Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
F RANCESCO HAD CO-EXISTED IN London for a long time, with Willow. They had both lived in the city for years, and yet knowing she was just a few suburbs away had never really been a big part of his thought process.
Until now.
Returning from the Cotswolds and dropping her off at her small mews house just off Gloucester Road, he’d found himself walking her to her door, carrying her small suitcase, and holding his breath while he waited to see if she’d invite him in. She didn’t. She smiled up at him, thanked him for being an excellent fake boyfriend—with benefits—and had slipped inside without a backwards glance.
But if she’d turned around and asked him to follow, he would have. He would have lifted her up into his arms, carrying her to a bed, or a sofa, or a carpeted rug, and made love to her all over again, giving his body what it had been craving since the morning after the party, when they’d explored one another in bed, slowly, this time, sensually, and with enough space to properly touch and be touched.
Willow was doing exactly what they’d agreed to and sticking to the boundaries. But as he stalked back to his car, he found his mind wandering to the trip the following weekend, to Italy, and suddenly, he no longer wanted her to back out. He wanted more of Willow, and the fact they’d formed this convenient, fake relationship gave him the perfect cover for that.
All he could think about, once he reached his own penthouse, was Willow. So much so he had to leave his phone in his bedroom to decrease the likelihood of weakening and calling her, inviting her over. That would be breaking the rules, changing the game they’d agreed to.
But after a sleepless night, and looking down the barrel of several more, he made the decision to get out of London, and away from temptation. He flew to New York without giving Raf any notice, deciding instead to simply arrive on his doorstep.
Only Raf wasn’t there.
Marcia answered, spoke two words to Francesco—neither of them pleasant. But after what she’d been through; could he blame her?
He dialled his brother’s number then, and when Raf answered, it was like he was talking to a ghost. His voice sounded so much like their father’s, from those awful dark days after their mother’s death. Deep, raw and affected by alcohol, despite the fact it was barely lunch time.
“Where are you?” he asked, tone grim.
“I don’t need a fucking saviour.”
“Good. Because that’s not what you’re getting.’
He could practically hear the cogs turning in Raf’s brain, and then, he named a bar in the Village.
Francesco caught a cab, and even then, worried sick about his brother, his mind wandered—without his permission—to Willow, so he was wondering what she was doing. Who she was with. Aching to call her. Aching for her in a way that infuriated him. True, sex with them had been insanely good, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t had great sex before.
First and foremost, she was his friend; he wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardise that.
Raf was in a booth at the back of the bar, staring straight ahead. Francesco took one look at him, contemplated dragging him back to his place, then decided against it, and ordered a couple of beers from the bar, on his way to the booth. He slid one over to Raf to get his attention—it earned him a flicker of a single brow, and a sound that might have been a grunt of greeting.
“I’d ask how you are, but it’s pretty evident.”
Another grunt.
Francesco sighed. “Raf, man, I don’t know what to say. It’s understandable that you’re feeling like this?—,”
Raf took the beer and drained half of it, then wiped the back of his mouth with his hand.
Francesco took a small drink of his own. “How’s Marcia?”
Raf’s eyes slide sideways to Francesco’s, his expression inscrutable. A shiver ran down Francesco’s spine; this was not like his brother, at all. Raf was fair minded and generally a pretty easy-going guy. This was new. And not good new.
Then again, after what he’d been through, wasn’t that to be expected?
“I saw her,” Francesco admitted.
Raf’s eyes drifted to Francesco’s face, lingered there a moment, his expression no longer inscrutable, but rather, furious. “And?”
“And she looked awful,” he admitted. “She told me to fuck off. Serves me right—she obviously wants to be alone, after everything she’s been through.”
“Been through?” Raf repeated, finishing his beer, slamming the glass to the table then lifting his fingers in the air, to call over a waiter.
“Well, yeah. I mean, losing a pregnancy is devastating for both parents, but for a woman, I imagine?—,”
“You cannot imagine anything about Marcia.”
Francesco’s gaze narrowed. “Raf, man, you’re not actually pissed at her about this?”
A muscle jerked in his brother’s jaw, beneath what looked to be about ten-day old stubble.
A waitress appeared, big smile in place an incongruity, given the tone of their conversation. “Would you like to see some menus?”
“Do you have Macallan?”
“Um, I think so.”
“Bring us a bottle.”
“A bottle?” She looked to Francesco, as if for confirmation.
He dipped his head, once, in confirmation, but added, for good measure, “And some burgers.”
“I’m not hungry,” Raf partially slurred, as the waitress left.
“You’ll eat something if you want to stay here.”
“I thought I told you; I don’t need a saviour.”
“You’ve got a brother. And a friend. But if you think either of those is going to let you drink yourself into a stupor, think again. You need to eat.”
Raf grunted.
“Raf, listen,” Francesco leaned forward, trying to find the right words. But this version of Raf was so completely unfamiliar to him. So angry. So furious. Just like their father. It stole his breath. And for the first time in days, he wasn’t thinking about Willow; he was fully focused on the predicament in front of him. “It’s probably not what you want to think about right now, but you and Marcia will get past this. One day, you’ll try again. You’ll have another baby. And probably another one. This is just?—,”
“No,” Raf interrupted, as the waitress returned, with a bottle of scotch and two glasses.
She hesitated though, eyeing Francesco, before announcing the cost of the entire bottle.
He nodded once, pulled out his wallet and slid over a card. “Start a tab.”
She stared down at the black card before lifting it up and walking away, leaving the whiskey between them. Raf snatched it up, unscrewed the lid like it had done him some great wrong, then poured two full glasses.
“I know you’re upset,” Francesco tried again. “But don’t you think you should be going through this with Marcia? She must be devastated too.”
Raf made a snorting noise.
“For God’s sake, what’s going on with the two of you? She lost a baby—there’s no way you can be angry about that.”
“She didn’t lose the baby,” Raf snapped, his eyes boring into Francesco’s now. His hand trembled as he lifted the whiskey towards his lips, then slammed it back down on the table, so half of it spilled out, over his hand, and across the surface.
“What?” Francesco frowned. “But Gianni and Maria said?—,”
“They were misinformed.”
“By who?”
“Me.”
“What?”
“At that stage, I had been misinformed likewise.”
“This isn’t making sense.”
“She was never pregnant.”
Francesco stared at his brother for several beats then shook his head, as if he could shake the words into his brain, somehow.
“She lied. She got sick of the state of our relationship, knew that I would have no choice but to marry her if she was pregnant.”
Francesco swore loudly. “That’s hardly a clever plan. Presumably at some point she must have known you’d work this out, when she didn’t, you know, have a baby.”
“She thought we’d fall pregnant after the wedding. It was a calculated risk, that didn’t pay off.”
Francesco’s jaw dropped.
“Months passed. Months in which she told me she had regular appointments. Hell, she even produced a doctored sonogram image for me, Cesco. Can you believe that? The sickness of this woman…”
Francesco was inclined to agree. To see this as evidence that Marcia was, in fact, actually sick. “And then what?”
“She should be nearly five months along, by now. Showing, probably. With a baby due any time. So, she told me she’d miscarried. But she wouldn’t let me take her to a doctor, to a hospital, she wouldn’t get help. It didn’t make sense; nothing added up. Still, I didn’t suspect. What kind of an idiot does that make me?”
“You trusted her. You loved her.”
He scowled. “I called an ambulance, against her wishes. I had to. I was worried about her. I am not a doctor, but even I knew that miscarrying at that stage in the pregnancy could bring about complications.”
Francesco closed his eyes on a wave of nausea and anger. Imagining how that scene unfolded was truly mortifying. His poor brother.
“You must have been livid.”
“That does not begin to describe it. I have never known such anger, Francesco. Not in my entire life. I have never known a hate quite like it.”
He lifted the liquor glass and threw it back, his Adam’s apple shifting as he swallowed hard.
“She must have known this would all come out.”
“She thought we would fall pregnant at some point, that she could fudge the dates a little. She is a master manipulator.”
“But why? Just so you would marry her?”
Raf grunted, and Francesco slumped down in his seat a little, his mind spinning at that reality. He’d never liked Marcia. None of them had. But this was beyond anything he’d have thought her capable of. It was so calculated and cruel.
“I know she was not actually pregnant, but to me, she was. I had put my hand on her stomach and imagined our baby there, I had thought about what that child would be, would mean, would become. I was going to be a father, and now…”
Francesco grimaced, his brother’s grief and despair totally understandable.
“Let’s get hammered,” he said, adding another measure of scotch to Raf’s glass.
“Fucking yes,” was all Raf said, before scrunching his eyes closed and letting out a shuddered breath. And for the rest of the night, that was all Francesco thought of, all he focused on, until several hours later, when they were back in his penthouse hotel room, Raf passed out in the spare room. Alone with his own thoughts, Francesco felt the shifting of the wind, the way they moved away from his brother and Marcia, and towards Willow instead. He fell into his own bed and stared at the ceiling, wishing he could get her out of his mind—or that he could be buried inside of her. Either or.
* * *
The second Willow saw his name on her screen, her heart went into crazy overdrive, her insides clenching with remembered desire and need.
She shoved her phone back in her bag and leaned forward, focusing all her attention on Tom. He was telling her about his latest client, and the number of times they’d changed their minds on the paint colours—even when he’d almost finished the job—and Willow was smiling, and nodding, her features carefully arranged to show an interest she definitely didn’t feel.
Seeing Tom this week was intentional.
Necessary.
Important.
For days, she’d been distracted by the weekend with Francesco. What had happened with them was far from straight forward. She wanted it to be. She wanted to just be able to accept that they were friends who’d slept together, but the flipside to that was a yawning chasm of uncertainty.
Because going to Italy with him was suddenly the thing she wanted most in the world, and it shouldn’t have been.
There was Tom to consider. Tom to think about. Tom to crave. Who was supposed to be her future, her whole life. Tom who’d always made her feel at peace and calm.
Except tonight, it hadn’t.
Tonight, he’d arrived at the restaurant late and disheveled, and she’d been annoyed. Annoyed that he hadn’t been able to make it on time, when they hadn’t seen each other for months. Annoyed that his shirt was untucked on one side and he had some kind of oil stain on his collar. Annoyed that he didn’t ask her a damned thing about her life, but rather launched into a breakdown of his, from what he’d eaten for breakfast that morning to an annoying call he’d received from a telemarketer that afternoon.
Had it always been like this?
Had she really thought this was how she wanted to spend the rest of her life?
The disloyal thought caught her truly unawares. She sat up straighter, reaching for her champagne, letting the liquid fizz and bubble all the way down, then taking another sip, and another, until her glass was drained.
Even then, Tom didn’t break his monologuing stride. Had he even noticed she’d pulled her phone from her bag? That she’d skolled her drink? Was he even noticing her?
Suddenly, she was irritated. Not just with him, but herself, too. With the amount of time she’d spent getting ready, looking forward to this. Annoyed with all the hopes she’d invested, that he would be everything she wanted. That she’d see him and it would all lock back into place again. That she’d find a way to break through his objections and get him to see that their different backgrounds really didn’t matter.
But the more he talked, the less certain she became. A waiter appeared and silently topped up her glass. Tom kept talking.
At her side, she was conscious of the buzzing of her handbag, her phone receiving another call. She sipped some more of her drink, and some more, then stood abruptly.
Finally, Tom broke off. “Willow? Is something the matter?”
“I—have a call. I’m sorry.” She brandished her bag as if he’d asked for evidence, but Tom didn’t need it. He shrugged and pushed his thumb to his mouth, worrying at the edge of his fingernail.
“No problem; take your time. I’ll be here.”
Her stomach lurched, and the uncertainty of her situation, of what she now wanted in life, started to flip and twist inside of her, so she stalked out of the restaurant before taking the call, because she wasn’t sure she could trust herself to keep a hold of her temper.
It wasn’t Francesco’s fault.
On the contrary, he’d done everything she’d asked of him—and then some. He’d been the perfect fake boyfriend, and an exceptional lover. So why was she so annoyed at him? Why was seeing Tom somehow stirring up a hornet’s nest of anger.
She stabbed the phone, took a deep breath, tried to control her rioting feelings.
“Francesco?”
Silence. Her heart twisted.
“Hello?” Impatience curdled the word.
“Willow.” She closed her eyes on a rush of need. His voice was deep and throaty. Familiar but far away, and almost like he’d been drinking. She swallowed past a strange thickness in her throat. A group of people walked by, talking and laughing, but she barely noticed.
“Is this a bad time?”
“Huh?” She opened her eyes, stared straight ahead.
“It sounds busy where you are.”
“Oh. I’m on the street.”
“Just hanging out?”
His light hearted comment angered her further. He was kidding. Like this was all some big joke. Like she was a joke?
“No, actually, I’m out at dinner, but when you wouldn’t stop calling, I came outside to make sure everything is okay. So, is it?”
“I called twice,” he said in response.
“Okay, whatever. But you’re okay?”
“Willow—,” he sighed. “Yes. And no.”
“What does that mean?”
“Willow?” Tom’s voice cut through and she quickly blanked her face, hoping he hadn’t seen the emotion there. Because just hearing from Francesco was making her insides zip and loop in a weird way. “Did you want dessert?”
Nope. He had apparently seen nothing. “I—won’t be long.”
“They’re closing the kitchen, that’s all.”
Already? She blinked down at her watch. It was after ten. “Oh, right. Um, no. Just a coffee.”
“Great. Black?”
Irritation flared inside of her. “No, an oat latte.”
“Great.” His smile was bemused. “Don’t be long.”
It was those three words that sealed the deal for her, cementing what had been building inside of her all night: an acceptance of the final, absolute end of her relationship with Tom. An understanding that he wasn’t what she thought—what she needed. What she’d once loved. Except, had she really loved him? Or just the idea of him?
“I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
Silence.
“Hello?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Okay. It’s just, you were?—,”
“Is that Tom?”
Her heart stammered. It was strange to hear Francesco say the other man’s name—stranger than it had been when they were together. Then, she’d welcomed the mention of Tom. It had been a salient reminder of where her priorities lay. Now? She couldn’t say with clarity. It was all so muddled.
“Yes.”
“You’re out with Tom.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you didn’t see him anymore?”
“I hadn’t seen him in a while, but you’ve always known what he means to me.”
She closed her eyes against the way that felt to say. The fact she knew, even as the words left her lips, that it was a lie.
“Of course.”
She watched as a woman strode across the street, blonde hair tossed over one shoulder. Effortlessly confident and chic.
“Anyway,” she said unevenly. “Was there something you wanted to talk about?”
Silence, and then, “This weekend.”
Her heart stammered. “Yeah?”
“Are you coming?”
Her heart pounded. Was she? It was a fair question. It was just, no matter how many times Willow thought about this, she couldn’t come up with a straight answer. He’d left it up to her, and Willow had vacillated a thousand times.
“Would you prefer I didn’t?”
The second she asked the question, she winced. It was too needy. Too desperate. Suddenly, she was that little girl again, who’d been so desperate for love and approval, she’d sought it out constantly, only to be resolutely ignored by Meredith. Made to feel that unless she was perfect, she wasn’t worthy of affection.
“Frankly, Willow, right now, it’s the last thing on my mind. Just do what’s best for you.”
Silence fell. A strange, prickly, angry silence.
“Francesco…”
“Go back to Tom, cara . You wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”
Tears stung the backs of Willow’s eyes as she made her way into the restaurant, but she refused to let them fall.