by Raye Morgan
He rose slowly and turned toward her, his face ravaged. “Don’t be sorry for me,” he said coldly. “I don’t deserve it. I let her die. I let them both die.”
She gasped. “Max, how can you say that? You were asleep.”
“Yes. Exactly. I was asleep. I should have…” His voice faded.
“See? You can’t even say what you should have done. You couldn’t help it. Accidents are called accidents because no one means for them to happen.”
He was shaking his head, looking at her with haunted eyes. “I should have saved her.”
She searched her mind for some way to get him to see this from another perspective. “Should your father have saved your mother when she jumped from the balcony?” she said a bit wildly, and then clamped her hand over her mouth, realizing she didn’t know enough about the incident to use it this way.
But to her surprise, he didn’t seem to notice that. He answered directly. “He couldn’t have done anything. She was alone at home when it happened. How could he have stopped that?”
Isabella threw out her hands. “And Laura was alone when she went into the water. You weren’t there. You were asleep.” She shook his arm again. “Max, you couldn’t help it. It’s not your fault.”
He looked doubtful, but she could tell he was beginning to mull that over. She shook her head.
“At least you talked about it,” she said.
He gave her a sardonic look. “Quite the junior psychologist, aren’t you?” he said, but there was no animosity in his voice. To his own surprise, he did feel better. Not much, but a little better. Maybe.
And she could see the truth in him, in his face, in his attitude. She was glad she’d risked everything on pushing him to talk. For now, it seemed to have worked out for him. There was so much guilt, so much self-doubt in his heart. And for her, there was so much new background that she knew about him. No matter what she learned, everything only made her regard for him grow. Her father and Susa were wrong. She was glad she hadn’t stayed away from royalty after all.
There was just one thing that still nagged at her. She didn’t know the details of the crash that had taken his face, the accident no one seemed to know anything about. That was still a mystery.
“You’re going to have to ride with me again,” he told her as he led in the stallion, and she nodded, thinking what a contrast this was to the other night in the dark.
“It’s way past noon,” she fretted. “Now don’t you wish we’d brought the picnic I made?”
He nodded, feeling a touch of chagrin. Looking at her, he realized what a fool he’d been. He’d thought he could keep her at arm’s length if he only tried hard enough. Now he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Though he couldn’t see how anything real and lasting between them could work out in the long run, for now, when she was near, he was going to live in the moment. No more pretending, especially to himself.
“I’m hungry as a wolf,” he admitted.
She grinned up at him. “I have a solution to that. There’s a place very near here we can get the most wonderful food.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked suspiciously.
“Do you know the little stand by the reservoir? Where the Spanish family sells tapas?”
His face cleared. “Yes, I’ve driven past it.”
“And you’ve never been tempted to stop?”
He half smiled down at her. Her lively interest in everything was contagious. “Actually, I have, but…”
She put a hand on his arm. “We’re going there.”
That was going a little far. “What? Who’s going where?” He thought she understood he didn’t do things like that.
“You and me. We’re going to go have some of his delicious tapas. You’ll thank me for this.”
He stood where he was, shaking his head and looking stubborn. “Isabella, I don’t think…”
“Oh, Max, please.” She hung on his arm and looked adorably hungry. “It’s just outside your walls. We’ll go out the gate and we’ll ride up and you can stay outside, under the trees. I’ll go in and order the food. There are tables along the water.” She made her face even more appealing. “At this time of day, we’ll probably be the only ones there. You won’t have to come face-to-face with another soul. I’ll do that part.”
He was still frowning but she could see he was going to bend. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” She gave him her most playful smile. “You know very well you need this. You want it.” She pulled on his arm. “Come on.”
He gave in. He couldn’t help it. To do anything else would seem churlish right now. He helped her up in front of him on his horse and they made their way through the gate, to the outside of the estate. This was territory he hadn’t traveled in years, except to rush past in his limousine. There was something freeing about just venturing this far beyond his own walls.
The tables on the rise above the river were completely empty. He sat at one of them and she went in, bringing out a wonderful collection of small, delicious items, including prawn croquetas and chopped pork empanadas and sautéed artichokes. Señor Ortega trailed behind her carrying two bottles of cold beer, and Max tensed, waiting for the man to react to his scars. Maybe Isabella had warned him, but he showed no sign of noticing a thing, chattering on in his Spanish-accented Italian about how they should come back tomorrow because he was planning to make the best tapas ever seen in these parts and if they didn’t return, they would miss that.
He smiled and nodded at the man, who turned back to the little stand, still talking as he went.
“Señor Ortega is a friend of my father’s,” Isabella told him comfortably. “Someday he’ll have his own full-size restaurant, just like we do.”
The food was wonderful and the beer was ice-cold. They ate and talked and even laughed a bit together as though they’d known each other forever. Whenever she stopped to think about it, Isabella felt a glow. She could hardly believe they seemed so good together. She’d never known a man like this before.
They finished up and walked the horse back to the estate gate.
“You see?” she told him. “That wasn’t so bad. You need to get out more and be a part of this area. After all, this place is yours. Your ancestors owned all this land and developed the village originally, didn’t they? You can’t just walk away and pretend it has no connection to you.”
He rolled his eyes and made a gesture with his hand meant to show that she talked too much, and she laughed.
They stopped while he used his code to open the gate. It creaked out of the way, giving them room to enter, and she looked up and down the length of what she could see of the long stucco wall.
“I can’t believe you have this wall around your whole huge property,” she said. “It must be miles and miles long.”
“And it took years and years to build it. About four hundred of them.”
She sighed, feeling the history and the romance of it all. “And now the wind and rain and everything else is working hard to tear it back down again,” she noted wistfully.
“Yes.” He steadied his horse and helped her mount. “Just like that Robert Frost poem about there being something that does not love a wall,” he added as he came up behind her and settled her into a comfortable place in front of him. “Nature abhors a wall more than it does a vacuum.”
She nodded, relaxing against him and feeling his arms come around her waist with a sense of warm pleasure. “Maybe you should work on tearing down some of your walls,” she murmured.
He groaned. “How did I know you were going to go in that direction?”
“Because you know you need to do it.”
His voice hardened a bit. “I’m not going to be lectured by you,” he warned her carefully.
She caught her breath. She certainly didn’t want to put him off, but, still, he needed to begin to live a real life, and if she didn’t help him do that, what good was she to him?
“Oh?” she said, deciding to use
a humorous tone to help defray resentment. “Then who will you let do the lecturing?”
“No one.”
His voice was firm, but not angry, and she risked going on with it.
“You see? That’s your problem right there. You need other people in your life. You need to be with others, talk to people, hear some new opinions on things, new experiences in life. You’re alone too much.”
He shrugged. “I have the Internet.”
“The Internet!” She turned to try to look him in the face. “That’s like interacting with robots.”
“They’re not robots.” He actually sounded a bit offended that she would say such a thing. “They’re real people on real computers. I’m not quite the hermit you think I am.”
She shook her head. “You can’t see the people, you can’t judge their emotions. You can’t see their truth.”
“Truth,” he scoffed.
“Real life is better,” she insisted stubbornly.
He was silent for a moment, then he said, softly, “Real life can be painful.”
She drew in her breath. “Yes.” She wished she could turn and hug him. He was holding her, but loosely, impersonally. It was odd to be so close, and yet so far apart. “Pain is like rain. You need it to grow.”
He made a sound that was derisive, but with a touch of amusement that let her know he wasn’t taking offense to all her philosophizing.
“Too much rain floods out life,” he said, making it sound as though he were trying to bring in his own words to live by to stand against hers. “What then?” he challenged her.
“Then we learn to tread water,” she shot back.
He laughed softly. “Don’t worry about me, Bella. This is my lot in life. I can handle it.”
She loved that he’d used that affectionate nickname for her, but she wasn’t sure she liked the way his thoughts were tending otherwise.
She didn’t know what he meant. Was he expressing a fatalistic acceptance of his scars, or was he saying he could rise above that if he wished? She wanted to know, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask him to explain. So she was silent for the rest of the ride back to the castle.
They found Mimi grazing peacefully in the yard outside the kitchen with only about half the basil left under the strap that held the bags. Her wild ride to get home again must have sprayed it across the landscape.
“What a shame,” Max said, a smile in his eyes. “It looks like you’ll have to come back tomorrow and do this all over again.”
She turned to look at him. He reached out and touched her cheek with the palm of his hand. She covered his hand with her own as she searched his eyes.
“Shall I come back?” she asked him, wanting to make sure.
He nodded. “Yes,” he said.
She smiled at him, thinking of all they had been through today, and her heart was full. There were no words she could use, not right now. So she did the only thing she could think of. And in that moment, she would have done anything for him.
Reaching up, she took his face between her hands and kissed his mouth. He started to pull away at first, but she didn’t let him go. She kissed him and held him close and used her body to tell him what she couldn’t say with words. In a moment, he responded, curling his arms around her and kissing her back.
When she finally drew back, her eyes were swimming with tears, but his were smiling.
“Isabella,” he said softly, holding her chin in his hand as he looked into her eyes with something close to affection. “How did you so quickly become the sunshine of my life? Without you, I live in darkness. I only wish…”
He didn’t say what he wished, but she thought she knew. He wished she were just a little different. He wished he were just a bit more free to act on his inclinations. She wished those things too, and her heart broke a little just because reality was so cruel. But, for now, she was happy just to be with him. It was all she needed.
Isabella’s joy in the day faded quickly once she got back to the restaurant. Her father was waiting for her, his face creased with worry.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“I…Papa, I’ve brought back basil.” She lifted the bag to show him. “We’ll be able to use it again right away. I…”
“You’ve been with the prince.” He said the words as though she’d destroyed herself and her family’s reputation in one fell swoop and there was no turning back.
“What?”
She tried to laugh at his serious attitude. It was so completely over the top and something she’d never expected from him. But he was obviously sincere. This sort of anguish just floored her.
“Papa, it’s all right. He’s allowing me to continue to harvest the leaves and he’s helping me….”
Luca waved away her explanations. “I’ve heard all about it. I know you’ve been seeing him. And we all know what that means.”
Her head went back. She didn’t deserve this. Anger shot through her veins. Here she’d practically turned her life inside out in order to get the desperately needed ingredient, and when she returned in triumph, no one cared.
“Yes, I’ve been seeing him,” she retorted. “But I don’t think it means what you seem to think it does.”
He turned away, muttering curses and complaints and she stared after him, more angry than she’d been in ages. She was not one to dwell upon resentments, but she was feeling some now. After all she’d done for her family, after all her sacrifices and delayed dreams, she didn’t need payment—but she certainly could use a little acceptance and compassion. After all, she was very likely falling in love with a man she would never be able to have for her own. And all because she was trying to save the restaurant. A little family support would be helpful.
“You didn’t tell me,” he said, turning back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because…”
That was a question. Why hadn’t she told him? She usually told him everything. Now that she thought about it, she could see that not telling him made it seem as though she were ashamed, and there was nothing to be ashamed about.
“I guess I didn’t want to get your hopes up about the basil,” she said, knowing that was lame.
“Oh, Isabella, my beautiful daughter.”
His voice echoed with despair. He swayed as though he was about to fall and she hurried to help him stay upright, then gave him an arm as she led him back into the restaurant and through the kitchen where Susa was grating chocolate, into the little room behind where he could rest.
Once she had him settled, she came out and asked Susa, “What on earth is going on? Why is he so upset?”
She shrugged. “He has a point, you know. Nothing good can come from these liaisons with princes.”
Isabella threw out her hands. “Sorry, but I beg to differ. Something good has already come from them.”
She pointed to the bag of basil. Then her chin rose defiantly.
“And anyway, I like the man and he likes me. We have fun together. End of story.”
Susa shook her head, not giving an inch. “That’s what they all say when the relationship begins,” she noted gloomily. “It’s later when reality sets in like crows on the clothesline.”
Isabella stared at the older woman. “You have no faith in me, either one of you.” She threw up her hands. “Maybe I should just go. Maybe I should go back to the city and forget all about helping out here.”
“Maybe you should,” Susa said. “But for now, your father is worried about other things besides the precious feelings of his little girl. Fredo Cavelli has filed a formal complaint with the village board.”
Isabella whirled, her anger forgotten. “What?”
That really was bad news. If the board actually accepted his complaint, there would be an investigation. They might have to hire a lawyer to defend their interests. And where would the money come from for something like that?
“Your father says he can fight this on his own,” Susa said, shaking her head, when Isabella brou
ght that up. “I say, God help us all.”
Isabella sighed. You solved one problem and another jumped up to take its place. Happened every time. So what was she going to do about this one?
“First,” she told Susa, “I’m going to write to Cristiano and Valentino to come home and help with this attack on our livelihood.” Another flash of anger roiled through her. Why were her brothers never here to help carry some of this burden? “They should be coming home soon for Papa’s birthday anyway.”
“Are you planning a party?”
Isabella hesitated, then let herself relax a bit. “Of course. Just a family party, but we need to celebrate. Papa needs the moral support, if nothing else.”
“I’ll start work on a cake right now,” Susa said, looking happier.
Isabella frowned fiercely, gathering strength. “Then I’m going to come in here and start a big vat of sauce for the evening dinner rush.”
“Good.” Susa nodded approvingly. “That’ll show them.”
Isabella laughed and gave the older woman an affectionate hug. “You better believe it,” she agreed, and went off to do just that.
Despite everything, Isabella went to the castle the next day. She and Max rode out on horseback again. This time they took the picnic lunch she brought and spread it out on a cloth at the hillside. The sun was shining, the day was fresh and clear, and something seemed to be sparkling in the air.
For some reason, she found herself telling him about the unpleasant reception she’d had when she got home the day before. A little of her anger still lingered, and he could tell.
“It’s because they love you,” he told her. “They think they’re protecting you.”
“They think they’re controlling me, you mean,” she shot back.
“That too,” he admitted. “But I’m sure they’re worried about the restaurant and that colors their emotions.” He looked at her sideways. “Have you considered taking out a loan to get you through this rough patch?” he asked.
Her heart skipped a beat. He was ready to offer a loan to her family. She could tell by his tentative tone. That was unbelievably generous of him and it warmed her. But she shook her head quickly.