Something inside her snapped at that. She leaned forward and poked him in the shoulder. ‘What do you want from me?’
He turned. His mouth opened and closed but no sound came out.
‘You’re not a stupid man.’ She glared at him. ‘You must know how I feel about you.’
* * *
Rico stared at Neen—at the wild recklessness in her eyes—and wished he’d just stayed away.
Only...
He hadn’t been able to.
‘I love you, Rico.’
The despair in her face, the pain that stretched through her voice, beat at him, and he had to close his eyes.
‘And, if the way you’ve been avoiding me since that day at my parents’ place is anything to go by, it’s obvious you’re running away from that.’
His eyes rocked open. The memory of that soul-scorching kiss rose through him for the hundredth—the thousandth—time. He wanted this woman. He craved her in every molecule of his being. But he couldn’t have her.
‘And yet, even knowing how I feel about you, you want me to remain at the café, where I’ll be forced to see you on a regular basis? You think that’s kind?’
It was exactly what he wanted. But he saw the selfishness of it too. But to let Neen go...?
His mouth filled with ashes. ‘I...I... Neen, I’m sorry.’
She moistened her tongue and need pounded through him. ‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why won’t you give us a chance?’
‘Louis,’ he croaked. ‘I have no right to enjoy what he never can.’ Family, children, love—they were all lost to him. All he could do was atone and hope that somehow it counted.
‘Louis is dead, Rico. You’re not.’
He flinched away from her.
‘You have a duty to live your life to the fullest. You owe Louis that much for being the one to survive! For pity’s sake, you didn’t force him to take the heroin. He did it of his own free will.’
‘That’s a crazy way of thinking!’
‘Burying yourself and punishing yourself—that’s what’s crazy! It won’t bring Louis back. It doesn’t change a darn thing. And can you honestly tell me Louis would want you to turn your back on life? Is that what you’d have wanted for him if your positions had been reversed? For Louis to immolate himself on an altar of guilt?’
Of course it wasn’t. But...
His mind went blank, scrabbling to find a valid argument but coming up with nothing. His hand clenched. He had no right to the things Neen was offering.
But it didn’t stop him wanting those things with every fibre of his being.
‘And I don’t deserve to be punished because you can’t come to terms with your past!’
Her words slashed at him. He dragged a hand down his face and tried to breathe through the constriction in his lungs. Neen didn’t deserve any kind of punishment, and certainly none of his making.
She’d get over him. Surely she’d...
He glanced at her and his gut churned harder. She loved him. And he was hurting her, breaking her heart. The steel inside him wavered. He craved to make her happy, to give her everything she wanted. His heart pounded. His mouth dried. A pulse hammered through him.
‘Neen, what vision do you have for us?’ The words left him on a ragged breath.
Her face softened. ‘All we need to do is love each other and the rest will fall into place.’
Love each other? Oh, he loved her, all right. There’d never been any doubt about that.
‘Can’t you just trust that much, Rico?’
He fell back to the stool, planted his elbows on the bench and rested his head in his hands. Him and Neen? Could they make it work? Could he make it work for her while still focusing on everything he needed to achieve and staying true to Louis’s memory?
He pushed past the nausea pounding through him.
Him and Neen? Could they...?
He had a sudden vision of working with her, not exactly side by side...
He lifted his head, but he no longer saw the kitchen in front of him. His heart surged against his ribs. Him and Neen... He could continue working with at-risk youth. Neen could carry on managing the café and making it a sparkling success. So successful that between them they could open another one, and another one after that! With Neen at his side he could accomplish so much more.
He swung to her, reached for her and pulled her into the vee of his legs, his arms circling her waist. ‘I’ve been such an idiot! I love you! You know I love you, right?’
Her eyes widened, her breath hitched and her eyes filled. She didn’t say anything, just nodded.
His hands tightened at her waist. ‘You’re right. We can have it all.’
She threw her head back then and laughed. The sound lifted his heart even as the clean line of her mouth beckoned. ‘Of course we can!’
‘We will make an unstoppable team.’
Two lines appeared on her forehead. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We can accomplish so much together! We can achieve big things!’ The boys they’d save... The hope they’d give...
His mind raced with plans and it took him a moment to recognise the dawning horror in her face.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.
He took her face in his hands. ‘We can create a whole chain of charity cafés. We can offer badly needed jobs and opportunities. You were right!’ He pressed a kiss to her lips. ‘All I needed to do was trust my love for you and the rest would follow.’
He tried to pull her closer, aching to kiss her with all the intensity raging inside him, but she broke out of his grasp and backed up, staring at him as if she’d never seen him before.
He rose, his heart hammering. ‘What?’
He’d fight whatever had spooked her.
‘I thought you understood what I was asking of you, Rico, but you obviously don’t. I won’t come second to your job. I’ve been through all that with my parents and I’m not doing it again.’
‘What are you talking about? I love you.’
‘No, you don’t. If you did, you’d put me first.’
He went cold all over. She wanted him to give up his job? ‘What about you putting my needs first?’ he shot back, stung.
‘I am.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I will not be party to you flaying yourself alive every single day. I will not be your consolation for that.’
Fear and darkness rose through him in equal measure. She’d given him a vision—a glorious, seductive vision of a future he wanted with all his might—and now she was taking it away.
‘Love, Rico? I think not. I don’t think you even know the meaning of the word anymore.’
She started to turn away, and then she swung back. She pressed her hand to his chest. Beneath it his heart pounded, trying to reach her, trying to find a way to make her stay with him.
‘What do you want in here, Rico? That’s what I want to be part of—not this half-life you’re living now.’
And then she turned and left, leaving him more alone than he’d ever been.
* * *
Rico spent the next five days moving in a fog. It was as if a thick morass of apathy and dejection surrounded him, protecting him from the anguish of Neen’s rejection.
Each day, though, a little of the fog lifted, leaving a hard, burning anger in its wake. Anger at Neen. Anger at himself and Louis for their utter stupidity as seventeen-year-olds. Anger at himself now, in the present.
He spent the spare moments of the week following pounding the pavement, lifting weights and completing endless sets of push-ups and sit-ups.
It didn’t help.
He stayed away from Neen and the café. That didn’t help either. One day he even stood on the corner opposite the café so he could watch Neen
close up for the night. That definitely didn’t help. It disgusted him too—filled him with shame when he recalled the way Chris had hounded her.
On the third Saturday after her declaration of love and subsequent rejection of him, Rico stalked out of his apartment, bought a recipe book and a whole load of ingredients and spent the afternoon cooking up a storm.
That helped a bit. Just as Neen had said it would.
‘For Pete’s sake,’ he growled aloud. ‘She doesn’t have all the answers.’ He fell into his sofa and glared around the room.
He wasn’t sure why he spoke out loud, only that the silence in his apartment seemed oppressive. He hadn’t noticed that silence until Travis and Joey had left.
He missed them too. He leaped up to pace the length of the room, rolling his shoulders and trying to rid himself of an indeterminate itch. Before he’d met Neen his life had been neat and tidy—orderly. Everything in its place and—
The oven timer buzzed and with a curse he didn’t try to smother he wheeled into the kitchen to pull out the two trays of savoury pastries he’d assembled.
He set them on the bench and stared at them in a combination of awe and astonishment.
They weren’t particularly symmetrical, at least not like the picture in the recipe book, but they smelt divine and he’d made them. Him. His mouth started to water.
Neen mightn’t have all the answers, but she was right about this. Cooking fortified something inside him. It recharged and restored him.
Okay, so she was right about the way he’d been holding himself aloof from people too. The friendship he’d struck up with Travis now bolstered him, as did the avuncular relationship he’d developed with Joey. Cutting himself off had been bad for his job. He could see what she’d been trying to tell him. He’d become single-minded and driven, like her parents, and—
He flinched at that thought. Their obsession had hurt Neen so badly, but his desire to keep at-risk youth off the streets didn’t hurt anyone.
His mouth went dry. It didn’t!
He recalled Rafe’s overture of friendship and thought again of the similar multiple overtures made towards him in the last few years. Overtures he’d ruthlessly ignored in order to focus on the things he’d deemed important.
And then he saw boys, multiple boys like Joey, who’d just needed a hug. And he hadn’t hugged them.
His hand clenched. Results—that was what he’d focused on. Results rather than people. He’d wanted to get the boys off the streets and safe. He hadn’t understood that there were more important things, like human connection and friendship.
For a moment he could feel Neen’s hand pressed against his heart. What do you want in here, Rico?
He took one of the trays of pastries to the table, sat and ate the lot. One by one, popping them into his mouth, chewing, savouring, swallowing and finding a new strength with each mouthful. By the time he’d finished them he knew exactly what he wanted.
He glanced at his watch. Six p.m. on a Saturday evening. He knew exactly where to find his heart’s desire.
* * *
Monty completely ignored the ball she threw to him. He raced instead straight past her. What the—?
Oh, good grief. Who was he going to molest now?
She spun, with a screeching Sit! on her tongue that never made it fully out of her mouth.
Rico.
Her pulse skittered and dipped. Her chest grew so tight all she wanted to do was sink to the sand and curl up into a tiny ball. Seeing him tore at something deep inside her, and each searing rip stole more of her vitality.
Oh, right—and not seeing him has been a whole barrel of laughs, has it?
He made Monty sit before petting him, just as she’d shown him. When the goof of a dog rolled onto his back, Rico scratched his stomach.
She glanced away from those lean brown fingers and all their promise.
‘Hello, Neen.’
His voice came from right beside her. She lifted her chin and met his gaze. ‘Hello, Rico.’
Monty loped into the water and barked at the waves. The silence on the beach between her and Rico grew. It stretched and tightened and made her ache.
‘You wanted to see me?’ she finally managed.
He shook his head, dragged a hand back through his hair. ‘I haven’t rehearsed anything.’
She blinked.
‘And now I don’t know how to start this darn conversation without just lurching into it.’
His skin was tinged an odd grey, but the rest of him glowed with vigour, as if he’d spent a lot of time outdoors recently. Concern for him warred with self-preservation.
She folded her arms. ‘Then just lurch into it.’
He gave a decisive nod and planted his feet. ‘You asked me what it was I really wanted...in here.’ He touched a hand to his chest. ‘And, Neen, now I know.’
Her heart hammered. The beach tilted. She moved up to the dry sand and sat.
He followed. ‘Are you okay?’
This man could bare her to her very soul. He could crush her with one word. What he was about to tell her would clinch her future.
‘Please don’t get my hopes up, Rico. I...I just don’t think I could stand it.’
He fell to his knees in front of her. He cupped her face. ‘Sweetheart, I have no intention of hurting you.’
His endearment burned through her. She wished she could believe him, but...
She removed his hands from her face. ‘Not on purpose, perhaps.’
He subsided to the sand beside her. ‘I’ll tell you what I want—what I really want in my heart—and then you can decide if that makes me the kind of man you could build a life with.’
Words were impossible. All she could do was nod.
‘Neen, I want to cook.’
Well, that was a no-brainer. But would he have the courage to follow that desire?
‘I cooked these little pastries today and it was brilliant. They were brilliant.’
He had? She sat up straighter.
He turned to face her more fully. ‘I want to cook and I want to have friends. I want to laugh. I want to make my life better, bigger, richer.’ He hauled in a breath. ‘I want to go to parties and enjoy them rather than scoping out the crowd to see who I can hit up for sponsorship or donations.’
She stared at him. Was this Rico—workaholic extraordinaire—talking? ‘Go on,’ she urged when he stopped.
‘I want a family.’ His hands clenched. ‘I want children who will keep me on my toes, who I can pass on good strong ethics to—but also a love of life. I want a wife who’ll make sure I don’t take myself too seriously. A woman who’ll make my life bigger, better, richer. A woman who’ll love me with all she has, Neen. The way you love me.’
Her heart pounded up into her throat.
‘When I find her I will cherish her forever. I will do my best to become the man she needs, the man she wants me to be. I love you, Neen, and I want that life with you.’
She gripped her hands together. ‘Do you know the man I want you to be?’
‘You want me to be happy.’
He said it so simply it took her breath away. Finally she allowed herself to hope.
Spinning around so she knelt in the sand beside him, she said, ‘What about Louis?’
He held her gaze. ‘I will always regret what happened. I wish it hadn’t. I wish I’d made different choices back then.’ He paused. ‘But even if I had, it doesn’t mean Louis would’ve. I’d never considered that before, and in a way it’s freed me. It’s made me realise the only thing I can control is my own actions.’ He pulled in a breath, his gaze never wavering from hers. ‘It’s time to stop living in the past. I’m not saying I won’t have bad days, when I struggle with that, but I...I mean to try.’
She swore even her eyeballs pulsed.
‘I’ve realised that if I wanted to make you happy I had to be whole. I haven’t felt whole since Louis died, Neen. I’ve been too afraid to try in case I let someone else down. But for you I’ll risk anything.’
‘What about your job—the way you seem to use it to punish yourself? What about that?’
For a moment his lips almost twitched into a smile. ‘You made me see what a machine I’d become. All I was focused on was getting kids off the street and safe. I wanted to do something positive, make a good difference. But watching you with Travis and Joey—heck, with all the boys—made me see you had a greater impact on them than I’d ever had.’
She drew back. ‘That’s nonsense! You made the café a reality. Without you...’ She shook her head. It didn’t bear thinking about.
He leaned towards her. ‘I want to be on the inside now. Not on the outside.’
She couldn’t help herself then. She launched herself into his arms. They fell back on the sand in a tangle of limbs, with Neen sprawled on top of him. She kissed him. ‘Welcome home, Rico.’
He grinned up at her, his hand trailing a tantalising path down her spine. ‘I’m going to ask you to marry me soon.’
‘And I’m going to say yes.’
He sobered. His hands stilled. ‘Don’t you want to know what I plan to do workwise?’
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter what you choose to do now, because you’ll be doing it for the right reasons.’
Without warning he rolled her over. ‘I want to tell you anyway.’
He pressed against her in the most delightful way imaginable. She wriggled against him, revelling in the way his eyes darkened. ‘I didn’t mean to imply I wasn’t interested.’
He grinned. ‘I want to open my own café. I’m going to learn to cook, and I’m going to employ some of our boys. Wanna join me?’
She started to laugh. ‘Actually, Rico, if it’s all the same to you I want to stay at the charity café. I love working there.’
His eyes widened, and then he threw his head back with a laugh. ‘I knew it. You’re hooked! That place is perfect for you.’ He ran a finger down her cheek. ‘Sweetheart, I just want you to do whatever will make you happy.’
The Redemption of Rico D'Angelo Page 18