CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zago thought he’d handled his trip to London well.
He had caught up with a few old friends, as was his usual habit. He had taken care of the usual business concerns, and had subjected himself to the usual, tedious meetings.
Notably, he did not accidentally find himself wandering about Notting Hill, dressed as a stranger. Though he could not claim that the notion had not occurred to him, just to see what it was like. Just to inhabit her skin a while, and get a better sense of the woman who—it turned out—haunted him with great effect even when she was only in his mind.
When he had satisfied himself that Nicolosa was well and recovering from her heartbreak, even intended to go back to university in the fall, he took himself home again.
And every time he left Venice, returning to this magical city where his ancestors had lived for some thousand years, it always reminded him exactly who he was.
Because it wasn’t simply that it was heart-stoppingly beautiful to arrive in the evening and take a boat into Venice at night, though it was. It wasn’t only that all the regal houses along the Grand Canal were lit up and lovely, with the lamplight spilling over the water and music echoing as if it was welling up directly from all the cracks in the weathered old buildings. It was more than that. It was more than pretty views and old bloodlines.
This was recognition , he thought. This was the love that he been raised on, for good or ill. The sense of place and belonging that felt as if it was a part of his bones and his very biology, and Zago did not intend to settle for anything less than that in his private life.
He would not.
And it wasn’t that he second-guessed himself, he thought as the boat pulled up to his dock. Though he had certainly been tempted to, especially in London. It was more that he was bolstering up the decision he’d already made.
It also wasn’t that he thought any love could exist without its challenges. That seemed impossible as long as humans were involved. But at the base of it all, he was certain it should feel like this .
Instant recognition. That feeling of homecoming. The knowledge that no matter where he went in this whole wide world, all these beautiful places filled with adventures and temptations aplenty, that he might love them in his way but he would always long to be here .
That there could be nothing on this earth that would ever suit him better than this city. And this ruined old house that he had loved since before he could walk.
For better or worse, Zago had only ever had one home.
He walked slowly up the long stone path, looking up at the palazzo that stretched high into the night, gleaming with the same soft, thick light. And he was halfway to the impressive front door when he lowered his gaze and saw a figure sitting there on the wide stone steps.
He recognized her instantly.
In truth, he would recognize her anywhere. He had looked for her in London, in costume and out. He had puzzled over passing strangers, looking for the telltale line of her cheek, or the arch of her brow. Even the way she drew in a sharp breath. He had looked in all those crowds, forensically examined everyone who came into his field of vision, and he hadn’t found her.
Yet somehow, it was no surprise at all to find her here.
Waiting.
He kept walking. He did not alter his pace. And Zago stopped there at the bottom step, his eyes on her.
Irinka, back again.
He was aware of the staff who moved around them, but mostly because Irinka smiled at them and nodded her head in greeting. Only when they were alone again, save the passing boats in the canal, did she look at him once more.
Zago let his gaze move over her. It was warm here, much warmer than it had been in London, but she had dressed for the humidity. Her black hair curled all around the way it had that first summer, even though she piled it on top of her head. She wore an easy sort of dress that looked as if it was fastened by two bows at her shoulders, then left to do what it would. He wondered if he would always notice everything. That her manicure was repaired and back to its former glory. That her toenails matched, the color of champagne. That she wore sandals that wrapped around her ankles.
And that she looked as if she had gotten sun somewhere. There was a hint of that sort of flush on her skin, right there across the crest of her nose where some people were given to freckle.
It was just the two of them, out here in the soft light of a warm Venice night.
He could hear opera echoing down the Grand Canal, though he could not take that as a sign of anything except the fact that this was Italy. Opera was a part of who they were. It had nothing at all to do with how blue her eyes were.
Or the fact that it was once again time to test his resolve.
“I saw you in London,” Irinka said. But before he could respond, she lifted a hand. “I wasn’t skulking around in costume, which I’m sure is your first thought. I can’t blame you. But I was actually seeking out your sister, entirely as myself. I planned to apologize to her, but then I saw the two of you having dinner together and didn’t feel I should intrude.”
Zago didn’t know what to say to that. How had he felt her so many different times, in so many different places, but not then? How had she been so close and him none the wiser?
It felt like a fundamental breakdown on the part of the universe.
“But I realized something as I was standing there,” Irinka told him. “First, that an apology would be for me, not for her. I saw her smiling and it seemed cruel to go over there and bring the whole thing up again. It could possibly have made it worse. And right when you’d clearly made some headway.” She took a breath. “And then I had asked myself why it was that I wanted to apologize to her, specifically, and not all the women who’d been broken up with in this particular way. By me.”
Zago thought he could have jumped in there and answered, but he didn’t. Surely he had said enough.
Irinka was frowning down at her hands.
“I’ve been on something of a journey, actually,” she said after a moment. “I kept looking for the wounds.”
She looked up and searched his face, and it took everything he had to stay as he was. Not precisely impassive, but not engaging, necessarily.
I am simply here to listen, he cautioned himself.
Irinka looked down again. “I kept thinking that if I could just find the thing that was broken in me, then everything would make sense.”
He had never wanted to go to her more. But he couldn’t let himself. It was almost like he wasn’t able to move. He felt like some kind of statute, as if he had finally turned to stone and become one more part of this palazzo that would one day sink into the mud.
“I went to see the Duke.” That moved in him like a physical blow, but he still didn’t speak. “I talked to my mother. I thought about my lovely friends and the way we’ve always been with each other and for each other.” Her chest moved as if she couldn’t quite get a breath in. “Then I finally realized that I kept failing to ask myself the critical question.”
Zago shifted his weight, then thrust his hands in his pockets. Because it was that or put them on her.
As much as he longed to do that, he could not. He could not allow himself to intervene in this. Whatever this was.
And he didn’t dare hope.
“Finally,” Irinka said quietly. “ Finally it occurred to me to ask why it mattered what anyone told me or thought of me or called me. Because it shouldn’t, unless I agreed.” She smiled then, and he thought his heart might have shattered if it hadn’t been broken into pieces already. “And I realized, at last, that this was what you’ve been trying to tell me. I don’t think I deserve any of this. My father’s name. His begrudging blood money. My gorgeous, marvelous friends. Even the clients I was able to round up to help out the agency. And you.” That smile again. “I am certain that I don’t deserve you, Zago.”
It caused him physical pain not to say her name. Or to reach out and touch her, at last.
But all he could do was stand there and listen. And wait to see where she went.
Irinka’s smile faded. “All this time, I kept thinking that if I really let you close, if I truly let you in, you’d see that there’s nothing there. My friends still think I’m mysterious. Because I am. Because fundamentally, deep inside, I’ve never thought that it made sense that I was the subject of all that speculation when I was little. But I was center of so much drama and I thought that meant I had to be worthy of it, so I made sure no one could ever find out that I’m not. That I’m just me.”
She took a breath, then blew it out a bit raggedly, and he saw what looked like a gleam of moisture in her blue gaze. “I don’t know how to love anyone the right way, Zago. But I want to try. And maybe there isn’t a right way. Maybe there’s just you and me and this thing that I’ve been fighting against since I first saw you at that theater.” Her breath caught. “I know it doesn’t make sense, that I could enjoy being naked with you so much and yet I’m terrified of being too vulnerable. But I know that once I do this, once I really do this, it will be like a death. There will never be this version of me again. She will be gone forever and despite everything, I have grown rather fond of her.”
For a long moment, they were both quiet. There were so many things he wanted to say. Arguments he wanted to mount and facts he was dying to point out to her, but all of it was to sway her to his side.
And he’d meant what he’d told her, more than once.
He didn’t want what he had to force. Or beg for.
He wanted her love freely given. He wanted her to meet him here.
“But death is only terrifying if life is,” she said quietly. “Look at this marvel of a city, propped up on little more than hopes and dreams and wooden posts. A thousand years or more of stories, ghosts, secrets, memories. Floating on. Because maybe death is just the beginning.”
She stood then, and Zago had to look up, but that was no hardship when it was Irinka he was looking at. She came down one step. Another.
“Zago,” she said, with a kind of solemnity that made his throat ache, “I fell in love with you so fast that it terrified me.”
And something must have changed on his face, because she smiled and he saw a tear form in the corner of her eye. Then trail down her cheek.
“That first summer was so overwhelming. Maybe I died then the first time, but over and over again. I told myself it was just physical. I was sure that it was toxic. Because everything I’d always been told was that sex should be light and fluffy, a happy little pastime. I wasn’t prepared for you , Zago. For all this intensity. For not only what you did to me, but what you demanded in turn. How fully and completely you wanted me to be present, with you, right here.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it.”
Irinka came down another step. “It’s more true than I would like to admit that I went back to London and found new and interesting ways to reenact our breakup with all those men, my clients. I got to throw crockery. I got to flip tables. I got to rant and scream and carry on.” Her gaze was wide and shadowed. “But you and I know that our real breakup was so quiet. You looking at me with all that disappointment and me sneaking out under cover of darkness, so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye. So anticlimactic. So cowardly.”
She came down the final step and then she stood before him, her head tipped back and her eyes on his.
He had never seen that expression on her face before. Then again, he wasn’t sure that he was breathing.
“As soon as they told me that they were taking me to Venice, I knew it was you,” she confessed. “And I told myself that there were practical reasons not to cause a scene, but I didn’t even try. I got on that plane and I let them bring me straight here, straight to you, because I wanted that plausible deniability. If you were a kidnapper, that made me the victim. And if I did the thing that you asked and made myself a servant, that made you look like the bad guy.” Her lips curved. “And Zago, I desperately wanted you to be the bad guy.”
She looked as if she was going to reach out to him, but she didn’t, and it felt like a new, bright grief.
“And when I left you that time, I was convinced it was so civilized. So adult, at last. I told myself all the way home that it made up for the first time. I was drawing a line underneath it, under us , at last.” Irinka laughed at that. “But then when I got back to England, I was a disaster. Everything was gray, inside and out. So I thought that I would come back and convince you to try again, but you were having none of it. You were saying all the things that I was afraid to even look at directly. It was terrible.”
She shook her head again, but there was a different light in her eyes, now. “And I think I underestimated how hard it must have been for you to turn me away, but you did it. So of course I did what I always do. I hid. But I did it in plain sight. I followed you around, like a mad woman. And you caught me anyway. And then…you kissed me like a fairy tale and walked away without looking back.” Her breath sounded ragged. “You told me that I needed to believe that I could deserve you.”
This time she did reach out, and she fitted her palms to his torso, carefully. As if she was checking to see if he was real. Not stone at all, but a living, breathing man who hadn’t died each time she left.
A man who had been waiting a long, long time for her.
For this.
“And I don’t know what it really means to truly deserve anything,” Irinka told him. “But I want to be the woman you imagine that I could be. I want to see myself in the mirror the way I can see myself in your eyes. I want to love you, as much as I can and for as long as I can, and with everything I have inside of me, until it feels like the love you deserve. I want to figure out how you have always been so certain, and give that back to you like the gift it is.”
Tears were running down her face now, and she did nothing to hide them. She went up on her toes and tipped her face back, and he could see everything.
No games. Nothing held back.
And, if he wasn’t mistaken, forever in her eyes.
“Zago,” she said, this woman who had stopped his heart from the first, “I want it all. I want to marry you. I want to rattle around in this palazzo and keep it floating. I want to have your babies. Maybe a lot of them. And I want to love them all in ways that they will recognize, so they’ll know, their whole lives, that no matter what else happens…they are loved. And I want to love you the same way, but more. I want to give you everything. I never want to make you wonder, ever again, that this is anything but meant to be. You, me, and no more masks.” She considered for a moment, then smiled. “Except, perhaps, at Carnival.”
Finally, then, Zago moved. He pulled her deeper into his arms and then his hands found her face, cradling her head in his palms while he rubbed his thumbs beneath her eyes to pick up all that moisture.
And once again, there were so many things right there on his lips. Vows he would make. Promises he intended to keep. Declarations and opera and all that poetry he only seemed to have inside him where she was concerned.
But what he said was simple. “What took you so long?”
And his beautiful, magical Irinka threaded her arms around his neck. She went up higher on her tiptoes and pressed her body to his, and it wasn’t that he didn’t feel that instant chemistry, that wildfire implosion. He knew she did, too.
But he understood when she pushed into him that what she wanted was simply to feel the way they fit together. That sweet, impossible perfection that had haunted them both all these years.
Because that was how he felt, too.
She smiled at him, ear to ear and her blue eyes sparkling. “Don’t worry, my love,” she said, her voice husky with all of the time they’d wasted, and all of the ground they’d covered. “I plan to make up for it with a lifetime or two. If you’ll have me.”
“Tesoro mio,” he said, as he swept her up in his arms and held her there, like a fairy tale that would end the right way, this time. “I have only been waiting for you to say the word. Our forever starts now.”
And then he showed her.