Maddie’s stomach dropped to her feet. She shook her head hurriedly, looking out the window to her right. Her father requested this table – a nook in the bay window – every year and given his friendship with the publican, they were given it, always. “No.” And then, because he was right – she was heartbroken and crestfallen and falling apart in lots of ways, but not because of Michael – she lifted her shoulders. “It’s over.” And it was. She’d heard nothing from Nico, nor did she expect to. “It would never work between us.”
A long pause and then, “Are you sure?”
She reached across the table, putting her hand over his. “Dad? I don’t want to talk about it.” She tried to soften it with a tight smile. “Do you mind?”
“Well, it’s Christmas,” he said, his misgivings obvious. “I can hardly force you. But come back next week. I want to make sure you’re doing okay.” Then, with a more relaxed smile, “We’ll come here for lunch.” And he winked so her own smile was more natural. “Have the roast. And some cider.” He leaned closer. “Maybe even a little pie and ice cream.”
“Okay.” After all, it wasn’t like her social life was lighting the world on fire, and her book had stalled in the last month or so. Everything had stalled.
She needed to find a way to kick start her life and she would. One day things would start to feel normal again, surely?
Only in England would there be three pubs called The Wandering Goose, all located in the quaint collection of villages that made up the Cotswolds. Nico wished he’d asked more questions – but why would he have? So all he had to go on was the fact she often spent Christmas with her father in a little Cotswold village and they had lunch at the pub – The Wandering Goose – if her mother wasn’t home.
It was a big ‘if’. He’d been to two pubs and there’d been no sign of Maddie, and the staff he’d asked had never heard of her. But what if they just didn’t know her? What if her father reserved the table? What if she’d been within a mile of him and he hadn’t known?
He came into the third village a little before two o’clock. There were pale stone buildings on either side of a road that curved gently in one direction first, then another, leading to a street that was lined, on each side, by pale stone buildings. His heart sped up. Hadn’t she described exactly this? Fairy lights were strung from the highest point of one roof to the next and so on and so forth so the whole street had a zig-zag of lights overhead. The sky was a leaden grey and little tiny flakes of snow had begun to fall. There was barely any sign of life – no cars, no people – until he reached the very end and the street gave way to an ancient square – Tudor period, if he’d been forced to guess. There were three pubs and one, he saw, had a hanging sign with a coat of arms and beneath it: THE WANDERING GOOSE.
He moved quickly, his hand falling to the handle in his door, his eyes scanning the building on autopilot. And then he froze.
Maddie.
Everything inside of him lurched. He released his grip on the car door and sat right where he was, fumbling and switching his headlights off so as to avoid drawing attention to his parked car. At this distance, she’d never be able to see through the darkly tinted windows of his car.
But he could see.
He could stare, and he did. Alone in his car, he allowed himself this indulgence, this moment, to simply sit – knowing what he did now about his own feelings – and watch her.
He watched as she reached across and put her hand on her father’s, smiled at him in a way that almost ripped Nico’s heart from his chest, then looked towards the window so he could see right into her eyes. And everything plummeted inside of him.
The separation was suddenly intensely painful. Having her in another building, separated by a car park, glass, stone, steel. He wanted her in his arms, immediately.
But he’d waited this long. Months. Months of missing her and refusing to acknowledge that to himself. Months of wanting to cave and call her, and not doing so. He could sit in his damned car until she’d finished her meal. Couldn’t he?
“Thanks for lunch, dad.”
Her dad reached over, straightening her novelty crown into place, then kissing her cheek. “My pleasure. Come on, love. Let’s go see what Liz has to say about the year that was.” He wiggled his thick, grey brows so she smiled and nodded.
“Sounds good.”
The door had bells hanging above it, and they jingled as Graeme and Maddie stepped out. Sometime during lunch it had begun to snow, and the ground had a light covering now. It would be thick in the morning if it kept coming like this.
She turned towards her parents’ home, linking arms with her dad as they took a few steps in that direction.
“Maddie.”
She stopped walking instantly. Everything inside of her responded to that voice. She spun quickly, dropping her dad’s arm, her face as pale as the fresh-fallen snow, her eyes huge.
Because there, on the other side of the door to The Wandering Goose was Nico Montebello.
Nico. His name pulsed through her body, reminding her of everything he was to her all at once so it was like being shaken back to life.
Looking at her as though he had no idea what to say. Looking at her as though…
As though what?
Nothing made sense. “What are you doing here?”
He grimaced and took a step towards her but a family emerged from the pub at that exact moment, so loud, so interrupting, so awful in that moment Maddie felt an uncharacteristic urge to shout at them to hurry up! But she didn’t. She stood there, beside her dad, with snow falling and the distant sound of carollers practicing for the evening’s church service, and she tried to remember to breathe and all the while her eyes devoured Nico at every opportunity they had until finally the family had dispersed and it was just them, once more.
And then he moved, stepping towards her, so she had only a few seconds to brace for the fact that he might touch her. Kiss her. God, how she wanted to touch him. Heck, she wanted to hurtle herself forward and close the distance, to throw herself into his arms and close her eyes and breathe him in and forget that she’d laid her heart out for him and he’d politely, and oh so kindly, handed it right back to her.
“A friend of yours, love?”
Maddie turned to her dad, her tongue thick in her mouth, speech impossible.
“Nico Montebello.” Nico, apparently, didn’t have the same problem. He held a hand out and Graeme shook it. Seeing these two men together was surreal and emotional and Maddie was rapidly losing any possible claim on calm.
“Nico?” Her voice was surprisingly cool despite her flummoxed nerves. “Why are you here?”
He dropped Graeme’s hand, but didn’t reach for her. Instead, he jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his eyes burning her with the force of their concentration. “I came to see you.”
She frowned. That didn’t make sense. She wracked her brain, trying to understand and then realised the only reason he could possibly be here was because of Michael. Maybe something had gone wrong? Perhaps the charges had been dropped?
“Love, I’ll head home.” Her dad reached out and squeezed her forearm. “See you soon?”
“Ah, yeah. Soon. Okay.” The idea of Michael had skittled her nerves further, so her fingertips were trembling a little. She watched as her dad made his way down the street, pausing near the bottom to talk to a man she vaguely recognised.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, closing her eyes. “Just get it over with.”
Nico was quiet. He didn’t speak. So she braced for even worse news.
“I can handle it, Nico. Just rip the Band-Aid off. I need to know.”
“Know what?”
“Is he out? Is that it?”
“Is who out?”
“Michael. Has he been released? Are the police not pursuing charges after all?”
Nico’s eyes flew wide and now he did reach for her, his hand stopping just short; before he could touch her shoulder, he dropped it back to his side.
&nbs
p; “No, cara, no. I told you, he’ll be in prison for a very long time.”
“Oh.” She felt relief, yet calm didn’t follow. Her heart continued to pound, her fingers to shake. Even the falling snow couldn’t cool her heated brow.
“So why are you here?”
Another group emerged from the pub, loud and jovial, so he looked over his shoulder. “I’m parked just there. Can we speak in my car?”
In his car? Alone with him? In a confined space? Maddie wasn’t sure she could trust herself. She shook her head, her eyes unconsciously portraying her mistrust. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Afraid I’m going to kidnap you?”
It was a joke but she couldn’t even muster a ghost of a smile in response. “No.”
Her eyes strayed towards her father, except he wasn’t there anymore. The street was empty, just the pretty twinkling of fairy lights overhead and the distant singing of Christmas songs.
Nico sighed, lifting a hand and running it through his hair. He seemed different somehow. Less confident. Less sure of himself.
“You’re scaring me, Nico.” Then, with another frisson of alarm. “Is it Dante? Is he sick? Is he –,”
“No! Stop! Let me speak.”
“Well, hurry up. I have no idea what you’re doing here and I hate that. Tell me so I can understand and then go back to my normal life, please.”
He nodded, but his eyes were watchful, his expression impossible to interpret. “Is that what you want?”
“What?”
“To go back to your ‘normal’ life?”
She gulped for air, looking away from him, a hint of anger bursting through her. “I don’t know what my normal life is,” she said with a shake of her head. “Honestly? I feel like a tiny boat on an enormous ocean with no idea what direction I’m going in, completely at the mercy of the tides and honestly, I hate it. Half the time I feel close to sinking. That doesn’t make any sense, I know, it’s just –,”
“It makes perfect sense,” he promised, his voice rough. “Because it is exactly how I feel.”
“You don’t get it,” she refuted immediately.
“I do get it,” he insisted. “Because ever since you left Italy I have felt like I couldn’t make sense of anyone or anything. It’s as though all the best parts of me disappeared the day you did, and I no longer know who I am. Without you, I don’t make sense. Without you, nothing makes sense, nothing works, and most importantly, nothing seems to matter.” He paused, scanning her face, perhaps waiting for her to speak but his words had rendered her utterly mute. “You are my everything, Maddie. My everything. You are all I think about, all I dream about, you’re the person I want to speak to whenever anything of interest happens in my day. I miss your smile and your laugh and your voice and all I want is to go back to that morning in Italy and shake myself for not understanding any of this before it was too late.”
Snow fell. People moved around them. The lights overhead twinkled. But Maddie was only conscious of Nico. She felt his every movement in every cell of her body. They were two people connected by a thousand invisible strings.
“I don’t –,” she shook her head. Words wouldn’t come.
“All of my life, I’ve told myself I don’t believe in love. Certainly that I don’t want it. But the truth is, I’d just never known anything like what you make me feel.” He moved closer, so his body was separated from hers by only a hair’s breadth. “And the more I felt for you, the more I cared for you, the more I loved you, yes, the more afraid I became, because in my experience, love doesn’t end very well. It’s not something I ever planned to rely on as a source of happiness. I like things that are tangible and make sense. I like numbers,” he reminded her so she was transported back to the cave in Italy, that beautiful, magical evening they’d shared looking out over the sparkling ocean. But he was so serious, his expression so sombre, that even those memories didn’t warm her. “I like things that are rational and sensible, easy to predict and control.” He shook his head. “That’s not this.”
She swallowed, biting down on her lip.
“That last morning, I wanted you to stay with all my heart but I tried to find a way to make it sound like something else.” He shook his head angrily. “The truth is, you answer every single need I could ever have. I love every part of you. All of you. I love you completely, and always will. And I’m still terrified of what that means. Of what the flipside to loving someone so damned much is, but I cannot live without you, Maddie. I can’t.”
It was too much. Her eyes filled with tears and her breath was shallow. “But you said –,”
“I was a fool. Such a fool.” He shook his head and she felt the strength of his emotion. She felt the sincerity of his words. “I didn’t really understand my own heart until you left. And even then, I pretended not to know what was going on, nor why I was feeling as though I wanted to shout at everyone, all the time. But it was talking to Yaya on Christmas Eve that made me realise.”
She was silent, watchful, waiting, so he continued.
“She was talking about my grandfather, and how hard it’s been since he died. And then she said that she’d do it all again. That loss was a part of life, of love, and her deep sense of loss was proof of how much she’d loved and been loved. And I realised.”
“You realised?”
“That one way or another, we lose the people we love. I pushed you away because I somehow thought I could control that, that I could limit how much it would hurt, but it didn’t. And I risked losing a lifetime with the woman I love because I was too terrified to admit how I feel, even to myself, certainly to you.”
A small sob emerged from her lips. She couldn’t speak.
“So I’m telling you now with no idea if even you, with your beautiful kind heart and your goodness and grace, will be able to forgive me for what I put you through. I have no idea if you still want me as you did then. But I’m standing here offering myself to you in every way and I’m begging you not to send me away yet. Just to think and see if maybe you can forget the last few months.”
She bit down on her lower lip, emotions exploding through her. “I can’t.”
His expression darkened. His eyes swept shut, and a breath hissed from between his teeth.
“I thought I’d known pain, but walking away from you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done Nico.” She lifted a hand, tucking her hair behind her ear then remembering she was wearing the paper crown. She dislodged it carefully, folding it between fingertips that were numb.
“I know you didn’t want to hurt me, but leaving you, leaving Dante and Ondechiara…I haven’t felt the same. All these last few months have taught me are that I was right about you.”
His eyes pierced hers. Something flared in their depths.
“I loved you. I loved you in a way I’d never felt for anyone, ever. It broke me in two, and yet I’m stronger than I’ve ever been as well, because you changed me. Because of you, pieces of me that I thought were lost came back together. I don’t want to forget the last few months because they’re something else I’ve weathered and I’m proud of that.” She tilted her chin, angling her face to his. “I didn’t weaken. I didn’t call you even when I thought about doing it a thousand times over. I didn’t show up at Ondechiara and beg you to take me back for that one last week, no matter how tempted I was. I know how strong I am, Nico and I don’t want to forget that.”
“You are the strongest person I’ve ever known.” The words rang with pride. “And I will never let you forget it.” He reached for her free hand, lacing their fingers together. “Before I met you, I thought I had everything I could ever want in life. You showed me that without you, there is nothing. I am so in love with you, Maddie, and if you let me, I’ll show you that, I’ll show you how I feel.”
She dipped her head forward, her heart in her throat, her head ringing from the thousands of things she was thinking and wanting.
“Michael taught me not to give second chances,�
� she said softly, the words falling like snow to their feet. She didn’t see his reaction; she didn’t see the way his face looked tortured, as though he’d been knifed in the side.
“I promised I wouldn’t hurt you and I did. I did that, and I’m sorry. Cara, I’m so sorry, but I’m not Michael. When I say ‘sorry’, I mean it. When I tell you I will spend my lifetime making sure I never hurt you again, making sure you are deliriously happy, I mean it. You are my reason for all things, Maddie Gray.”
Her heart turned over in her chest. She lifted a finger and pressed it to his lips. “I wasn’t finished.”
His lips were warm. She almost groaned, but didn’t.
“You taught me to trust my instincts. You taught me that great things can happen when you take a chance. And most of all, you already did show me – every single day we were together – in myriad ways, that you are nothing like Michael, and never could be.” She moved her hand so she could cup his cheek, her eyes showing her love, her fingertips light on his stubbled skin. “You taught me to trust again, and you taught me to love even if you didn’t realise it, and I will always, always love you for that, Nico.”
His groan was so soft, and then a moment later his head was dropping, his lips searching for hers, his kiss a desperate, hungry possession.
“Ti amo,” he pressed the words into her mouth and she laughed, nodding, lifting her hands and wrapping her fingers into his hair so the paper crown fell loose and blew down the street without her realising it.
“I know.” And she did. With complete and utter certainty, she knew that he loved her, and that he always would. She smiled against his lips, and there, in the middle of a street, miles from her place and his, Maddie felt as though she’d truly come home. And it really was where the heart was.
Epilogue
“HE HAD A NOSE ring, and a patch, and he limped.”
“Really?” Maddie met Nico’s eyes over Jack’s head, her smile twinkling, digging dimples deep into her cheeks.
“Oh, yes. And he said, ‘arghhh, walk the plank!’”
Just This One Summer: A billionaire forbidden love romance... (The Montebellos Book 2) Page 18