Her Mediterranean Playboy (19 page)

I want it all. A home, family, love.

Didn’t she realise those were all illusions? They didn’t last, even if they were real in the first place. His had been torn apart by his father’s lust and deceit, and she expected him to
forgive
?

Leandro cursed again. He would
never
forgive his father—no matter how many letters he wrote. He’d never allow him back in his life, his heart—

Or anyone?

The little voice that whispered inside him wasn’t sly, only sad.

Leandro slumped in the chair behind his father’s desk. A sudden memory pierced him with its sweetness: climbing on his father’s lap while golden sunlight streamed through the window, playing with his pens and papers. His father had only chuckled, never minded, never swatted at his hands or told him to leave.

Not as he’d told Zoe to leave.

His father had always had time for him, always listened and loved him, and when he’d walked away that was what had hurt most of all.

Was he going to do the same? Prove once and for all he was just like his father—at least in that?

As the grey day turned to darkness, Leandro felt a fresh sorrow wash over him and he closed his eyes in regret.

In the end it was all too easy to creep out of the villa with her one beat-up bag. She left a note on the kitchen counter, asking for her last pay cheque to be sent to a postal box she kept in New York. Leandro’s study door was firmly shut, and Zoe decided against knocking. There was nothing more to say; it had all, sadly, been said.

She walked down the driveway in a twilit drizzle, hitched her way to Menaggio, and then caught a bus to Milan. A few hours of waiting for a standby flight, and less than twenty-four hours after her confrontation with Leandro she was home.

Home. Home was hardly the word for the hostel she’d found in New York City’s Meatpacking distract. It was a grotty room with a single bed, a battered bureau and a cracked sink. After the warmth and beauty of the villa, crumbling as it had been, it seemed all the more appalling—yet it was within Zoe’s budget.

The next morning she took a newspaper and a red pen to a local diner, and over coffee and scrambled eggs began circling ads. Chambermaids, temp work, anonymous dead-end jobs. Her usual.

Yet after a few minutes she set the pen and newspaper aside and took a sip of her cooling coffee. She didn’t want to do this any more.

Yet she didn’t know what else to do; how did you begin finding a life for yourself? She’d taken a chance once and it hadn’t paid off. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes and she blew on her coffee, trying to distract herself. She didn’t want to burst into tears in the middle of a grimy diner.

‘You’re the devil to find.’

Zoe stilled, tensed, unable to believe the voice she was hearing. Then she looked up slowly and blinked. Twice. Leandro didn’t disappear.

He was dressed in jeans and a shirt, sporting a full two days’ growth of beard. He looked wonderful. He couldn’t be real.

Yet he was.

‘What are you doing here?’ Zoe asked when she’d finally found her voice. Her heart was beginning to thump with loud, painful hope.

‘Looking for you. I had no idea you’d run out on me so quickly.’

‘You made it clear that you didn’t want what I wanted,’ Zoe
said quietly. She felt the tears again, and one trickled shamefully down her cheek.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ Leandro agreed. He gestured to the vinyl seat across from Zoe. ‘May I?’ he asked, and when she nodded, slid into the booth.

Leandro was silent for a long moment, and a waitress sauntered over to take his order with a loud crack of her gum.

‘I’ll have what she’s having,’ Leandro said, and when the woman had left them alone he confessed in a voice so low Zoe could barely hear it, ‘Zoe, I was afraid.’

‘Afraid?’ she whispered.

‘You were right. It is safer to keep your distance. To never let anyone in. That’s how I’ve been living my life since my father left, but somehow someone got in anyway. And I didn’t realise how close until she was gone.’

‘
How
close?’ Zoe asked in a whisper, and Leandro smiled.

‘Close enough to make me realise how many mistakes I was making, letting bitterness and fear guide me instead of love.’

Love.
One simple, wonderful word. Zoe’s heart ached. ‘Love?’ she repeated, and heard the longing in her voice.

‘I love you, Zoe.’ Leandro’s voice was steady and strong. ‘You’ve shown me so much…given me so much…and I almost threw it all away.’ He reached across the table and brushed another tear from her cheek. ‘I don’t mean to make you cry.’

‘I don’t want to cry,’ Zoe admitted with a choked laugh, two more tears streaking down her cheeks. ‘I want to believe…’

‘Believe me. I spent a great deal of time thinking yesterday, while I thought you were still in the villa. If I’d known how quickly you were going to leave—’ Leandro shrugged ruefully. ‘But, no. I needed that time. I suppose I’m a slow learner.’

‘And what have you learned?’

‘To forgive. To let go. To love.’ Leandro’s smile was endearingly crooked. ‘I wrote to my father. I took down the “For Sale” sign. And I came to find you.’

Zoe’s heart felt as if it was being squeezed even as it expanded with hope and joy. ‘I can’t believe you found me.’

‘It took a lot of money,’ Leandro told her wryly. ‘I greased
quite a few palms, trying to find what flight you’d taken, and then what address you’d given the cabbie. But in the end…I’m here.’

Zoe swallowed. ‘Yes, you are.’

‘And, frankly, I’d rather be somewhere else.’ Her eyes widened and Leandro smiled. ‘I’d rather be home,’ he said softly. ‘With you. Will you come home with me, Zoe? As my wife?’

Home. Wife.
Words she’d never thought to hear, to hope for. Zoe could barely see Leandro through the shimmery haze of tears, yet she knew that the hardness was gone from his eyes, the bitterness and anger had melted away. There was only love shining there, perfect and true.

Home.

She reached across the table to twine her fingers with his. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, and knew there was no other place she’d rather be.