Fiancée For The Cameras (Mills & Boon Modern)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S HE SAID NOTHING in reply for so long that Andrea began to wonder if she’d heard him at all. Through the long, hot shower he carried her to, through the sudden foray into the kitchen in their robes when her stomach growled violently, through their return to his bedroom—giggling, after Flora had found them in the kitchen and watched them with red streaking her own cheeks—to feeding each other bits of cheese and figs and grapes and washing it down with wine. Through another bout of sex after Monica had demanded to know one of his fantasies and he had bent her over the arm of the couch while they watched each other in the full-length mirror. He began to wonder if he had said it at all.

Even wondering that, Andrea had fallen into a sort of blissful sleep, wrapped around her, after two days of emotional turmoil. When he suddenly startled awake, dawn was streaking the sky with fingers of pink, and the side where Monica slept was not only empty but cold, too. Again.

He shot to his feet, pulled on his sweatpants and followed her voice into the closet to find her packing her suitcase with her cell phone clutched to her ear.

He lasted two minutes before he grabbed the phone, ended the call without checking who it was and threw it behind him until it clanged against the floor with a loud thud. “Why are you packing?”

“You brute! That was my phone.”

Hands on his hips, he gathered all the patience he could find within himself. There was a strange flutter in his chest, like a panicked bird beating its wings. “Why are you packing, Monica?”

“I have to leave,” she said, shying away from his gaze, folding a sweater.

Shocked beyond reason, he grabbed her wrist, gentling his hold as he always did, and pulled her behind him back to the bedroom. He turned all the lights on and was struck by the sight of her anew. Deep shadows cradled her eyes as she wrapped her arms around herself. She looked as if she hadn’t slept a wink. Andrea ran a hand over his face, willing his anger to cool, his spiraling emotions to plateau.

“Leave for where, bella ? And why are you packing at dawn, like some thief stealing away before morning hits?”

“I wasn’t going to leave without saying goodbye. The airline called about my ticket and I thought I might as well finish packing.”

“Again, why are you leaving? To where?” he said, knowing that he sounded like a desperate child and not caring.

“A friend told me that Father D’Souza has developed pneumonia. He has no one to look after him. I need to do that. I want to. For once in my life, I’m in a position to give my time and energy to him. I can’t leave him alone in this condition.”

Relief shuddered through him, even though Andrea felt awful for the old man. This was a solvable problem. This was within his control. “I will have a nurse by his side within the hour. He will not be alone,” he said, immediately reaching for his phone.

“Yes, but that would be a stranger. Not someone he knows.”

“ Bene. You can go in a couple of weeks, then. I’ll even accompany you. You can spend a couple of days with him, making sure he has everything he needs and we can make a trip out of it. You always tell me how much you love New York in winter. It could even be our honeymoon trip.”

Her shoulders sagged but her head jerked up. Her gaze widened. She swayed where she stood like a leaf in a storm. “You’re joking.”

“Twice in a row about something like this? You know me better than that, bella ,” he said, grabbing her hand. He felt this...strange, almost desperate, overwhelming need to touch her, to hold her, to anchor her to him in every way possible. He didn’t question the urge.

Seating himself at the edge of the bed, he pulled her to him. And something in him calmed when she came without the protest he was expecting and buried her face in his chest. She was trembling, he realized, and tightened his hold. Her arms went around his waist, as if she was intending to vine herself around him for days to come and yet, she was planning the opposite. Lifting her chin, he kissed her and all the urgency of the past few days came rushing back. A thread of something curled within him, roping tighter and tighter around his chest.

When he pulled away, she mewled in protest. He dug his fingers into her hair and pulled her head until she was looking into his eyes. “Tomorrow. We will get married tomorrow. Mama won’t like it but she’ll be too happy to—”

“Why do you want to marry me?” she said, eyes wide and emotions slamming through them one after the other. There was hope and excitement but also doubt and confusion and some new inner resolve he didn’t know how to break.

At least he had an answer ready for this. “I like having you in my life. I like that I can trust you in every way and I like that you and I share the kind of passion that one doesn’t come by often. I like knowing that I can give you the kind of security and family that you’ve always wanted and dreamed of. Is that not so?”

Tears filled her eyes and overflew, the tip of her nose turning adorably red. She swiped at the tears slowly, her gaze never leaving his. “I did. I do. But I... I want to be by Father D’Souza’s side as soon as possible.”

“That’s not an answer, Monica.”

“I can’t think of this now, Andrea, and—”

He nodded. “We will fly with you to New York in a couple of days, then. Mama and Romeo and I. We can marry in that church with the father’s blessing.”

Her mouth fell on a gasp, and a smile cut through the tears. “You’re serious.”

“Of course, I am.”

A groan seemed to wrench out of her and she mumbled, “You’re making this so hard,” while drenching his chest in fresh tears. Then with a deep breath, she stood, stepped back from the circle of his arms, the line of her shoulders stiffening. “You didn’t like my disappearing on you for two whole days, did you?”

“No. But—”

“Marrying me is about efficiency for you. About keeping things in control. About compromise, si ?”

“I have no need to marry you, bella . So what am I compromising on?”

“It’s giving me just enough without truly letting me in,” she said with an empty laugh and scrubbing at her cheeks. Even watery, her eyes shone with that resolve he’d never seen in her before. “My dreams are not the same as they were three years ago, a year ago or even three months ago when you saved me from Francesco.”

“So you don’t believe in marriage and family and security anymore?” he asked, unable to keep the taunt out of his voice.

“I do, and you have no idea how tempting your offer is. I’d have your trust and your fidelity and the security you offer and Flora’s love and Romeo’s companionship. I’d belong to you, like I’ve never been anyone’s. But all of those things can’t make up for the one thing I need. You have changed me, Andrea. Being with you these two months... It’s unlike anything I’ll ever live through again. It’s taught me so much about myself.”

“You talk as if you’re...” His heart gave a swift kick against his rib cage as realization landed. He stood. “You’re ending this. You came back yesterday with this intention set. You asked me to make love to you as some sort of wretched goodbye. All night, you laughed and talked and kissed me...with this in mind.”

“I don’t want to, but I have to. Before it gets ugly and I start clinging to you. Before you push me away again. Before I do something that violates that boundary around yourself. Before my heart shatters into so many pieces at your feet. But more than anything, I need to understand what this is.”

Every thought and word that came to Andrea was ugly in its shape and full of a bitter jealously. And after those came something worse. He felt as if he were in that floundering car again, yelling at his father to steer into the skid, yelling at Romeo to sit back, yelling and yelling and yelling until he could no more and the oncoming tree loomed larger and larger and fear shone in Papa’s eyes and he was shouting, too, telling him that he loved him, asking him to look after his mother and Romeo, telling him that...and then there had been nothing.

Not sounds. Not sights. Not the tears in his father’s eyes, or his moving lips, or his fingers’ death-like hold on Andrea’s hand. Nothing but wretched darkness consuming him. And when he’d woken up days later, the world had been painfully colorful, so bright and yet so empty that he had wished himself to be swallowed up back into that darkness.

He had vowed to himself that he would never feel like that again. Never feel such love again that it left him searching for the dark. And yet, here he was, losing his foothold on reality again, losing something he had never wanted at all.

“Andrea, please try to understand,” she said, reaching for his hand.

He jerked away from her, his action now one of self-preservation. Somehow, he made himself look at her. The large lamp behind her limned the contours of her face and body with loving care and he wondered at how empty this space would feel without her.

“I don’t,” he said, reaching for some composure. It didn’t matter that he could see the pain in her eyes, in her entire body. All he could focus on was the sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. “But it is your life and as you made it clear over the weekend, you owe me nothing.”

“Is that what you truly think?” she asked, anger etching itself into her words. She looked impossibly, achingly beautiful then, her emotions making her bolder and taller and making her shine brighter than he’d ever seen her before. As if her very conviction was a light inside her. “If I told you I’m in love with you, would you still marry me? If I told you it hurt to be sent away from you, it hurt to not reach for you and offer solace, it nearly ripped me apart to know that you might never feel the same about me as I do you, would you still marry me? If I told you I’d settle for nothing less than love, would you still be ready to marry me?”

He would’ve been less shocked if she’d slapped him across the face out of nowhere. “You’ve imagined yourself in love before, Monica, and look how that turned out.” The moment the words poured out of his mouth, he wanted to snatch them back. Cristo , what was the matter with him? Why did he always say the worst things when it came to her? Why did he hurt her when it was the last thing he wanted to do?

And he had his answer as surely as she let out a humorless chuckle. It was the very thing he’d always been determined not to feel, the very thing that was making him lash out at her, the very thing that was turning him inside out at the thought of losing her. But he could not give in, could not take that risk.

Her arms went around her middle, as if he had attacked her but she’d also expected it. It shamed him that she knew him better than he knew himself, that he had proved her right. “This is why I need to leave. I can’t be near you, much less marry you when I feel this way. When I don’t know if this is just me reaching for security again. When I don’t know if these feelings that make me so angry at you can be trusted, when this constant knot of fear sits in my throat, warning me that I shouldn’t ask for more, I shouldn’t crave more, I shouldn’t demand more than you give. I don’t want to be in a relationship with that fear in my heart. I never should be in one unless I know I can ask for whatever I deserve. It’s not fair to me. It’s not...” She gasped in a pained breath. “I don’t want to live in that fear. I don’t want to love you with that niggling whisper in my heart. So I have to leave. I have to say goodbye to the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have to let go, even though I don’t want to, and hope that in the future, I will know a love that doesn’t come with conditions. I have to start believing that I deserve that kind of love. And you made me realize that, Andrea. Even if you can’t offer it.”

She came to him then and went on her toes and kissed his cheek and pressed her cheek to his chest, her arms going around him again, as if he was both the storm and the port and she was caught in the middle.

Andrea couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear to smell her and hold her, and touch her and kiss her, all the while knowing that she was leaving him, alone and adrift in the snow again.

He pushed her away from him and left the suite, wanting to be swallowed up by darkness again.

Andrea hadn’t imagined, in his darkest nightmares, that he would feel her loss so keenly every single day.

Of course, the fact that Monica had run his life like a well-engineered machine, always anticipating his needs and meeting them before he even verbalized them, made it impossible for him not to miss her.

But it wasn’t just his work life. It was the way she’d made him laugh; the way she’d dragged him along to every new experience that she was determined to have; the way she’d sit quietly with her knitting while he worked on his sculptures; the way she’d seemed to bring him back to the man he’d been once before.

Ever since the accident, he had drawn a boundary around himself; had reduced his life to a single dimension—work—and let everything else about him die a slow death. But that had never been what Papa had wanted. He had never asked Andrea to turn himself into a machine.

He had only asked him to be careful with his racing, to dial down the unnecessary risks he had begun to take, the highs he had started chasing, to think of others before himself. And yet, as punishment, Andrea had turned himself into another version Papa would have hated, too.

He would have told him that life was to be lived, with the ones you love, that one’s heart was for more than just beating and pumping blood. He had shown him and Romeo by making their family name stand for so much, by loving their mother so well that to this day, that love was a shining light in her smile.

How could Andrea be anything less? What was left of his life without Monica? How was this empty darkness better than the light and laughter she had brought him?

The merger was done, production had started on the new plant and yet he felt no surge of pride or sense of satisfaction. All he wanted was to hear her voice one more time, see her and hold her.

He knew Romeo was in touch with her, but he refused to ask his brother about how she was faring. It was bad enough neither his mother nor Romeo would meet his eyes or say a word to his face. For all that she’d said she wouldn’t take sides, Mama’s displeasure was clear.

But as weeks piled into a month, what little pride he had hung on to had dissolved. For a few hours he decided he would fly to New York, to offer support to her while she tended to the man who had shown her kindness and love, without imposing any conditions. He wouldn’t ask for anything, demand anything.

But then her face swam into his vision, her eyes full of anguish when he’d straight out told her that she’d believed herself in love before. Cristo , he’d been cruel to taunt her for what she thought was her weakness. Still, she’d behaved so bravely, his fierce little mouse , walking away from him, from them , from the golden future he’d painted using her darkest fear against her, to get clarity, to know herself, even as she’d told him she was in love with him.

I don’t want to love you with that niggling whisper in my heart.

How could he then be any less brave? How could he chase her to New York and steal that time and space she’d asked for? How could he browbeat her into saying yes to him and then wonder for the rest of his life if she truly loved him?

Suddenly, he understood the anguish of the dilemma she’d faced.

If he truly loved her, which he realized he did painfully with each passing day that he didn’t see her or touch her or kiss her or hold her, he would give her the space to figure it out.

He would let her be, let her know herself, see herself as he saw her, the vulnerable yet fierce, the generous but bold, the gentle but brave, creature that she was. He would wait and hope that when she did have that clarity that she would come back to him and give him just one more chance.

Just one chance and he would lay the world at her feet.

Every cell inside him revolted at the idea of waiting, of leaving the decision in her hands—at least for now. He balked at the idea of not chasing her down to wherever she was in the world and seducing her and kissing her and bending her to his will, at the idea of not making her say that she loved him all over again. He was not a man used to inaction, to letting others dictate his happiness and yet there was another thing he was coming to recognize—his happiness was with her.

In her kisses and embraces and her soft smiles.

It was the pain and uncertainty and the anguish that came with loving her, the very thing he’d wanted to avoid. But then he’d remember the sweetness of her kisses, her shy boldness when she was under him and looked up at him with those yellow eyes, and the soft, slow way she’d stroke his lips when he laughed, as if she wanted to bottle the sound. The easy, effortless way she had loved him, even when he hadn’t been able to appreciate it. And he knew that it was all worth it. That without this pain, they would always be unsure of each other. That now, he could live with nothing but her unconditional surrender, and his own in return.

The waiting made each day that much longer, that much more unbearable. Whatever they saw in his face now melted Mama’s and Romeo’s silent admonishments.

Then suddenly, as he sat working on a wooden piece in his new shed that gave him little pleasure without her company, it came to him. He would give her the one thing, the only thing , she’d ever asked of him and hope that she’d understand his message.

That everything that was his, his mind, body and heart, were all hers, if only she’d demand it of him.