Chapter Five #2
‘I had to sell the flat,’ she admitted, the pain of losing her home a dim echo of the deep wound it had once been.
‘The housing market wasn’t the same as when I’d bought it, but there was enough left over to help me until I was able to get back to work,’ she finished, not wanting him to think that she was completely terrible with money.
Yes, there was still a sense of shame attached to the fact she hadn’t done better , but she had done what she needed, when she’d needed to.
And she wanted Antonio to know that it hadn’t been a complete loss.
‘And now things are much better. I have a lovely little flat-share, and I love my job, and…’
Was she trying too hard? Could he tell?
Dessert appeared in front of them. Rich, chocolate, extravagant, and she suddenly wanted to cry.
‘ Cara ,’ he said, his voice low, gravel thick, as he reached across the table for her hand.
She let him take her hand but couldn’t meet his gaze.
She didn’t want to see what was in his eyes.
Didn’t want to see what he thought or felt.
But she would let him offer the silent comfort she needed, just for now.
It was part of his apology, she knew. It wasn’t something she could rely on in the future, but just for now, God, she wanted it so badly.
‘If you need more money—’
‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head.
‘I know the money you’ve asked for is for the library and not for yourself.’
She nearly laughed. It sounded like an admonishment.
‘I don’t need your money, Antonio,’ she said with more determination.
If her flat-out refusal surprised him, it didn’t show.
But no, she couldn’t take money for herself again.
Not like that. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to own a house again.
The pressure of meeting the mortgage payments had weighed on her so heavily, the bills she’d not been able to keep up with because she’d not been able to work…
the responsibility… What if something happened again?
She wasn’t sure she could survive losing her home twice. It had nearly destroyed her last time.
She took a bite of the rich chocolate dessert, not tasting a single bit of it.
‘I’m glad that you’re okay,’ he said, the words stilted, and she smiled sadly.
Yes. She was okay.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, before taking another mouthful she didn’t really notice.
Antonio left his untouched, but waited patiently until she’d forced herself to finish the dessert because it would have been rude not to.
He paid for the meal and escorted her to where the car waited to take them back to the villa in a pensive kind of silence that Ivy didn’t feel the need to break.
It wasn’t uncomfortable, just an awareness.
But that awareness became something more as he opened the car door for her.
As they made the journey back and he didn’t reach for his phone to check emails.
She tried not to let her glance slide to the way that the moonlight outside the car landed on the angles and planes of his face—that he was sitting on her right side made it easier.
Subtle hints of his aftershave reached her from across the car and she was struck, viscerally, by the way he’d kissed her cheek at the wedding ceremony.
A timely reminder that she shouldn’t build sandcastle dreams about this man.
No, she hadn’t really expected him to come for her when she’d been in hospital. He’d never said that he would, or intimated that he even could. That wasn’t really the problem, she realised now. The problem was that she’d wanted him to.
Antonio glared, bleary-eyed, at the espresso Agata had just put in front of him. Last night, he’d watched Ivy head up the stairs towards the room he’d given her down the hall from his own, and returned to his office. But for the first time in years, it wasn’t to check emails or business reports.
Instead, it was to research everything he could on retinal detachment.
He’d even found a reference to Ivy’s case in some paywall protected journal, but it was enough to get the name of the ‘specialist’ she’d mentioned.
From there it had been a simple matter of sending a few ‘urgent’ emails so that he could discover as much as possible about what had happened to her.
He had been inconceivably arrogant. Not in terms of ego, but in terms of believing that his needs—the needs of his loved ones—overrode all else.
And while he still had his eye firmly on the goal of marrying Maria to meet the ridiculous terms of his grandfather’s will, it didn’t mean that he couldn’t find a way to make up for the fact that Ivy had been alone, in a very desperate state, and he’d chosen to ignore her.
There had only been one moment in his life when he’d felt that way—alone. Truly alone and utterly helpless. And the fact that he’d left Ivy feeling that way was a deeply bitter pill to swallow. Self-loathing was sharp, hard and swift.
In the kitchen, he noticed the makings of Ivy’s herbal tea by the sink and frowned.
‘Dov’è Ivy?’ he asked Agata.
She nodded out into the garden, where he could just see her sitting by the pool’s edge, the early morning sun kissing her skin where she wasn’t covered by a cream and fuchsia kaftan.
Her face was lifted to the sky and suddenly he had an image of her from six years ago, on a break from Affogato, that same peaceful smile as she’d turned page after page of an art book she’d been reading.
But from the information he’d gleaned, both from his research last night and what she’d told him, reading would be hard for her now. And, just like that, where he’d once seen a means to an end, all he saw now were questions.
Did she still read? Was working in a library hard for her? Why hadn’t she asked for money for herself when he’d offered it? He could have given her anything. What was money to him? he wondered carelessly. He had what he wanted, didn’t he? If not, then it was certainly within reach—thanks to Ivy.
As an orphan who had been abandoned by his biological parents and rejected by his adoptive father, Antonio knew better than to ask about her parents beyond what she’d told him, refusing to tread into emotionally painful areas for her.
He picked up the espresso and made his way out towards the pool, welcoming the scents of home on the breeze, the warmth of the sun-soaked ground evaporating the last traces of the past night’s mist. And yet, despite all these things that Antonio usually relished, he only had eyes for Ivy.
‘I can see why you like it here,’ she said as he approached, keeping her face tilted to the sky.
She wore a pair of sunglasses that must have been bought yesterday, because they were from an Italian designer that hadn’t made it over to the UK yet.
She sat on a blanket with her mint tea and her camera within easy reach.
It was surprising, the wave of satisfaction he felt at knowing that she was dressed in things he’d bought for her. Primal, in a way he didn’t have a right to feel about the woman he was in the process of divorcing.
He looked around, the view stretching far below into undulating verdant valleys in almost all directions. In the distance he could see the rooftops of San Gimignano, but the beauty, the peace of it, the sight of it, struck him somehow as so much more precious than it had yesterday morning.
‘My mother rented this villa just after her husband left us, when I was eight years old,’ he admitted. ‘We escaped the fallout of the press and the wrath of my grandfather who, despite how much he adored my mother, still struggled with the notion of a divorce.’
Ivy frowned. ‘He seemed to have got over that notion if he was happy enough for you to divorce me to marry Maria?’
Antonio sighed. ‘It was impressive just how much Gio could get over, in order to get what he wanted,’ he admitted, taking a seat on the cushioned chaise near to where she sat on the warm patio.
He frowned, feeling incredibly overdressed in his suit trousers, shirt and loafers, next to her soft, gentle cover-up that wasn’t really doing as advertised.
He caught glimpses of shapely thighs and a high-cut bikini and was so distracted that he didn’t realise Ivy had stopped looking at the sky and her watchful gaze was now on him.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For my mother’s husband? Or my grandfather?’ he asked.
‘Both.’
He shrugged dismissively, but she didn’t buy it.
The knowing curve of her lips told him that much.
The way she looked at him was different to the way other women looked at him.
It was as if she were trying to see behind his words, rather than wanting nothing beyond his bank account.
Everything about Ivy said that she didn’t want that from him, even if it would help her considerably. That made him distinctly uncomfortable.
He pulled at the collar of his shirt, eyeing up the crystal-clear water in the pool. He noticed Ivy looking longingly at it too.
‘You should go in. It looks blissful,’ Ivy said wistfully.
‘You’re the one dressed for it,’ he pointed out.
‘I haven’t been in the water since…’ She trailed off with a sigh. ‘I don’t know how unbalanced it would make me feel,’ she said, her eyes narrowing to express both thought and concern at the same time.
‘I’m here. You could…hold on to me.’
His offer was stilted, and so uncomfortably delivered Ivy wanted to laugh, but when she tore her gaze away from the pool, back to him, the laughter died on her tongue. His words might have been clumsy, but his eyes were intent. As if he were determined, half against his wishes.
And the problem was that she did want to. Her skin, warmed to the point of hot by the rays of the sun, would luxuriate in the cool temperature of the water. It would feel like heaven to slip into the pool and have an anchor.