, and he wished it could cut a hole in the soft earth and then sink him.
Bury him before he had to hear his wife say—
“I lost my baby. Ten years ago I lost a baby.”
Allie gasped.
Liam’s face remained the unperturbed mask he’d cultivated over the years. He could feel it settled into the calm lines of a mature man, visually unmoved by a long-ago disappointment.
“I was in Tuscany—” Giuliana’s voice broke.
Her distress snapped his equanimity. He jumped to his feet. Disappointment? Who was he kidding? It had been a fucking catastrophe.
“What happened?” Allie said.
“We’d heard the baby’s heart.”
His own battered against his ribs, a desperate prisoner, rattling the bars of its cage. He remembered the moment, the nurse at the clinic pressing the wand on the golden skin of his wife’s belly. Thanks to pregnancy tests, they’d known she was pregnant, but then, with that whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sounding in the room, he’d known it. He and Giuliana had made a baby. An odd euphoria had seemed to lift his feet from the ground. No one and nothing can take her from me, he remembered thinking. This cements it.
What a fool he’d been.
“It was a baby,” Giuliana was saying. “Though they tried to tell me, after, that it was nothing. A positive test could be wrong, they said.”
Oh, God. This was new. He didn’t know they’d tried to take that away from her . . . Giuliana had needed to mourn and someone had tried to tell her she was grieving over a mistake.
“I heard the heartbeat, Allie. I heard it.”
“Shh,” her sister said. She must be touching her sister now—holding her hand or enfolding her in her arms. “I know you did, Jules. I know you did.”
They’d heard the heartbeat. He’d taken both her hands in his, looked into her eyes, and as the nurse turned up the volume of that whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, he’d silently pledged himself to her again. I’ll never leave you . . . Not two weeks later, he had.
Giuliana would have tears on her face now. She’d had tears on her face in Tuscany, when she’d miscarried the baby, he supposed, but he’d missed them on both occasions.
“I was so alone,” he heard his wife whisper.
“Alone?” Allie’s voice turned sharp. “Where was Liam?”
Ah, there it was.
But she didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I didn’t worry at first. I hadn’t had morning sickness. Maybe the cramps were my version. When it was more, I called the clinic.
“Don’t worry, I was told. It’s probably nothing. Put your feet up and the symptoms should stop.”
“Oh, Jules.” Allie sounded so sad. “They didn’t stop.”
“No. Soon . . . soon I knew there wasn’t hope.”
There was a beat of silence, then Allie repeated her question. “Jules, where was Liam during all this?”
He’d already been gone then. Answering the “emergency” call from his father, when his and Giuliana’s own crisis was bearing down on them.
“A few days before, he’d flown back to California.” There was a brittle quality to her voice. “I called him when it was over.”
“Oh, Lord,” Allie muttered. Then she raised her voice. “Given how you two have been at each other’s throats this last year, that conversation didn’t go as it should.”
How would that be? If he was in the room with Allie right now, he’d demand she tell him. How the hell should he have dealt with it? Over six thousand miles away and the girl he loved called him, heartsick and hurting. The powerlessness had made him want to kill something.
But so much had already died.
“You’re wrong, Allie,” his wife said, her voice dull. “He handled it really well. He told me what happened was for the best.”
The words slid between his ribs like a blade so sharp he didn’t feel it at first. He could even look over at Penn, and it was only then the wound began to bleed. Because on that near-doppelganger’s face, he saw the pain he’d never been able to express and that he’d pretended didn’t exist for the last decade.
A whooshing sounded in his ears. Like that noise that had filled the tiny examining room at the clinic as the nurse discovered their child’s heartbeat. In the distance, Liam heard the phone ring again.
But he couldn’t stay. On stiff legs, he turned. At first he just managed to walk, and then he managed a jog, and finally he was able to run. He didn’t stop, not even when he heard the woman he’d abandoned call his name.
“Wait!” This time it was Giuliana chasing Liam through the vineyard. She put on a burst of speed at the same time that he gave up the race. Her feet stuttered in the dirt as he halted, his back to her, his hands hanging loose at his sides.
Wary, she approached him slowly. When she’d gone outside to find the men following that second phone call, Penn had told her Liam had taken off . . . after he’d overheard her conversation with Allie.
“I’m sorry,” she said, still four feet away.
He twitched. “Oh, shit.” His right palm swiped over his face. “Stevie and Jack lost their baby?”
“No!” She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “No. Jack called. She and the baby are fine. They recommend a few days rest as insurance.”
“All right.” He nodded, his back still turned. “Okay.”
She took another step closer, her gaze on his wide back and the masculine jut of his shoulder blades. Sometimes she forgot he was the companion of her childhood, the young boy who’d been the acknowledged leader of their little band. His style was never the ruthless dictator. Little Allie always got her turn. If there was some special treat to share, he’d established the rule that whoever divvied up the pieces had to take the final portion. You’d never seen such equal-sized slices.
Before he’d become the man whose bed she’d been sharing for the past weeks, he’d been the teenager who walked her across the chasm between girlhood and womanhood. Her passionate nature had advocated flinging herself across the breach, but Liam had kept a gentle hold on her. Never taking too m
uch when she would have given him all much too soon.
For the first time she wondered, what had she ever given him in return?
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“For what?” He turned to face her.
“For telling Allie . . . for Penn overhearing . . . for sharing a secret that was private between us.”
He was already shaking his head. “Don’t apologize. I’m beginning to see that keeping secrets hasn’t done either one of us any good.”
The sale of the Tanti Baci land. In all the upheaval she’d forgotten that everyone knew about that now. Oh, God.
Liam lifted a hand, then. Good-bye? He turned away.
“Wait!” she called again.
His back stiffened. He glanced back. “Why?”
She remembered what he’d said after that other vineyard pursuit. “Because it’s time.” It was a repeat of his words. “Because we can’t go on like this. You just said it, the secrets aren’t doing either of us any good. Neither is not talking about . . . what we lost.”
“It’s too late, Jules.” He sounded tired. “So many years have passed. You’ve made decisions, I made huge mistakes . . . what will dredging it up do?”
“I don’t know what for you,” she answered, honest. “For me . . . I think I’ll get back something I’d let myself forget.”
This is what she needed, she realized. Coming back to Edenville and Tanti Baci had reminded her of happy years that she’d banished from her memory in order to banish the pain of that one single summer. But there’d been so many good times and she figured if they could get past this that she’d be able to cherish that happiness once again.
Her hand lifted to touch him, but she let it drop. “You weren’t just the man who left me in Tuscany. Until these last few weeks, I’d forgotten the boy who taught me to fly a kite. The one who was more patient than my dad and let me learn to drive a stick shift on his precious BMW Z3. You were protective and tender and careful with me, always.”
To ensure she kept her hands to herself, she shoved them in her pockets. “What happened that summer, Liam? Where’d that person go?”
His head dropped. “When we were in Tuscany . . .”
“By the time we arrived, you were already turning inward. But after . . . after the miscarriage, you seemed almost uninterested in me. You let go of our marriage so easily.”
He spun to face her. “It wasn’t easy.”
“What was it then?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I made huge mistakes, I admit to that. Let it go.” He turned and started striding off again.
But she’d made that mistake herself before, so, gritting her teeth, she caught up with him. When he glanced over, she avoided his eyes and took up the sunglasses she’d hooked over the neckline of her shirt. Slipping them on, she kept stride with him. Two people headed in the same direction.
On the path that they’d worn when she’d believed their lives were destined for the same road forever.
She scanned the vineyards surrounding them, the organized rows masking the capricious nature of creating wine. She’d not truly understood that, she supposed, until she went to Tuscany and experienced her own failed growing season.
“That girl loved you so much,” she said. “I was devastated when I lost the baby.”
“You think I don’t know that? You think it didn’t kill me that I wasn’t there for you?”
Stretching out her right arm, she let her fingertips tickle the leaves as she passed along the vines. They were both the gatherers of light for the vine and the guardians of the fruit, acting as a natural canopy from the sun’s heat. What fabulous romantic partners they were—being providers as well as protectors.
Liam had been those two things to her, and she’d thought, then, that she did know him. So what came after didn’t add up. It never had.
“Were you ashamed of me?”
He stopped short. “What? No!”
“Then why did you want us to keep our marriage a secret? Because I was too young, you said.” Which, in hindsight, didn’t make a lot of sense. But she’d thrown herself forward without thinking too hard, being her impetuous Italian self.
“You were too young,” he muttered, starting to walk again. “I should never have come up with that stupid idea to go to Reno.”
“If I recall, it was my stupid idea.” She felt her mouth curve into a smile. “Face it, Liam, we should have just had sex and not worried about a marriage certificate first.”
“I was trying to do the right thing.” He slid a look at her and it held a spark of amusement. “But you were hot-blooded. Insistent. Dissatisfied with anything but everything.”
“You say it like it was a bad thing.” She could be kind, she found, to her younger, ardent self. That girl had suffered the devastating loss of her mother and then found such joy again in life with the person she loved. “Did my passion embarrass you?”
He let out a wry laugh. “Clearly, you have never been a twenty-year-old man.”
“And yet you didn’t want anyone to know we’d eloped.”
He hesitated.
“After everything, I think you owe me an explanation.” She steeled herself, unsure what to expect.
His head ducked. “You’ll think I’m a fool.”
“It’s better than me thinking you’re snobby, arrogant, conceited, self-important, egotistical—”
“You can stop now.”
“—condescending, bigheaded, overly proud—”
“I wanted to keep it safe.”
“It?” She held her breath.
“Us.” He hesitated. “If it was a secret, it belonged to us alone. No one could screw it up, no one could pass judgment—”
“Now you’re thinking about your parents.”
He retreated into silence for a moment, then spoke again. “I was afraid my father was going to fuck up my marriage, just like he’d done with his own.” Liam’s voice was bitter. “Looks like I was right.”
Giuliana thought back to that summer in Italy. “You said your dad wanted you back in the States. Just a few days, you said.” Now that she knew more about Liam’s relationship with his father, she could guess why he’d returned. “He wanted you to—what? Cover for him again?”
“Something like that.” They’d reached the side gate at his house, and Liam unfastened the latch and held it open for her. They crossed into the courtyard and the breeze moved the fountain’s shower of water so that the veil of drops shifted right and then shifted back, like a swarm of bees operating in unison. Liam stared at the feature as if he’d never seen it before. “Dad’s latest paramour was threatening to tell my mother about the affair. I was supposed to come home and soothe the waters.”
Giuliana stilled. Something about what he’d said and the angry thread in his voice . . . She glanced at him, but, as usual, could read nothing in the carved mask that was his profile. “Soothe . . .” She felt a little sick as a thought invaded her mind. “Soothe her waters? The other woman’s?”
“I told you!” he burst out. “I told you I worried he’d dirty what we had, somehow.”
“Liam, you wouldn’t—”
“I didn’t.” His hand slashed out and he moved away from her. When his calves hit the edge of one of the chaise lounges, he dropped onto the cushions and put his head in his hands.
“Liam . . .” She sat beside him. This wasn’t her childhood friend or the love of her teenage years. This stranger was the man she’d never allowed herself to know. The hot-blooded, reckless young woman she’d been had hurt too much to stick around long enough to meet him. “You said that maybe losing the baby was for the best.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. That you thought so . . . that maybe I let you think so . . . that was just another of my mistakes.”
She lifted a hand to touch him, then let it fall to her lap. “What did you mean, Liam?”
“That it was best we didn’t stay together.” He drew his fingers through his hair, then turne
d his head to look at her. Control was written in the stark lines of his face. His expression was composed, his blue eyes a cool glacial lake. They were fixed on her face. “That summer I came back early from Tuscany so he wouldn’t hurt my mother—and what happened? I hurt you instead.”
“Liam . . .” Her hand crept toward him.
He jerked away. “Don’t. Don’t touch me. I’ll screw that up, too. Don’t you see? I’m so much like him, hurting the people I care for, messing up my very own family.”
Her mouth was dry. “Losing the baby wasn’t your fault.”
“Failing you was. I’m so like him. That’s what I worried about and why I let you go. I’m so fucking like him!”
His eyes blazed blue and it took her a moment to realize there were tears in them.
And in that brightness she saw the stark emotion that he’d disguised for the last year. In them was raw pain, boundless disappointment, a river of regrets she supposed they both deemed impossible to ford.
She’d been angry at his icy control, but she’d give her soul to not see beyond it now. Liam’s inner life sliced hers open. Love leaked out, and her head went dizzy with it.
I’m still in love with him, she thought, and the knowledge was like an old toothache returning. Familiar. Painful.
She loved him so much that it was a very good thing she’d taken such drastic steps to move out of his life. Leaving meant she couldn’t put her already-damaged heart on the line again. Leaving meant that this time she’d be turning her back on Liam instead of the other way around. It was for the best, just as he’d said.
But her gaze didn’t stray from his tense shoulders as he strode off. And she discovered she was still reckless enough to rise to her feet and follow him. Perhaps they both might feel better if she offered the comfort they could have used ten years before.
17
In the steamy shower stall, hot water cascaded over Liam’s body. It rinsed the soap from his skin and suds circled the drain at his feet. He’d lathered up three times already and still didn’t feel clean, but the unwanted emotion that had welled up in the courtyard had receded once more to its dark place. He could breathe again.
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