by Janice Sims
“Ana and I worked late, I saw her home, and since I live quite a distance away she suggested I stay the night on the couch,” Pietro told him in a low voice. Adding the couch part had seemed like a prudent choice. “I’m sorry but Ana didn’t tell me she was expecting you.”
“I was going to surprise her,” Erik said. And what’s it to you? “Where is Ana?” He knew he shouldn’t be allowing his mind to take him to this dark place but seeing Pietro there at this late of an hour had brought out the jealous fool in him. And why was Pietro whispering?
Pietro gestured to the couch. Erik walked around and saw Ana. She was sleeping peacefully. He looked around the room. An empty bowl with a few popcorn kernels in it was on the coffee table, two soda cans beside it. Ana was fully clothed. So was Pietro. There was no evidence that anything of a sexual nature had happened here and, yet, he felt like he had walked in on Ana and Pietro and caught them red-handed.
He had to get hold of himself. He turned and began walking toward the door. He couldn’t let Ana see him this way. Pietro started to say something but when he saw the tightly wound tension in Erik’s face he thought better of it. “I’m going,” Erik said to Pietro. “Don’t tell Ana I was here.”
Pietro let him go, but as soon as the door closed behind Erik, he hastily typed out a text message to Ana, explaining that he’d decided to go home after all. He grabbed his coat from the foyer closet, put it on and left.
He caught up with Erik out on the street. “Erik, wait!”
Erik stopped walking, but his face was still a mask of anger when he turned toward Pietro. Pietro couldn’t tell if the anger was directed at him or perhaps was the result of Erik waging a war within himself. It didn’t matter. He needed to talk to Erik now.
However, before he could say a word, Erik said, “Don’t try to tell me you don’t love Ana because I’ve seen the way you look at her!”
“I’ve known Ana longer than I’ve known anyone else in this world besides my mother,” Pietro began. “We played together as babies. We lost touch but now that I’ve found her, I don’t ever want to let that happen again. I hope you and I can be friends. But if that’s asking too much, I understand. Just know this, I do love her but not in the way you must imagine I do. I love her like a sister.”
Erik laughed mockingly. “A man cannot love Ana like a sister unless he is her brother and you’re not related to her by blood.”
“Ana tells me you two were friends before you fell in love,” Pietro said hopefully.
“Ana didn’t tell you the whole truth. We were attracted to each other from the beginning. We used restraint.”
“You think I’m biding my time until Ana realizes it’s me she loves and she leaves you for me?” Pietro asked. He couldn’t hide the disbelief in his voice.
“Look,” said Erik. “I trust Ana. I know she wouldn’t cheat on me. But I don’t know you. Therefore, I don’t trust you.”
“Would you believe me if I told you that Ana isn’t even my type?”
“No,” said Erik flatly.
“Then I suppose I should save my breath,” said Pietro. He sighed heavily. “It’s obvious nothing’s going to be resolved tonight. I’m going home. I suggest you go back upstairs and surprise Ana. She misses you. I sent her a text message telling her I went home. But if you want to bite off your nose to spite your face, go right ahead.”
Pietro walked off. Damn Erik Whitaker! The lucky bastard had one of the best women in the world and he was going to mess it up with his jealous nature. Sure, he realized he could clear things up in seconds by telling Erik he was gay, but why should he? If Erik didn’t trust Ana to stay faithful to him, he didn’t deserve her! He wished he had someone in his life who loved him as much as Ana loved Erik.
Erik stood a moment on the sidewalk, indecision eating at him. He wanted to go back upstairs to Ana but he was still in a rotten mood. He didn’t want to subject her to what might spill forth from his mouth while he was fighting to subdue his baser nature. He was only a man, a man with unresolved abandonment issues, if he wasn’t mistaken about the gut-wrenching emotion that filled him when he walked in the door and found Pietro standing there.
He was afraid of losing Ana. That was the reason he had left. If she found out that for one split second he had thought her capable of cheating on him she would conclude that maybe they’d gotten engaged too quickly and would call the wedding off. He needed time to cool off.
So he went home.
* * *
A persistent beeping woke Ana. She raised herself on her elbow enough to reach her cell phone atop the coffee table. It was a message from Pietro. She sat up more and looked around her. “Pietro?” No answer. She read the message then knew that she was alone in the loft. He must have had something important to do at his place she surmised. She got up, collected the bowl and the empty drink cans and took them into the kitchen.
Once she’d washed the popcorn bowl and put the cans in the recycling bin, she glanced up at the clock. It was nearly two-thirty. She thought of Erik, alone in his hotel room in San Francisco. Should she phone him? What time was it out there? Three hours earlier, right? That made it only eleven thirty.
She went and got her cell phone and dialed his number. Curiously, it went straight to message. “Sweetie, I just wanted to hear your voice before going to bed. Pietro and I worked late on the spring campaign and then he insisted on seeing that I got home safely. He’s such a gentleman. I told him to just stay over, it was so late. We started watching a movie and I fell asleep and when I woke up he was gone. I guess I snored.” She ended with a laugh. “I love you! Call me when you get this. I don’t care how late it is.” Shortly after leaving the message, Ana drifted off to sleep again.
She woke up the next morning refreshed and ready to take on her day. She had no plans to work with Pietro on the campaign today but first she had an appointment with a well-known actress whose portrait she had agreed to paint. That wasn’t until eleven. It was now 8:28. She got up and showered.
Her cell phone rang as she was pouring herself a cup of coffee twenty minutes later. She grinned when she saw that it was Erik. “Good morning, my love,” she said, her tone husky. “I hope you’re home.”
“I’m home,” Erik confirmed. She could hear the smile in his voice. “I can’t wait to see you.”
“Then come on over.”
“All right, I will.”
He abruptly disconnected.
That was rude, Ana thought, and then she heard his key in the door. All thoughts of his being rude were abandoned as she fairly flew to meet him.
Erik felt like a heel for behaving the way he had last night. He’d spent most of the night lying awake going over and over in his head the reason why he’d reacted that way to Pietro’s presence. The thing to do was to tell Ana what had happened with Pietro last night. That’s all he could do because he knew now that his reaction had been visceral—he’d had no way of controlling it. It was just there like a physical reaction to being hit in the face, violent and painful.
Now as Ana rained kisses on him, he took her by the arms and set her away from him. “Ana, I’ve got something to say and I should say it quickly or else I might change my mind.”
Ana’s big brown eyes were concerned. She stood still and gave him her undivided attention. “What is it? Has something happened? You look sad.”
“Let’s sit down,” he said and walked over to the couch he’d found her sleeping on last night and sat down. Ana joined him, sitting apart from him because she sensed he needed space this morning.
She was still in her bathrobe. He was wearing his running togs and a zippered jacket which was lined for warmth. His coppery eyes looked into hers. “I came by early this morning at around two and ran into Pietro. I was upset seeing him here. So I left, I didn’t want you to see me that way. He followed me out and we argued
a bit.”
Shock registered on Ana’s face but she didn’t say anything. He knew her mind was making connections, though. Putting two and two together, probably deducing that Erik was the reason Pietro had gone home. But why hadn’t he stayed?
He laid it all out for her, telling her exactly how he’d felt—like kicking Pietro’s ass. Then he told her how vulnerable he had felt at the thought of losing her. And how he thought he had worked through his abandonment issues only to find that he had not. He apologized for allowing such feelings to enter his heart let alone his mind.
Ana listened intently. Her first thought was that she had slept through it all. She hadn’t sensed him or smelled his aftershave, nothing. She must have been truly tired. Her second thought was that Pietro had not told Erik he was gay and it therefore was impossible for him to be her lover. Though some gay men have admittedly married and had children, Pietro clearly was not the type to do that. But still it was understandable that Erik would be jealous of all the time she spent with Pietro. Any man would be jealous.
She’d made a promise to Pietro to keep his secret, and that had to be honored even if she wanted to tell Erik to ease his mind. She was in a quandary. Should her loyalty be to a friend who had told her something in confidence thirteen years ago? Or to the man she loved to help him feel secure?
She took Erik’s hands in hers and maintained eye contact. “You had every right to feel the way you did. I would have been livid if I’d walked in and a beautiful woman was in your house. A woman you’d had a prior relationship with, even though it was a friendly relationship. But Pietro and I aren’t even attracted to each other.”
Erik slowly shook his head in the negative. “I have the feeling you’re not being totally honest with me. It seems as though you’re holding something back.”
Ana lowered her gaze only for a second or two, but Erik caught the guilty expression in her eyes and that was all it took for him to declare, “Ana, I came here because I felt guilty for my accusatory reaction last night. I wanted to tell you how I felt and apologize for feeling that way. I even considered apologizing to Pietro because, frankly, I think I scared the guy last night. Now I’m sensing some kind of subterfuge.”
Ana’s guilty conscience made her defensive. “Why can’t you just trust that I’m not going to be unfaithful to you? Shouldn’t that be enough? I trust you!”
“And I trust you,” Erik returned evenly. Although as he stood, his jaw set stubbornly, and looked down at her. Ana could swear he didn’t even like her very much at that moment, let alone trust her. “I have to go. It was a mistake coming back here so soon. I’m still angry and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret.”
Ana stood, too, pulling her bathrobe tightly around her as if she didn’t want to reveal too much of herself to Erik Whitaker. She felt wounded. His words cut like a knife. “Yes, you’d better go,” she said, hurt. “I have nothing more to say. You either trust me or you don’t. And you don’t.”
Erik simply looked at her, a frown knitting his brows together. What he wanted to say to her at that moment left a bitter taste in his mouth so he thought it wise not to voice the words. Why was she putting a childhood friend before him? He felt betrayed.
Ana met his gaze. She’d already looked away once and he’d taken that as a sign of guilt. She realized that she was nervously twisting the engagement ring around and around on her finger. Should she give it back to him? No, she thought. This was only the first argument they’d ever had. Surely this was not the end of them.
Erik broke eye contact with her and walked out, leaving her to close the door.
She stood with her back pressed against the closed door, willing herself not to cry. This was nothing. It would blow over as soon as Erik found out Pietro posed no threat to him. But then, it occurred to her that Pietro was not really the problem here. The problem was…Erik didn’t trust her.
Chapter 13
Business kept Erik from stewing in his own juices the next few days. He thought about Ana, but he didn’t have time to obsess over the situation. Like many businesses Whitaker Enterprises had taken a financial hit in the past three years but now the economy appeared to be rebounding, and since most of Whitaker Enterprises’ interests were in the service industry demand was putting pressure on them to supply enough products to satisfy customers. The first quarter of the year promised to be a very good one. However he did take time to speak with his father about his and Ana’s dispute and his father was his usual calm, and reasonable self. “Son, if you’d spent more time dating instead of working you would have known not to say everything that comes to your mind when dealing with women. You might have felt jealous and threatened by Ana’s friendship with Pietro but you should have chosen your words more carefully,” his father offered.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t be completely honest with Ana?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying in any relationship you pick and choose your battles. Was it worth it to put your emotions out there and tell Ana you don’t trust her?”
“That’s not what I said!”
“When you told her you felt there was something she wasn’t telling you,” said John, “you were saying you thought she was withholding information and to withhold information is to lie. And if you think she’s lying to you, it means you don’t think you can trust her.”
Erik had sighed over the phone. “That’s not what I was trying to get across.”
“That’s the problem with communicating with the opposite sex. You say one thing, she thinks another. You have to be clear. Don’t assume she can read your mind, because she can’t. And you can’t read hers. Don’t leave anything to guesswork.”
“It’s been a week since we spoke. She won’t even return my calls.”
“A week, huh?” said his father. “That’s not good. At any rate, you shouldn’t see her until you’re sure you won’t project your insecurities onto her. That’s what you did, son. I’m sorry to say that your parents weren’t the best role models for you. Mari was selfish and I was a workaholic who didn’t have one solid relationship with a woman in your formative years. If I hadn’t let my hurt force me into an emotional cocoon, you would be better equipped to handle certain situations.”
“That’s no excuse,” Erik insisted. “I’m a man. I should have more control over my behavior.”
“Solving a problem takes constant vigilance,” his father said. “You’ve been given your first test. You failed. The next time you’ll pass with flying colors.”
Erik cringed at the thought of a next time. But he knew there would be one. The way he felt about Ana, fiercely possessive and protective, there would certainly be another time when he would feel threatened and the beast would want to come out and growl at somebody.
“I’ll apologize right away,” he told his father. “I’ll grovel if I have to.”
“Oh, now, son, no groveling,” said his father jokingly. “Whitaker men don’t grovel.”
* * *
Ana was staying busy, as well. Sometimes she painted until dawn broke. She relished the pleasure good honest work gave her. She had completed the portrait of the actress and since then had accepted a commission to paint the mayor. Also, the publicity person at Corelli Fashions had booked her on several area talk shows to reveal the spring line—she enjoyed doing that. Often the hosts would also mention the fact that she painted and show photos of her work. Subsequently, Damon had been selling her paintings as quickly as she could supply them.
She was a happy girl. Except that she was miserable without Erik. Her mother phoned her late one night when she was painting. She welcomed the interruption because while she
was painting the mayor’s visage, all she could think about was Erik.
“Darling, something’s been on my mind and I’m just going to say it,” Natalie said without preamble. “When you told me about Erik being jealous of you and Pietro and how Pietro hurried outside to speak with Erik before he left, I couldn’t help wondering why Pietro didn’t tell Erik he’s gay. That would’ve diffused the situation in no time.”
Ana was momentarily speechless. How did her mother know Pietro was gay?
“You know?” she cried, relief flooding her. If her mother knew there could be only one explanation for her knowledge…Maria Lanza had spoken to her mom about Pietro.
“I’ve known for years. I never talked about it because Maria says he’s still in the closet. She said it seems to her that he started to mention it once when he was a teenager, but he couldn’t get it out. Ever since then she’s been waiting for him to be a man and come right out and tell her. But he hasn’t. You knew?”
“Yeah, he told me when we were kids. He said he did tell her not long after they moved to Rome, but she said she had a heart problem and didn’t want to hear something so awful. He didn’t want to give her a heart attack so he never brought it up again.”
Natalie laughed. “In all the years I’ve known her Maria has never mentioned having a heart problem. Somebody’s not telling the truth. I can see why you wouldn’t tell Erik, thinking that you were keeping a secret for a friend. But seeing the trouble he’d inadvertently caused, Pietro should have said something.”
Ana didn’t want to immediately put the blame on Pietro. “He’s been hiding for years. It probably never occurred to him to tell Erik who’s basically a stranger to him.”
“That’s not the point. You’re his friend. As far as I know, his oldest friend since Maria and I had play dates for you two practically from birth. He should have done it for you.”
Ana understood her mother’s point of view. A mother fought for her child’s happiness. But to allude that Pietro might have had an ulterior motive behind keeping silent was unfair. “No, Mom, the problem isn’t Pietro. Erik doesn’t trust me.”