Chapter Twenty-Three
How many days was it since Leo had left? Eight.
How many times had Jade called his phone and reached only voicemail? Felt like hundreds. The number of times she’d thought of Leo with a great empty hollow inside her? Millions.
It was bearable during the day, because the pensione distracted her.
Erin and Rosalie were out more, exploring Como and the lake as new employees Luigi and Nina had started.
They were experienced hands. Luigi, a small man, said, ‘Sì, sì,’ whenever asked to do anything, as if perpetually in top gear.
Nina had three young children at home and took out her phone to show you their photos at the least excuse, but she worked well too.
Unexpectedly, Jade missed the quiet presence of Geneva.
They’d met for coffee one afternoon, but her mother had been resolute in refusing to return to Three Sisters.
‘No, non posso. I have a job in a bar now,’ she’d said.
‘This time it is true.’ She seemed happier and wore a pretty dress, so maybe it was.
Jade missed Vittoria and Carlotta too, of course, but accepted their lives had diverged.
Leo’s absence, however? That was on Jade, and an enormous black cloud over her head. He’d been right. She’d been waiting for him to fail. Leave her. And she’d helped him exit . . .
Gritty-eyed and heartsick, each evening she visited Villetta Nascosta and knocked, though it was obvious there was no one home. Sheenagh denied hearing from him and seemed so disappointed in Jade that a fresh silence had grown between them.
On the ninth night, Jade rounded a turn in the path and stopped breathing. A light streamed from the open door of Villetta Nascosta.
Her heart leapt, then flopped into her stomach with a giant WHUMP.
Advancing slowly, she thought her pounding blood might be louder than the scrape of her footsteps on the path. Leo had certainly heard something as he appeared, silhouetted, and stared into the early dusk.
Throat dry, she stepped onto the terrace. ‘Hi.’ Beyond him, she saw a suitcase. He could be in the process of unpacking . . . or packing.
‘Hi,’ he replied guardedly, filling the doorway as if reluctant to let her into his space. Since she’d last seen him, he’d had a haircut, shorter than she’d ever seen him wear it. It made his browbone more prominent and his jaw stronger. Or maybe it was just that his expression was hard.
‘I owe you a giant apology,’ she said, swallowing. ‘I’ve left messages and I’ve called round every night.’
He nodded, not exactly reaching to grasp her olive branch.
Doggedly, she continued. ‘I’m sorry for leaping to conclusions.
You’d done nothing to make me assume you were trying to grab Three Sisters from me.
I’d had an emotional meeting with Geneva and I went into overwhelm.
I suffered some . . . misconnection over .
. . everything. I suppose that Erin being so pleased with herself, and you looking the same, it seemed as if everything I’d been scared of was happening. ’
‘I understand. You’d spent months fighting the feeling that your sisters were interlopers,’ he said tonelessly.
‘That’s being generous,’ she answered dubiously.
‘After everything we’d been to each other I had no right .
. .’ Her voice cracked. When he left her floundering, she asked, ‘Are you going back to the UK for good?’ She moistened her lips.
‘To Isabella?’ Privately, she thought Isabella a nightmare, but he’d had a years-long relationship with her. She was also blonde and gorgeous.
His expression shuttered.
Swallowing back tears when he didn’t deny it, she backed away, almost tripping off the terrace. ‘Well. Sorry. I can see why . . . I just wanted to say that I was wrong to accuse you.’
‘Thanks.’ Then, as Jade went to turn away, he added, ‘Actually, I’ve been kayaking.’
She blinked away tears to try to read his expression. ‘Kayaking?’ she repeated stupidly. ‘With Isabella?’ That was hard to picture.
His lips relaxed, if only by a fraction.
‘Erm . . . hardly her thing. I’ve only heard from her in texts to say Teddy turned up at the Black Falcon wanting to talk and she told him to leave.
He said the police have seized his passport.
I’ll probably have to make a statement.’ He shrugged, as if putting all that behind him.
‘My mate Bryce arranged the trip for his burnt-out managerial friends. I was the last-minute sub when some young executive’s annual leave was rescinded.
The deal was to leave our phones at his house and go whitewater kayaking on the River Derwent.
Living in tents. Leaving our usual lives behind.
They were disconnecting from work, while I was getting my head on straight and deciding what I wanted. ’
Jade was desperate to ask what that was, but didn’t really feel in a position to demand an explanation.
He ran his hand over his cropped hair, as if surprised to find a short pelt rather than tousled locks. ‘Is your insurance company sorted?’
Bewildered by this abrupt change of subject, she nodded. ‘Yes, they’ve seen sense, though now they’re huffing and puffing about wanting other quotes apart from Mario’s.’ Carefully, she added, ‘But if they hadn’t, I would have dealt with it.’
‘Good.’ Abruptly, he stepped back. ‘Scotch? I don’t have Ledaig, but I have Talisker.’
It was so unexpected that she remained where she was.
Then heat burst into life in two places in her body – one her heart and one somewhere more primal and pleasurable.
She glided past him, breathing in his musky male scent that told her he probably hadn’t showered yet after the flight.
She didn’t care – she might even like it – because it was Leo.
Once she was inside, he closed the door behind her. ‘Guess what business I’m moving on to next.’
She halted, eyeing the open suitcase. It took her a moment to arrange her features into a smile. ‘Those apartments in Como?’ She didn’t hold out much hope.
He shook his head. ‘Already off the market. They were too good a deal to hang around for long.’ He stepped closer, his nostrils flaring as if catching and enjoying a familiar scent.
‘Casa Leonardo, in Riva?’ she asked with even less hope.
He edged closer still, until his heat enveloped her. ‘Someone else’s good deal. Not mine.’
She stood motionless, her gaze turned up to his as she waited, heart seeming to kick the breath from her lungs.
A smile jumped into his eyes. ‘You’ll never guess, so I’ll tell you. Mum and Papà want to retire, so Massimo asked if I’d come back to Villa Panorama.’
His words were so unexpected that they almost jolted her from her feet. ‘Seriously? And you said yes? But you never wanted to be part of it. Ever. You wanted it so little that you not only left Como, but stayed away for sixteen years.’
He nodded, moving into the kitchen area and taking whisky from one cupboard and tumblers from another.
‘I was shocked when Massi put it to me. But in a weirdly good way. I’d been hanging back from committing to other projects.
Even something perfect on paper never quite touched me here.
’ He tapped his chest, over his heart. ‘Yet the second Massi made the offer, I wanted in. It felt right.’
He added a cube of ice to each glass, then emerged from behind the breakfast bar and passed a whisky to her.
‘That night when Massi and Sofi came to celebrate their scan,’ he went on, ‘I was about to tell you that we’d had a family conference and agreed that what had happened at Three Sisters when Mairead died was a lesson.
When Massi and I inherit, it will be tricky if he’s manager here and yet I own half of it.
Also, as Mum said, it’ll be different working with Massi to working for Mum and Papà. ’
Clutching the small tumbler, she processed his words. ‘But you won’t have it all to yourself, with no partners to screw you over.’
His expression became pained. ‘I said all that in the aftermath of being royally shafted by Isabella and Teddy. Then, when I thought I’d lost everything because Teddy almost got away with my money, it made me re-evaluate.
If I join the business, Mum and Papà can retire completely.
Massi will have time to spend with his new daughter – it definitely is a girl, by the way.
They’ve had another scan. We’re going to lay out clear lines of responsibility, so we don’t trample on each other’s toes.
So I’ll be staying here, in Como, with a big wodge of money to spend on an apartment. ’
While she tried to absorb this torrent of information, and adjust to the knowledge that he wasn’t leaving, either for Isabella or otherwise, he reached out and took her hand. ‘Have you eaten this evening?’
She shook her head. Then amended that to, ‘Oh, a cereal bar.’
He drew closer. ‘Can you stay for dinner? I’ll order something over from the hotel.’
Heart beginning to trot at the soft expression in his eyes, she nodded, hardly daring to believe where the evening was going after such an unpromising start.
‘And . . .’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Can you stay afterwards? Are those sisters of yours on the insurance now?’ With his other hand, he toyed with a bunch of curls dangling down her arm.
‘I’ve left the insurance company in no doubt,’ she said huskily, heart hammering.
As he seemed to be waiting for her to react to him, she put down her glass and slipped her arms around his neck – tentatively, because it was hard to believe what she’d just heard after the last horrible days. ‘Are you propositioning me?’
‘Definitely, amore.’ He dipped his head and tasted her lips.
Suddenly he pulled her hard against him, his voice husky.
‘I’ve spent the time away from you cursing myself as a prideful moron for marching out of Three Sisters rather than simply explaining.
I knew the strain you’d been under, but I showed no understanding at all.
I should have realised that you wouldn’t need me to rescue you, but if you did it was you I should discuss it with – not your sisters. ’
‘And you didn’t call,’ she reminded him. ‘After I left you a voicemail.’
‘I didn’t hear it until we got back to Bryce’s house.’ He rested his forehead against hers. ‘But I flew straight home as soon as I did, to talk to you face to face, to leave no room for mistakes or misunderstandings. It’s our whole future I’m interested in now.’
Her voice locked itself away in her throat so she showed her approval with kisses, enjoying the brush of his stubble and his arms hard and tight around her. ‘Your mum must be stoked that you’re staying at Villa Panorama,’ she managed to croak, when she finally came up for air.
‘Ah,’ he said wickedly. ‘I haven’t told her and Papà my final decision yet. I needed to know that this –’ he kissed her long and deep once more ‘– was going to be OK. We should go and tell them together.’
She gave a low laugh and took his hand to lead him further into Villetta Nascosta, and his bed. ‘When they hear the news, they won’t mind having had to wait.’