Chapter Thirteen
‘ARE YOU SURE?’ Beth whispered. Her head was reeling.
‘One hundred per cent,’ Erika said, sounding almost as dazed as Beth felt. ‘Miss Amore is owned by your husband. He bought it eight years ago.’
‘But…’ It didn’t make any sense. How did Xavi own it? Why did he own it? And why had he never mentioned it? ‘Do you have the date he took ownership of it?’
Erika gave her the date. It was two months after Beth had started her internship there. If she was remembering her dates rightly, it was around the time she’d been offered a permanent contract.
‘Do you still want to make contact yourself about buying it?’ Erika asked cautiously.
‘I don’t know what I want.’ Her head was reeling too much to think.
Just when she thought she had herself on a vaguely even keel, she was knocked for six again.
The call over, she stroked under Diego’s ears in the way he so liked, remembering that morning when she’d walked into the dining room and found Xavi stroking Diego in the same way.
In the four days they’d been apart, she’d received one message from him. It had been a response to her message after she’d seen the doctor and confirmed that all was well with the baby.
Thanks for letting me know—it’s appreciated. Please let me know when you book the scan.
And that had been it.
Excised again.
Except this time the excising had come from her. She’d been the one to walk away.
She wished it made her feel better about things, but it didn’t. She wished transferring the entirety of the Rosbel Group’s shares she’d bought into Xavi’s name made her feel better, but it didn’t.
Those who said the first cut was the deepest had never lived with the same wound being cut back open with a deeper, sharper blade.
She wished she’d handled it all better from the start. Wished she’d been honest with him about how she felt. If she’d told him all the stuff she’d posted over the years and her bright and happy demeanour whenever she was in his company had been a front, he would have run a mile…
And their baby wouldn’t have been conceived, so she retracted that wish.
Who was to say, though, that Xavi would have run a mile? He’d wanted her shares. He would have done anything for them.
He’d wanted her shares, but he’d wanted her, too, and though it hurt her to think it, the more she thought back on their time together, the more certain she was that he loved her, too, which only made her heart hurt even more.
She wouldn’t have believed there was anything left of her heart to break, but remembering how he’d stayed with her all those days of her illness did it every time.
Feeling tears prickle, she closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing. After eight years of her tear ducts refusing to work, they were making up for lost time with overtime added in. All she seemed to do was cry, and crying was no good when she was trying to plan her and the baby’s future.
This pregnancy felt different. She couldn’t explain why. It just did. And that made her dare to hope that this time the outcome would be different.
She would stay in Madrid. No running back to England like last time.
Her baby deserved to grow up in a city where both its parents lived, even if they couldn’t live together.
She’d put on a front before around Xavi.
Given time, she could do the same again for their baby’s sake.
After all, she was the queen of fake it till you make it. She just needed time.
Her intercom rang, making her jump.
Bloody paparazzi. They’d been staking out the villa. She’d hoped her statement would be enough to send them on their way, but nope. Thank God for Salma. She’d slipped out and stocked up on food…and here she was, looking troubled.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Xavi’s at the gate.’
Her heart punched her. She cleared her throat. ‘Did he say what he wants?’
‘No. Only that he’s here to see you.’
Gently pushing Diego off her lap, she got to her feet and nodded. ‘Okay. Let him in.’
Somehow, she managed to stagger up to her room. Struggling to breathe, she ran a brush through her lank hair, added a sweep of colour over her wan cheeks and a touch—only a touch; her hands were shaking—of mascara to her lashes.
Looking only a little less like death warmed up, she gripped the banister tightly as she made her way back down the stairs.
She was three steps from the bottom when the door opened, and a tall, lean figure holding a document folder stepped into the villa.
Her foot stopped mid-air. A moment later, Diego went charging over to him.
Beth used the moment he spent petting the dog to put her foot back on the step. It took a conscious effort to do it.
Their eyes met.
She thought she was going to be sick.
Lifting her chin, she wrapped her cardigan—she couldn’t seem to get warm despite the heat—across her chest and said in a voice that hinted at normality, ‘Hello, Xavi. To what do I owe the honour?’
He stared at her for a long moment, and in that stare she took him in. The unkempt hair. The unkempt beard. The shirt and trousers that looked like they’d been slept in. The bags under his red eyes and the lines that had deepened into grooves on his face.
And he took her in, too, and she knew he was seeing the lankness of her ineffectually brushed hair and the bruises beneath her red eyes.
Terrified she was going to burst into tears, she reached the floor and turned towards the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’
‘Please.’
With the excuse of fixing him a coffee and making herself a decaffeinated tea from the supply of English teabags Salma had bought her, Beth kept her back to him and filled the kettle. ‘So, why are you here? Is it to do with the business?’
‘In a way.’ His voice sounded as rough as he looked. ‘The shares you gave me… I’ve transferred them back into your name. I know it’s unnecessary, but I’ve printed them off for—’
‘No!’ Her refutation came out as a wail, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut to better control herself. ‘Xavi, I don’t want them. I don’t even want the shares I’ve got.’
‘Then sell them. Sell them all. Do whatever you want with them, they’re yours, but before you make a decision, know I’ve tendered my resignation from the Rosbel Group. An official press announcement will be released at six p.m.’
She jolted and came within a whisker of spinning around to look at him. Her stare flicked to her watch. It would be 6 p.m. in two minutes.
Her legs trembling as badly as her arms, she leaned her stomach into the counter and added a scoop of fresh coffee beans into the machine, except she missed and the beans went scattering over the surface and floor.
Charging over to the cleaning cupboard on the other side of the kitchen for the dustpan, she was on her hands and knees clearing her mess before she was able to clear her constricted throat and ask, ‘Why have you done that?’
‘Beth, please stop doing that.’
‘It needs to be done. Why have you resigned?’
He crouched down in front of her and put his hand on her wrist. ‘Please, Beth, stop.’
She snatched her hand away, coffee beans spilling out of the dustpan in the process, and shook her head, terrified to look at him, terrified the tears blinding her were going to fall. ‘Please go,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not ready to pretend to be normal around you.’
‘I resigned because I love my wife.’
Her whimper at this was so faint Xavi could have believed he’d imagined it, but the way his heart ripped at the sound… Oh, he deserved to be strung up for what he’d done to her.
‘Beth, those shares are yours. I could have bought them when your grandfather died, but the reason I didn’t had nothing to do with keeping the de la Rosa and Belmonte partnership going like I said—it was so I had a legitimate reason to bring you back into my life.
It wasn’t the shares I wanted, it was you. ’
A truth he’d finally acknowledged on his sister’s shoulder when the truth had refused to be hidden away any longer under the flood of decades of suppressed emotion that had poured out of him.
She rocked back onto her bottom and drew her knees to her chin.
‘I’m sorry, mi vida,’ he said starkly. ‘I’m sorry for everything.
All the pain I’ve caused you. All the pain I’ve put us both through.
All the wasted years. My feelings for you…
I have loved you since the day I met you, and I will love you to the day I die.
I’ve buried myself in work all these years, telling myself I’m continuing my father’s legacy when all I was doing was selfishly burying myself from the pain of missing you. ’
With a deep sigh, he sank to his backside and looked at her, wishing he could touch her, wishing she would open her eyes.
‘Losing my father and seeing my mother lose herself in grief broke something in me,’ he said quietly.
‘You fixed it without me even noticing. You came into my life, this impulsive, vibrant, affectionate redhead, and you healed me, but when I spent that time away from you in Milan and realised the mistakes I’d been making because of my need to just be with you, I pulled away from you and then pushed you away from me because I couldn’t handle just how deeply in love with you I’d fallen.
I had no control over it, and I needed control, Beth.
You were right about that, as you were right about so much else.
I needed to control everything, and with you, I had none.
I never have, and I was a fool to think I could bring you back into my life and not lose my head all over again.