Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
M ARCELLO ATE THE last of his surprisingly bland breakfast bagel, screwed the wrapping into a ball, and aimed it at the wastebin he kept in the corner of his office for this express purpose. ‘In one,’ he preened with a fist-pump.
But there was no droll, ‘Congratulations,’ to follow.
There hadn’t been for four days.
There was only him.
Only him, and he had an investment pitch to prepare for.
About to buzz Ryan into his office, there was a knock on the door and Ryan walked in.
Ryan was Victoria’s trial replacement, recommended by Victoria in her official resignation letter. Marcello was prepared to give him a chance at filling Victoria’s shoes but was not yet ready to have him occupy her desk.
He didn’t think he would ever be ready to see someone else occupying the space she’d made her own.
‘Excellent timing,’ he said. ‘I was about to call you. Can you prepare a report on Symon Tech for me?’
‘It’s already done, sir.’
‘Good work,’ he said, impressed.
Ryan looked sheepish. ‘I didn’t do it.’
He swallowed against the automatic tightening of his throat. ‘Victoria?’
Four days on and saying her name hadn’t got any easier.
The younger man nodded. ‘I’ll email it to you.’
‘Thank you.’ He let a beat of silence pass. When that wasn’t filled, said, ‘I presume there was something you wanted from me?’
‘Yes. Err... A few of us have, err, been, err...’
He had to fight his eyes from rolling. Victoria never prevaricated. ‘Get to the point.’
‘We’ve organised a whip-round to buy Victoria a leaving gift,’ Ryan blurted out.
This time the whole of Marcello’s body tightened.
‘And you are wanting me to contribute?’ He was already pulling his wallet out of his suit jacket pocket. In a digital world, Marcello never felt comfortable unless he had a wedge of cash on him. He pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills.
Ryan’s eyes widened.
‘Anything else?’ Marcello asked when the man who wished to fill the indispensable Victoria’s shoes continued hovering.
‘Would it be okay for me and Cate to finish early today so we can buy her the gift? We were going to buy it over the weekend but we’ve just learned she’ll be gone by then.’
‘Gone where?’ he asked casually.
‘Back to Ireland. Dani called her. She’s flying home tomorrow evening. Ideally we want to drop the gift to her apartment tonight.’
His heart contracted then pulsed with ice that spread into his every crevice.
Fingers digging into the mahogany of his desk, Marcello inclined his head and, through a smile he had to use imaginary marionette strings to pull off, said, ‘Do you know what you are going to buy her?’
‘We did but her leaving means we need to rethink it.’
‘She likes to wear rose-gold jewellery. Do you have a card for her?’ he added in case Ryan was tempted to ask how Marcello knew the kind of jewellery Victoria liked to wear. He wouldn’t have been able to answer. It was just something he knew.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. Bring it to me to sign and send me the report, and then you and Cate can leave. Take the day.’
Ryan’s eyes widened again.
‘And, Ryan?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘If I have to tell you one more time not to address me as sir, I will open up recruitment for the role. Capisce? ’
Ryan gave an uncertain smile and nod.
‘ Bene. If you ever meet my father you can address him as sir. Now get me the card and the Symon Tech report.’
Alone again in his office, Marcello blinked sharply, breathed deeply, and pulled his schedule up on his computer. He had a flight of his own tomorrow evening, to Rome, but there would be no chance of bumping into Victoria at the airport. Flying privately was a whole different experience from flying commercial.
The schedule before him had been inputted entirely by Victoria, who always thought and worked ahead. Her efficiency meant he was yet to let Ryan loose on it. Her efficiency meant that only her physical presence had been missed. He noted that meetings that had been arranged for the week the storm had shut Manhattan down had all been rearranged. She must have done it the afternoon he’d fallen asleep.
He took a deep breath to loosen the painful tightening in his chest. He was having to do that a lot.
A message pinged. The Symon Tech file.
Usually he would get Victoria to print off two copies, one for each of them to read through. Get her to write her thoughts in the margins. Compare notes. By the time they met with the company seeking his investment, he would have a good idea if he wished to go ahead with it. He was always open to changing his mind—you needed to meet the people behind the company before solidifying if you wished to invest with them. After all, he’d gone to the Hansons pitch two years ago thinking he would likely invest, but the directors had proved themselves to be such terrible people that their staff had deliberately sabotaged the pitch.
Cretins was what Victoria often referred to the directors of Hansons as. Cretins. Delivered in that Irish lilt that always put a smile on his face.
He was quite sure that in another week or so he’d be able to smile again without having to use imaginary marionette strings. One day soon, he hoped to remember her smile without having to struggle for breath.
Victoria hurried up the stairs to her apartment being careful not to squeeze her coffee cup too tightly and have the hot fluid spill over her hand.
Catching her breath, she unlocked the door and put her pastrami wrap and coffee on the small kitchen table. The washing had finished. She chucked the contents into the dryer then put her towels into the washing machine. That would be her last load. If she hadn’t overslept, it would already be done. But she had overslept, mainly because she’d still been awake at three a.m. willing her body to go to damned sleep.
She estimated she had just enough time for the towels to dry and for her to lob them in the suitcase before the car came to take her to the airport.
A car Marcello had arranged for her.
Not that he’d told her of it himself. Audrey had done that when Victoria had gone to the office the day before to hand in her company credit card and complete the company exit form. She’d timed it for when she knew Marcello would be in a meeting. She was functioning with what felt like all her limbs missing and a heart that had forgotten how to beat a normal rhythm. Just to imagine entering the skyscraper knowing he was under the same roof as her made blood pound in her head. Made it pound everywhere. She was holding up well enough, just focussing on tying up everything that needed tying up before she flew home to her family. To see him again would destroy that. She only had so much strength. Getting through each day was as much as she could cope with.
Before she’d left though, Audrey had asked what time she needed to be at the airport because ‘the boss’ had instructed Audrey to arrange for a Guardiola Group car and driver to transport her.
Victoria had no idea how she’d kept her legs upright or how she’d managed to answer without breaking down.
One day at a time had become a mantra, and she repeated it now while she forced her stomach to accept food it recoiled from. She managed half the wrap before binning the rest and dragging herself to the bedroom to clean the windows. She would give the apartment keys to the driver. If—and this was a big if—Ryan proved himself to Marcello and was given the job permanently, the keys would be passed to him.
On the bed lay her opened suitcases. Already packed in one was the Tiffany box containing a rose-gold bracelet that she’d been gifted from her colleagues. It was exquisite. It must have cost a fortune. Ryan, Cate and Dani had come to the apartment the night before with takeout and given it to her then, along with a giant leaving card. It had been a wonderful gesture and a wonderful evening, even if she’d had to deflect as to why she’d resigned and was moving back to Ireland. Missing her home was the excuse she’d used. She had the impression none of them believed her.
Was she doing the right thing? Running from her life and back to the home where she’d always felt like the cuckoo in the nest? Adapting to life in America had been hard but once she had adapted, it had been wonderful. New York was home.
But it had taken Marcello to feel like that. Taken Marcello to make her feel wanted. Needed. Remembered. To bring her to life and step into being the woman her teenage self had so longed to be, all long before they’d become lovers. And he hadn’t even tried.
And now he was tied to everything. There was not a single aspect of her life he hadn’t weaved his way into.
Although she’d promised herself to leave it until she was back in her childhood bedroom, she sat on the bed and reached into the case for the leaving card. She’d opened it in front of her expectant ex-colleagues but had only skimmed the hundreds of messages and signatures crammed into the white space. Now, she pored over it, searching, searching...
And then she found it. No bigger or smaller than any of the others it was nestled amongst.
Best wishes in wherever life takes you. Marcello .
A tear rolled down her cheek and landed with a plop on the card. It was the first tear she’d shed since leaving his apartment... Horror gripped her to realise the tear had landed on his name, and she dabbed frantically at it with her sleeve. Her efforts only made it worse. She’d smudged his name and his message. Smudged the one thing created by his hand that she had to take with her.
With a howl of anguish, she rolled into a ball and sobbed.
Marcello paced his office. Could not stop pacing. Kept looking out of the window over the Manhattan skyline. The fresh snow that had been falling on his drive to the office had stopped. The skies were clearing. Soon he would be up there in it. In two hours he would be on his way to the airport, on his way to Rome. In one hour and thirty minutes, Victoria would step into a company car and be taken to the same airport for a flight to the same continent but to a different country and for purposes that were the reverse of the same coin.
She was flying from pain. He was flying to it. And he wouldn’t even have her by his side to...
He stopped pacing abruptly.
A wave of revulsion at the direction his thoughts had tried to take washed through him.
Dio , he was despicable.
Was he seriously trying to suggest to himself that he’d only agreed to Benito’s request because he’d subconsciously thought having Victoria there would make it bearable?
There was a knock on his door quickly followed by it opening and Ryan stepping in.
‘It is customary to wait for an affirmative response before entering a room,’ Marcello snarled.
The shock on Ryan’s face brought him up short.
Running his fingers through his hair, he took a deep breath. ‘I apologise.’
‘No, my fault,’ Ryan said, backing out of the office.
A sudden image of Victoria backing into his apartment’s elevator flashed before him. The smiling wave she’d given him.
‘Ciao, amigo.’
‘Amigo is Spanish.’
‘I know.’
‘You can’t quit over a bagel.’
‘I just did.’
Suddenly he found himself unable to draw breath. The walls of his office were closing in on him, perspiration breaking out over his skin.
‘Sir?’
Ryan’s voice broke through.
Marcello looked at the young man doing everything he could to impress and prove he could replace Victoria.
But no one could replace her. No one could even come close. Not in any aspect of his life.
Head spinning, the walls crowding ever closer, he headed to the door. He needed air.
Travelling the elevator to the ground floor with no memory of getting in it, he stepped from the lobby into the crisp winter daylight of the pedestrian plaza his building faced. People going about their business at the end of the working day. Workers with their heads down. Tourists with their phones out snapping photos. A young father in unsuitable winter clothes holding the hand of a toddler dressed in a snowsuit...
‘You can’t quit over a bagel.’
‘I just did.’
He put a hand to his chest and tried to pull air into his uncooperative lungs.
The child stumbled. The father scooped him up. Marcello couldn’t tear his gaze from them.
Livia floated in his vision.
‘You are allowed to move on too, Marcello.’
‘I’m good.’
He closed his eyes. Opened them. The father was still carrying his toddler. He stared after them until they disappeared from sight.
He’d not been good since he’d touched his son’s forehead and panicked to feel the heat coming from it.
He’d run from the pain but had never run from Tommaso. He carried his child with him. A piece of him. He’d given the whole of his heart to his son and would never betray his memory and the purity of his love by letting anyone else in to share it. Would never open himself to pain again.
But pain had found its way back to him.
Pain and loss. Deeper than he could have believed he was still capable of feeling after Tommaso.
Work hard and play hard, that was what he’d dedicated himself to. Because life was fragile. Fleeting. You could close your eyes to the night and never see another sunrise, and all that would be left of you was an emptiness in the souls of those who’d loved you that nothing could fill.
Or so he’d believed.
It hadn’t been his office walls closing in on him, it had been the world. His world. His world without Victoria.
She was his world. His everything.
He raised his head, closed his eyes and spoke a prayer to his son.
And then he went back into the lobby and spoke to the nearest doorman. ‘I need a car. Now.’
At Marcello’s second stop, he jumped out of the car and slid through the slush to the door. On the side of it a list of apartment numbers but no names.
He’d never visited the apartment before. Had no idea what number it was.
Swearing loudly, he called Ryan. The car for Victoria would be arriving at any moment.
The tumble dryer beeped at the same moment Victoria’s intercom rang.
She closed her eyes.
So this was it, then.
Dully, she pressed the button to open the entrance door. She’d been told the driver would carry her cases to the car. Her life, all packed away. All except three towels. She could only hope they’d actually dried.
She supposed the towels being a little damp wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t like her parents didn’t have a washing machine or anything.
She wouldn’t stay with them for long. That much she’d decided. She had her nest egg plus the extra three months’ salary unexpectedly credited to her bank account only that morning. Marcello generous to the very end, and now she could easily afford to put down a deposit on a home of her own. Maybe afford to buy a home for herself outright. Maybe ask Grandma Brigit if she’d like to move in with her. At least her dragon breath would keep Victoria warm and her sharp tongue keep her on her toes. Stop her falling into the pit of despair she was so close to the edge of. The tears she’d wept earlier had been a temporary stem on the pain but she was barely clinging on.
Her decision had never felt so real as it did in that moment.
In a few hours she would no longer share the same sky as Marcello and she was going to have to find a way to live with that.
Although expected, the knock on her door made her jump. She hadn’t moved from the intercom.
Pulling herself together, she yanked the door open, took one look at the man standing there and, with a whimper, reflexively closed it.
Adrenaline shooting through her, hand over her mouth, she staggered backwards.
The voice she loved was faint through the reinforced safety door.
‘Please, bella , let me in.’
She shook her head frantically as if he could see her, the only word in her head an echoing no .
Not now. Not when she’d spent the whole week fighting the craving to seek him out and tell him she’d changed her mind, that she would rather suffer twelve-hour days by his side knowing he would never love her than spend another second without him.
She’d never understood what it felt like to miss someone before. Truly miss them, as an ache in her very soul.
She understood it now.
‘I know this is terrible timing but there are things I need to say to you, and I want to say them to you , not to a door. Please let me in.’
Shaking inside and out, she stared through the blinding tears at the door.
After she’d wiped the tears, it took a burst of impetus to make her body move and open it.
Bright but dull blue eyes captured hers. Broad shoulders rose. ‘Thank you.’
It hurt to even look at him.
Turning her face, she whispered, ‘I’m leaving in a few minutes.’
He closed the door.
She heard him take a deep breath. ‘I know, and I’m here to beg you not to go.’
The howl that echoed in the room came from her own throat.
‘Please, bella , come back to me,’ he begged. ‘Don’t go. Come back. I can’t function without you.’
Her heart and stomach plummeted to her toes. Ryan had confided that he was finding it hard to gel with Marcello and that he believed it obvious Marcello thought him a poor replacement for her.
Stumbling to the tumble dryer, she groped for the towels and hugged them tight to her chest. She had no idea how she made her mouth work. ‘Look, Marcello, I know Ryan can be a little earnest but he has great—’
‘Not as my EA,’ he interrupted.
She blinked hard.
He stepped over to her and gently took the towels she was using as a shield from her arms, and placed them on the edge of the table. Then he gazed down at her and, with a long sigh, stroked her cheek. ‘Victoria, I want you to stay with me as my wife. I want to marry you.’
His words were such a shock that it took a long moment to fully absorb them.
Absorbing them only added to the distress.
Swiping at his hands, she backed away from him so quickly that she bashed into the table.
‘I never thought you were capable of such cruelty,’ she cried. ‘To play on my feelings like this, just because you can’t adjust to having—’
The precariously placed towels fell to the floor. With them fell a glittering ring.
Marcello watched Victoria’s gaze fall on the ring he’d raced back to his apartment to get and had held tightly the whole way to her, the ring he’d forgotten he was holding the moment he’d looked at her for the first time in what felt like a whole life. He must have let go of it when he’d taken the pile of towels from her without even realising.
Crouching down in the stunned silence, he picked it up then slid onto his knees before her and gazed at her until her wide eyes slowly turned back to him.
It killed him to see the misery contained in them. The redness ringing them. The dullness of her complexion.
He took hold of her hand. It was cold.
‘I love you, bella ,’ he said quietly. ‘That is why I want you to stay. I want you to come back to me because I cannot live without you.’
Her chin was wobbling. Her beautiful little chin with the faint little cleft.
He tightened his hold on her hand. ‘I never forgot you because you caught me spellbound the moment I saw the look on your face at the final piece of sabotage your old colleagues did for that pitch. I carried that look with me for months. I carried your name. I gave Denise a maternity package my finance team told me I was mad to give but I did not care, and do you know why?’
She gave the smallest shake of her head.
‘I did not care because deep down I knew it meant she would never come back and that I could bring you in as her replacement.’
She sucked in a small breath.
He smiled wanly and kissed her fingers. ‘All this time, Victoria. I have loved you all this time and I was too damned blind and too damned scared to see it. I let you go and sabotaged my own happiness because I thought there was no room left in my heart, but you are in there with him, and I swear to you, there is room in there for all the children you want to have with me. I want them too.’ Tears filled his eyes, and he shook his head, still hardly able to believe the truth and the depth of his feelings. ‘It has taken me eleven years to learn that although the past cannot be changed, the future does not have to be stuck there. You...’ He sighed and kissed her fingers again. Was he imagining that they were warming...?
Keeping hold of her hand, he spread her fingers out and slid the ring on her wedding finger. ‘This belonged to my grandmother. My grandfather gave it to me over Christmas. He knew—my whole damn family knew—that my heart had opened for someone...you...but that I needed the push to open my eyes.’
He smiled again at the widening of her eyes. ‘I needed the push. All the pushes. My heart knew but the rest of me refused to see, and now it is all I can see and all I can feel. I have run from pain before but I cannot run from this...there is nowhere for me to run to. I do not know what the spell is you have cast on me but you have brought me back to life. I can get through anything if I have you with me. You are in my heart and my soul—you are my soul. My soul mate. You make each day a joy to live. Stay with me, please. Forgive me for being so blind, and stay with me for ever and let me love you the way you deserve to be loved, which is entirely for yourself because you are the best person in the world and just to see your face is enough to make my heart sing. Please, Victoria, stay with me. Marry me.’
Warm fingers tentatively touched his head and then slid down his cheek as she sank to her knees. ‘Say it again,’ she whispered.
‘Which part?’
‘The part about loving me.’
He gazed deep into the hazel eyes he would love for ever. ‘I love you.’
A tentative smile. ‘Again.’
‘I love you.’
A wider smile. ‘One for luck.’
Laughter broke free and he kissed her. ‘I love you.’
Victoria wound her arms around Marcello’s neck and stared in wonder at the face that had become the most beloved face in the whole of her world. ‘I thought I would never see you again.’
‘Forgive me. I never wanted to cause you pain.’
‘I know,’ she said softly. She’d always known what she meant to him but had never dared believe he would allow his heart to open enough to embrace it.
To feel the embrace of his love... She expelled the happiest sigh of her life. ‘I love you, Marcello.’
‘And I love you.’
‘Say it again.’
‘I love you.’ He cupped her cheek and kissed her deeply. ‘Marry me and I will show it and say it every day for the rest of my life. Marry me and let us spend every day of the rest of our lives together.’
‘I like the sound of that.’
‘Then you will marry me?’
‘As soon as we can.’
She didn’t just see his smile but felt it right in her heart.
‘I like the sound of that .’ He kissed her again. ‘Victoria Guardiola. My wife and business partner.’
‘Business partner?’
A slow nod and smile, all without the tip of his nose leaving hers. ‘Everything I have is yours. Let us take on the world together.’
Their next kiss was so deep and passionate, and the joy bursting from Victoria’s heart so loud, that she failed to hear the intercom buzz, announcing the driver’s arrival.
It didn’t matter. She was exactly where she was meant to be.