He arched a brow, and against his better judgement moved towards the stairs.
“On the wall in my bedroom,” she called to his retreating back.
Cristiano’s temperature rose with every step he took. He paused at the door of Ava’s room and braced himself for whatever he might see within the walls. Proof of Angus? Proof of her marriage? A wedding photograph above the bed?
He steeled himself for any discoveries he might make and then pushed the door inwards.
Her room was … lovely. He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. It was modern, stylish and tasteful. Very Ava. There was no sign of any man; only Ava. And Milly. A large black and white photograph of the two of them was hanging on the wall beside the bed. Their faces up so close, their smiles matching. He stood in front of it with an odd tingling sensation running the length of his spine.
This was his family.
These two creatures, both beautiful and fascinating in their own ways.
He stared at the picture for a long moment.
“Cristiano?” Ava’s voice was impatient. His lips twitched with an involuntary smile. If he didn’t hurry, she’d undoubtedly drag her way up the stairs to see what was taking so long.
He spun away from the picture and scanned the walls. The cane was hanging near the door. It was a simple stick, nicely carved, with pale gold detail around the handle. He frowned as he unhooked it, and carried it down the stairs. “Got it,” he said as he entered the room and his body lurched at the sight of her, so elegant but in obvious discomfort.
“Here you are,” he held the cane out in a silent challenge. Damn her stubborn streak to hell. Her independence was a force he’d never fully appreciated.
“Thank you.” She used her hands to lever her leg off the stool and gingerly placed it on the ground. She winced as it touched the floor but she made an effort to conceal the reaction from him. She curled her fingers around the cane and put most of her weight on her good leg as she pushed to standing.
The pain was excruciating. Sharp arrows of intense soreness spasmed up her leg. She swore softly. Before she could collapse back onto the sofa, or worse, the floor, Cristiano’s strong arms lifted her to his chest so that he was cradling her close to him.
“Damn it, Ava,” he said, staring down at her with obvious frustration. “Why are you so determined not to need anyone?”
His words, his actions, his nearness, struck her dumb.
He strode through the downstairs reception area into the guest bedroom and shouldered the door open. Memories were everywhere, cluttering the very air he walked through.
This room; the pleasure and pain. He eased her to the bed with a gentleness that turned her heart over, propping pillows behind her head and beneath her sore ankle.
“Stay here,” he said warningly as he cut across the room.
“Not sure I’m capable of anything else,” she admitted with a frustrated grimace.
“Good.” His eyes pinned her to the bed. “You are my prisoner.”
His words ignited the flames that were embers in her belly. The flames she’d believed would never flare again, in the face of his disapproval and sense of betrayal.
He left the room, but only for a few moments. When he returned, it was with a tray of sandwiches and some fruit mince pies. A steaming cup of tea was perched precariously on the edge of the tray and she reached for it before it could slide off and scald him.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely, grasping it in both hands.
“This is hardly gourmet fare, but I hope it will tide you over until breakfast.”
“It’s perfect,” she assured him. “I’m really not very hungry anyway.”
He nestled the tray onto the mattress and then surprised her by taking up the vacant side of the bed. He crossed his ankles and stared straight ahead. Non-threatening body language, yet she still felt like she was about to burst.
“I’ve learned to cook in the last three years.”
The statement appeared to come out of nowhere. She turned to face him, curious despite herself. “You have?”
“Yes. I spent four months in the south of France at a small but very old vineyard. The owner was an old woman. She did all the meals. I enjoyed talking to her about the history of the grapes. All manner of things.” He smiled as he thought of Martine and her dimly lit kitchen. “She talked, she cooked, and I watched. Eventually she trusted me enough to chop some things. Eventually to stir.”
“She trusted you enough to … stir?” She teased, biting into the sandwich.
“Martine was very proprietorial. But she took pity on me.”
“Why? Why should an old woman pity you?”
“She’d known heartbreak. She recognised it.”
Heartbreak! Ava’s own heart tore in her chest. What could she say?
He eyed her carefully, trying to see what effect – if any – his words had on her. “I went there a week after you’d come to Rio. I’d been putting it off. The vineyard was too small for my interest, really. But after you came to see me, and I had turned you away, I feared I was going mad. That if I didn’t find something to do immediately I would … I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought I would do.” He shook his head. “So I went to France and I met Martine.”
Ava’s throat was clogged with tears but she refused to give into them. “You should have come here,” she intoned flatly.
“To see you happily married?” He chided softly. He handed a sandwich to her and she shook her head.
“Mince pie, please.”
He smothered his smile as he made the substitution.
“What did Martine teach you?”
“Many things,” he said with a nostalgic expression on his handsome face.
Ava bit into the mince pie and felt happiness burst in her chest. “Amazing,” she said once she’d swallowed the first mouth full.
Cristiano studied her, his eyes drinking in every single detail of her face, before reaching over and stroking her upper lip. “Crumbs,” he said by way of explanation. But he didn’t remove his hand. He ran it gently over her lip and then sighed, pulling away from her with obvious effort.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” The question burst from Ava fully formed; she hadn’t even realised she was going to ask it.
His response was measured. “As opposed to?”
She drew in a shallow breath. “As opposed to what you said in the car. That day you found out about Milly.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “What did I say to you, Ava?”
“You hated me.”
“Did I say that?” He wondered, staring at her face in profile.
“I can’t remember.” Her laugh was an uncomfortable sound of desperation.
“I had been blindsided. I had just found out I had a two year old daughter.”
“I know,” she squeezed her eyes shut. “When I see you with her, I can’t believe I ever kept it from you. I can’t believe the decision I made.” Her words rung with sincerity. “I am so sorry for what I did. You deserved so much better.”
“Hey,” he reached over and put a hand on her leg. “Stop talking like that. We both made mistakes. We’re here now, together, and we’ve got Milly.”
“Yes.” She nodded, but the future was an enormous void of confusion. What were she and Cristiano to one another? Two people who’d fallen in love, broken up bitterly, and now faced the prospect of a lifetime in one another’s lives because of the child they shared? What if he wanted to leave? What if he met someone else? What if he fell in love with another woman? What if he had more children with someone else? The thought turned Ava’s heart to stone in a way that nothing else could.
“I think we need to make a plan for how to handle all this.”
“Do you now?” His words were droll, his manner amused.
She nodded. “Yes. We need some ground rules so that we don’t get hurt again. We can’t put Milly through it. And it would be easy for us to get confused and thin
k we wanted something else from each other … maybe even to believe that we’re in love with each other.” She glossed over the way that idea sledged ice into her blood. “But this is just about Milly, isn’t it?”
“You tell me.”
She turned to face him, but looked away again just as quickly. “If there was no Milly, and Tom Berry hadn’t got married and asked you to be his best man, you wouldn’t be here now. Even if there had been the wedding, you would have come and gone.”
He expelled an angry breath. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. We’ll never know what might have happened in an alternative universe. We only know what we have now. How we feel now.”
“And how do we feel? How do you feel?” She forced herself to be brave and ask the question that was burning inside of her.
“I feel like … I see you with Milly and I think you are the best mother in the world. I see you with her and I feel so proud of her, and what we created together. I look at Milly and I think I want ten more of her. I want to make babies with you until we are covered in yoghurt and laughter. I want to be with you this time. To see your stomach get round and to see life grow inside of you.”
Ava’s breathing was hard and laboured. She couldn’t get any air into her lungs. She was shaking her head, and she begun to whisper, “No. No. No,” over and over again, until Cristiano stopped speaking. Then it was just a desperate incantation of negatives filling the room.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when she’d finally stopped speaking and had her head pressed back against the bed. “I cannot lie to you. Why would I? We have a perfect daughter. Why stop there?”
“God, Cristiano, please just shut up!”
He stared at her and felt just as much pain as he had the first time they’d argued. Ava Henderson could inflict hurt on him unlike anyone else.
“I’m not having any more children.” She opened her eyes and turned her face to stare at him. Her expression was the bleakest, most messed up thing he’d ever seen. “Not with you. Not with anyone. Milly’s it for me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The silence was a third person in the room. It hovered between them, enormous and impossible to ignore. It was heavy with question and doubt. Finally, Cristiano pushed it aside. “Was it so terrible for you?”
She shook her head, her brow furrowed. “No.” It hadn’t been. For the most part, pregnancy had been a dream.
He frowned, obviously not comprehending her reticence.
“Milly isn’t enough of a reason for what you’re suggesting. I mean, Milly is our daughter, and we both love her. We’re both committed to raising her. But having one child together doesn’t mean we should launch into having more. It doesn’t make us a family.”
“What?” He pushed off the bed and stared down at her, his advantage unfair given her immobilised state. “You’re kidding me?”
She stared down at the mince pie on her lap. “Do I look like I’m kidding you?”
He suppressed the curse that had come to his lips. He didn’t understand, but that only meant he needed information. He’d made the mistake of jumping to conclusions with Ava in the past; it had never served him well. “I told you how I feel. What I want. You didn’t. What do you want, Ava?”
She cleared her throat. “I …” She closed her eyes. “I …” What she wanted? She wanted what he did! More children. A future with him by her side. But by choice, not obligation. And how could she expect him to stay when she could never give him more than Milly? “It’s exactly the same as before,” she said darkly, her eyes focussed on the bedspread.
“What is?” He sat at her feet, and put a hand on the normal-sized, uninjured ankle.
“I can’t give you what you want. No more so now than I did then.”
“You were what I wanted then.”
She shook her head. “We’ve talked about this. You wanted me, but only if I’d give up my life here for you. Only if I’d come with you. I didn’t want to travel like you did.”
Bitterness swelled in his chest. “I wanted you enough to give that up.”
“And I loved you too much to expect you to give up anything to be with me.”
His noise was one of complete frustration. “You would have been worth the sacrifice, believe me.”
“I didn’t want to be a sacrifice.”
He spoke as though she hadn’t. “But you were engaged to Edwards. You weren’t willing to give that up. I left you because you told me to. Because you said you wanted to go through with the bloody wedding.”
“I felt obliged,” she said stiffly. “It was the worst decision of my life.”
“Thank God,” he muttered, his eyes searching hers. “I have wanted to hear you say that for years.”
“I came to tell you all this in Rio, remember.”
“The worst decision of my life,” he retorted with a face that showed remorse. “No, leaving you free to marry Edwards without making a fuss was that. But being too damned proud to see you in Rio … That was fool hardy in the extreme. I was hurt, and I was angry. I had never been in love before. I thought … arrogantly, I suppose … that when I fell in love, it would be easy. That it would be smooth sailing. I imagined you would be … thrilled and that you would give up everything to be with me.”
“It’s not that easy. This place isn’t just a home to me. It’s not just a vineyard. This is the place my mum is. This is … home. I can never leave it.”
“I understand that now,” he squeezed her ankle reassuringly. “And I’m not asking you to leave it. I want to stay here with you. What you and I meant to each other is still there. No amount of time or stupid misunderstandings could change that. I felt it the first moment I saw you. I thought I wouldn’t. I thought we were done. But we’ll never be done, will we?”
She swallowed. “Please, don’t,” she said desperately. “You’re making this too hard for me.”
“What am I making hard for you.” He moved to crouch beside her, kneeling on the floor so that he could grip her hands in his. It was then that he noticed she was crying. “Ava, please, my darling love, please don’t cry. This is happiness. I thought all hope was lost for us, and now we have a child together, and we still love one another. That love? That very same love that threatened to blow my soul apart three years ago is now the very thing I cling to for meaning and existence. I love you, Ava. This is the best feeling I have ever known. Why do you fight this?”
“Because!” She pulled her hands away and fumed at the injustice of not being able to stand up and pace the room, as she truly wished. “I’m still not going to be what you want.”
“I told you; I want you. Milly is the icing on the cake. Any other children, if you were to change your mind, would simply complete my happiness.”
“But without other children? You’re not complete?”
He groaned. “You are deliberately misunderstanding me. If it were just you and me, I would be happy. I wish we could go back in time and undo the last three years of distance. That we have Milly is a miracle.” He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed them gently. “I want what you want. More children, or not. It doesn’t matter to me.”
She stared at him, as if trying to assess the truth of his words. She nervously weighed up the sentence that she heard over and over again in her mind. “I have to tell you something.” She pulled her hands away and clasped them in her lap. She couldn’t look at his face to see his reaction.
“Please, Ava, tell me. Let us have no more secrets, only truth.”
It reminded her of what he’d said on his first day back in the Valley. She nodded slowly. “I will never have another child.” She heard his intake of breath and before he could say something that would make everything worse, she hurried on. “I can never have another child.”
That silenced him. Perplexed, he watched the emotions dance across her face, and waited for her to continue.
“Everything with Milly was fine. My pregnancy was textbook. Until it wasn’t.”
“You had her early,” h
e prompted, when she was quiet for longer than suited him.
“Yes, yes. I …” Her face drained of colour at the memory. “I thought I was losing her.” She closed her eyes. “There was so much blood. Liv and Soph drove me to the hospital, and it was the most terrified I’ve ever been.” Her breathing was shallow as she remembered the details. “I had a rare medical condition that caused massive blood loss.” She spoke matter-of-factly now. “There was nothing for it but to operate.”
“You mean she was born via a caesarean?” He prompted, thinking of the fine pale scar he’d noticed on her belly and foolishly not questioned.
“Yes.”
“But Ava, lots of women have babies this way and go on to have other children afterwards.”
She nodded. “I know that. Unfortunately, my bleeding couldn’t be stopped.”
He waited, his patience diminishing and his need for details almost insatiable.
“I would have died if they hadn’t … if they didn’t … I had a hysterectomy. I had to.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Her chest felt hollow. “I can’t have any more children. It’s just not possible. They took… they took … I can’t have another child. Milly’s it. And so if you want a bigger family … if you want more children … you need to know that I can never give you that.”
He let her words sink in. Her sweet, beautiful, selfless words. “Ava…” His whisper carried the burden of his grief.
“No, Cris.” She cut him off angrily. “You don’t understand. You’ve missed so much with Milly. That was my fault. I should have told you. I could have. I took it as a sign when you turned me away, and I was scared, and so I told myself that it was just better this way.” Her breath was shaky. “You’ve missed the baby stuff. You’ll never get that again. Not with Milly. And not with anyone else, if you want to be with me.”
His chest was throbbing. He loved her, but her words dug into his core, as they had been designed to do. “I can’t miss any more,” he said finally, simply.
Ava’s eyes were wet. She blinked them furiously, but still didn’t raise them to his face.
The Brazilian's Forgotten Lover: Years have passed, but old habits die hard... (The Henderson Sisters Book 3) Page 11