Chapter Thirteen #2
He stared at her, wondering if he was imagining this. Wondering if somehow, he’d conjured up a version of Jamie that didn’t actually exist.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that I want us to try again.’ She expelled a long, slow breath. ‘I know how unbearable it was, in the end. I know how much of a toll it took on both of us. But I’m different now. I’ve finally accepted this situation. And with that, I think we could just go back, be like we were before.’
This was the last thing he’d expected to happen today and the last thing, he realised, that he wanted.
‘Jamie,’ he sighed softly. But she was moving, lifting her hands to his chest, touching him right there where his heart was thumping.
‘Just think about it,’ she urged. ‘You don’t need to settle for marrying someone you don’t love.
I don’t care what the business benefits are—you deserve to be happy.
I want to make you happy.’ She lifted up onto her tiptoes and kissed him then, like they’d kissed a thousand times before.
Like they’d kissed in their marriage, every single damned day.
But with each shift of her mouth, cell by cell his body shut down, turning to ice.
Just a few seconds later, he stepped back and shook his head.
‘I don’t need to think about it, Jamie. I’m pleased for you—so pleased that you’re finally going to get your dream of being a mother—but I’m engaged to someone else. ’
‘And that’s the only reason you won’t consider this?’
‘No,’ he said, gently. ‘You and I were great, for a while. We really were. But I think we both know that over time, we fell out of love.’
Her smile was ghostly. ‘No, we didn’t,’ she whispered.
‘You just wish that were the case.’ She moved to the front door.
Dante didn’t see any point in disputing the facts of their relationship even when he knew, in every fibre of his being, that Jamie was wrong.
He didn’t love her now and he was starting to wonder if he ever really had loved her—in the way a man should love the person he intends to spend the rest of his life with.
‘Think about it, Dante. I’m offering you the world. ’
Except his world had changed shape a lot since meeting Charlotte and he didn’t have to think very hard to realise why...
* * *
Charlotte took a long time at the grocery store. She tried checking in with Jane, grabbed a coffee, ambled up and down each aisle, before finally paying and making her way back to Dante’s. She deliberately prevaricated, because she wanted to give Jamie and Dante time to talk.
Because she wasn’t planning to look like some jealous girlfriend, even when jealousy was practically eating her alive.
The driver was waiting for her in the parking lot.
As she approached he stepped out to help her load the bags into the trunk.
When they pulled up outside Dante’s Charlotte hesitated for a moment before hopping out and grabbing the shopping.
The driver offered to help once more, but she demurred.
It was only four bags. She could manage.
She approached the house with her head bent, so didn’t see the movement at first. It was only when she lifted her gaze to the door, frowning and wondering what happened next, that she saw that Jamie was standing out the front. Waiting.
She tried to smile, but everything suddenly felt onerous. Way too hard. She approached the other woman with a sinking feeling in the pit of her gut.
‘Hi. You must be Jamie,’ she said, a little unevenly.
‘Yeah, that’s me. And you’re Charlotte.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Allegra speaks very highly of you,’ the other woman said, glancing over her shoulder a little guiltily, towards the house.
Allegra, Charlotte noted. Not Dante.
‘She’s very sweet.’
‘Yes, she is. They both are,’ Jamie continued. ‘I know Dante has this big, tough exterior, but beneath it, he’s such a softie.’
Anger flooded Charlotte. If she was a cartoon character, steam would have started spurting from her ears.
To be told anything about Dante rankled.
When it really shouldn’t! Naturally Jamie knew him better than Charlotte.
But a hot possessive streak was overtaking every rational part of Charlotte’s brain.
‘Anyway,’ Charlotte said, lifting the bags a little higher. ‘I’d better get this in the fridge.’
‘Wait,’ Jamie’s voice was urgent now. ‘I just need a moment.’
Charlotte’s throat ached suddenly. Her shoulders felt weighted down.
‘Dante is a great guy,’ she said. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s going on between the two of you, and why he feels like he has to help you with this whole fake engagement or whatever, but before you make him go through with it, I thought you should know something.’
Charlotte could hardly breathe.
The insults just kept coming.
The fact that Dante had told Jamie about their arrangement—or, at least, that they weren’t a real couple. The fact that Jamie was implying Dante didn’t actually want to go through with it. That it was all because he felt a sense of obligation. The very bottom fell out of Charlotte’s world.
‘I’m still in love with him,’ Jamie said. ‘He’s not the kind of guy you easily get over. And the thing is, I think he still loves me.’
Charlotte blinked at the other woman, wondering if she had any idea how much this was hurting her to hear.
‘That’s between you and Dante,’ she said. ‘If it’s true, though, I would never stand in his way.’
Jamie puffed out a breath of relief. ‘Oh, good. That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say. Will you tell him that? Tell him he’s off the hook, Charlotte?’
Charlotte stared at the other woman, not trusting herself to speak. She just nodded, as a thousand childhood fears and hurts slammed right back into her.
Feeling unwanted.
Surplus to requirements.
Loving someone and wanting, wishing, hoping they would love you back, when they just didn’t have it in them.
Thrust upon someone who wished she’d never been born.
There was second-hand trauma, too, when she thought of her mother and how she’d loved a man her whole adult life who’d already been in love with someone else.
It had destroyed her mother and Charlotte knew it would destroy her, too.
‘Thank you so much,’ Jamie cooed. ‘Allegra’s right. You’re quite lovely.’ And with that, the harbinger of Charlotte’s doom spun on her sneakered heel and sashayed elegantly down the street.
* * *
‘Cristo, you took your sweet time,’ Dante muttered, a moment after hearing the front door shut and dragging a hand through his hair as he came into the foyer to find Charlotte standing there, holding paper bags, staring into space.
She looked...pale.
‘Are you ill?’
Her eyes slid to his, staring at him, her lips parted, her cheeks almost paper white.
‘Charlotte, for the love of God, sit down, please, before you pass out.’
‘I’m okay,’ she husked, her brow furrowing. ‘I have to put these in the fridge.’
But she made no attempt to move. She just stared at him, as if she’d never seen him before.
Concern became a tide, surging through him. Whatever was happening he needed to know immediately. He needed to fix it. Even accepting that he couldn’t fix everything for everyone, he knew he would try for Charlotte. He knew she deserved that.
‘Charlotte?’
‘I met Jamie,’ she blurted out, her brows knitting together.
He swore under his breath, crossing to her, needing...something. He didn’t know what. So he took the bags, at the very least, to relieve her of their weight, and placed them onto the tiled floor.
‘When did you meet Jamie?’ he asked, focusing on that, first.
‘Just now. Outside.’ She shivered. ‘She waited for me.’
He felt something odd—a panic he hadn’t known before. An anger, too, that his ex-wife had somehow slipped right inside the bubble he and Charlotte had made in Tuscany. He’d known reality would intrude, but he hadn’t expected that kind of reality. He didn’t want it.
Charlotte’s lip tugged between her teeth. ‘You told her about us.’
He bit back a groan, swiftly followed by a curse. ‘Yes.’ He couldn’t, after all, deny it.
‘You told her this is a fake relationship,’ Charlotte nodded. If he could have gone back in time and sewn his lips shut to stop that revelation escaping, he would have.
‘I told her that, yes.’
Charlotte nodded, but her shoulders were slumped and she looked confused. Or wounded. Which was so much worse.
He moved quickly then, putting his hands on her hips, needing to hold her, hoping that would help her understand. ‘When I called to tell her we were engaged, she was upset. I told her that our marriage was of a practical nature. I told her we weren’t in love.’
It was what they’d agreed to, what they’d said to each other over and over again, so why did Charlotte now look as though he’d physically wounded her?
‘I didn’t know you’d told her. Or anyone. I wasn’t prepared...’
‘It’s just Jamie,’ he promised. ‘She won’t tell anyone. I trust her.’
Charlotte’s eyes opened and lanced him with the directness of her stare. ‘It’s not about that.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘I can’t do this.’
The words were simple enough, but he didn’t follow her thought process. ‘Talk about Jamie?’
She shook her head. ‘Marry you.’ This time, she whispered, the words almost drowned out by the rushing of blood through his ears. ‘I’d never forgive myself, Dante.’ Her lips twisted in a bitter half-smile. ‘You’re off the hook.’
‘Off the hook?’ he repeated, wondering where the hell she’d have gotten the idea he wanted to be off the hook.
‘Yes. You can go back to Jamie. You should be with her. Be with who you love. You should be happy.’
He swore then. ‘Is that what she told you?’
Charlotte turned away from him, pulling out of his grip, moving back towards the front door. His heart accelerated. His head ached. Don’t leave me.
‘It’s not true, cara. I don’t want to be with her.’