Hired: The Italian's Bride (16 page)

He squeezed her fingers. “I meant what I said last night. We did have a connection, you and me. We just knew it wasn’t forever. I will always look back on this as a fond memory.”

He didn’t know how to handle her tears, but to his surprise she pulled her hands away from his and straightened her shoulders.

“A fond memory. That’s all.” She tried a smile but he saw through it to how deeply he’d hurt her and regret had a bitter taste.

He had to get out now before he made a huge fool of himself or hurt her feelings further. There really was no choice. He was due in Paris. He’d given his word he’d be there and he’d never broken a promise to his father, even when he’d wanted to. Yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to break ties with the Cascade, either. Changing it, restoring it, had meant a great deal to him and he hated having to walk away from all their hard work. It was more than a project. It was his and Mari’s project. At least he knew that he was leaving it in good hands.

“I’m sorry you thought it was more. I’ll be in touch anyway, about the hotel. So this isn’t really goodbye.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Her blue eyes blazed up at him, looking for truth and he didn’t have any to give.

“Yes, that’s all.”

“This is goodbye, then. After everything.”

He nodded. Perhaps it was kinder to let her go angry. Maybe it would make it easier for her to move on. His stomach burned acidly at the thought, but he carried on. “Yes. I assured my father I’d be in Paris as soon as I could. I’m leaving with Charlie within the hour.”

She held out her hand. “Goodbye, Luca. It’s been a pleasure working with you.”

He took her hand and felt the trembling there.

“Goodbye, Mariella.”

She pulled her hand away and retrieved her purse. She walked down the hall and out the doors, through the parking garage to her car.

And once she was inside, she finally let it all go in a rash of weeping. She’d risked it all. And lost.

D
AWN
wasn’t gray; it was pure white.

Mari looked out the window and shook her head. Last night she hadn’t given a thought to a storm, but at this time of year anything could happen in the mountains. Should she go in to work, or take a day off? It was a short drive, but her road hadn’t been cleared and she wasn’t sure her little car could handle the curves. Not to mention the return drive, up the hill. Flakes were still falling in thick pads, obscuring the view of even the parking area above the cottage.

Tommy came back in from his trip to the yard, shaking the snow from his golden coat with great enthusiasm. Mari gave him an absent pat and went to the bathroom. Seeing her puffy eyes in the mirror, she decided that there were advantages to being the boss. She made the necessary call—they’d be running on essential staff today anyway—and decided she could work from home this once. She would log in to the server at the hotel and access all her files, and if anything was pressing Becky could phone.

She put on the coffeepot and calculated the time difference in Paris. It was afternoon there already. What was he doing?

Before long, he’d be in Italy, with his father and Gina and her children. All she’d wanted when he’d walked in that first morning was to get rid of him and retain her manager’s job.
And now she’d done it. And knew that the sad reality was that yesterday she’d been prepared to give it all up if only he would have said he loved her back.

She was starting on her second cup of coffee when a knock sounded at the door. She opened it to find Luca there, bundled in a heavy parka with Bow Valley Inn embroidered on the front. It was obvious he’d raided the old boutique storage for suitable outerwear.

“Luca!”

“Can I come in?”

She had been so shocked to see him that she’d been standing in the doorway like a dolt. “Of course! How did you…when are…I mean, what happened to your flight?”

He stepped inside, his already tall figure made even larger by the addition of winter boots and the jacket. “I didn’t take it,” he replied, pulling a black toque off his head and shoving it into a pocket. His normally precisely gelled hair was in disarray from the hat. To Mari, he’d never looked better.

And she was suddenly acutely aware that she stood before him, barefoot and braless in a pair of pink candy-striped flannel pyjamas.

“Oh Lord, excuse me a moment!” Her cheeks went hot as his gaze remained pinned to her flannel jammies.

“Mariella,” he said, and her feet refused to move.

Just yesterday he’d said goodbye. He’d taken her protestation of love and had politely, but quite definitively, rejected it. Why was he here now?

“I couldn’t get on that plane.”

“You couldn’t?”

He shook his head. And she frantically tried to beat down the hope that fluttered in her heart. There was no sense getting her hopes up. They’d said all there was to say. He’d been crystal clear.

He unzipped his coat, shrugging out of it. When he stood there with it in his hands, it came to her that she should hang it up for him.

“I’m glad you didn’t go into the office today. The roads are horrid.”

“Yet you came here.” She turned from the closet, amazed at herself for voicing the thought so easily. A month ago she would never have done such a thing. It was more proof just how much she’d changed since Luca had come to the Cascade. She owed him more than he knew, for shaking her out of her life that had been nothing more than self-preservation.

“I have the four-wheel drive. You only have your little car.”

“I called in to say I was doing paperwork from home. I should get dressed…”

“Mari wait.” The urgency in those two words stopped her.

“I came here to say things. Things I should have said yesterday. But you caught me off guard.”

He bent, removed his boots and padded across the hardwood to stand before her.

“My Mariella,” he whispered, lifting a hand to her cheek and cupping it.

“Don’t,” she choked, her eyes drifting shut anyway. “Luca, I can’t take it. You said all you needed to yesterday.”

But he ignored her, cupped her other cheek and dropped the sweetest of kisses on her eyelids.

“That’s where you’re wrong. I said too much, and all the wrong things. You, Mariella Ross, made me a coward, and that’s not something I like in myself.”

His breath was warm on her forehead. “You’re not afraid of anything,” she whispered breathlessly.

“I’m afraid of you. I’m afraid of me, how I feel when I’m with you. And then on the drive to Calgary I realized how incredibly difficult it must have been for you to say what you did. And how you deserved better from me.”

She leaned back, searched his eyes. “And that’s why you’re here?”

“That’s what frightens me, Mari. You make me want to give you more. You make me want to be worthy and I’m terrified of failing. Again.”

“I don’t understand.”

He tugged on her hand and led her to the table and chairs that covered the space between the kitchen and living room. When she was seated he pulled a chair close and sat so that their knees were pressed together, the same way he had the night she’d told him about Robert.

“Mari, you deserve so much more than what I have to give. I hadn’t even given a thought to love, and everything that goes with that. You’re just now stepping out of the shadow of all you’ve been through. I said what I did because I was too selfish to end it like I wanted to. I wanted us to stay friends, and if not that, business associates that had shared something great.”

His thumbs grazed her knees. “You make me want things, things I haven’t wanted for a very long time. I thought I was making the right decision by leaving. For you, for me. I thought my reasons were right. But I was wrong. I had Charlie bring me back. And I spent all of last night trying to fix it.”

“You have to go to Paris.”

“No,
cara.
I don’t.”

He took her hands in his. She wanted to believe him, even when his words of yesterday still rang in her ears. He was here and for some reason being here was important. She had to believe that was because somehow
she
was important.

She absorbed how he looked; the tanned skin, the full mouth that didn’t smile, the cappuccino-colored eyes that had always been able to see into her. Somewhere along the way he’d become her ideal. She longed to cup his face in her hands and kiss him as he’d kissed her that last night in the alcove.

But he spoke, keeping her in her chair.

“You know that my mother left my father when I was very young. And though we had our father, I felt very responsible for Gina. And for my father at times as well, because I was old enough to see how our mother leaving had hurt him. Time and again I saw him ask for her love and she gave it, but the words were meaningless. He tried in every way he could but it wasn’t enough for her.”

“Did you think I didn’t mean what I said yesterday?”

“I’m not one for words, Mari. I need to be shown…I need to show. I said the words once…remember I told you about Ellie. I gave her my heart. And it wasn’t so much that I found her with someone else, you see. It wasn’t even that I learned she was only with me because I was a Fiori. It was that I’d trusted her, with my heart. It was my judgment holding me back. And I vowed not to trust it again. So when I started having feelings for you, I gave myself every justification and excuse in the book.”

Mari pictured a younger Luca, vibrant with being in love and having that crushed. She squeezed his fingers. “So you focused on work.”

“There was never a question of me working for Fiori. It is my heritage. A heritage built by my grandparents. I would feel I had let them down if I hadn’t stayed with the company. I would have felt as if I’d let myself down. I love Fiori. It is in my blood.”

“I hear a ‘but’ in there.”

He let out a little sigh. “But I spent many years focusing on my job alone, avoiding people. And I didn’t know how to have both.”

She raised an eyebrow. She had the magazines to prove that his nonavoidance was well documented. Yet she knew he did have it within him. The way he’d held her as she cried proved it. Luca was capable of great feeling.

“Oh,” he chuckled, a smile flirting at the corners of his mouth. “I did put on a good show. But I never got close to anyone after Ellie. Never wanted to. Gina got married and started a family and I kept traveling around the world, watching out for our interests. But putting on a front takes a lot of energy, Mariella. You, of all people know that.”

She rested a hand on his arm. “Yes, I do. You always seemed so self-assured, Luca. I never would have guessed you were unhappy.”

“And I wasn’t, not really. There was simply something missing.” He put his hand over hers. “I was missing roots. Which sounds foolish considering how I just told you how my family grounds me.”

“There’s a big difference between coming from roots and finding your own place.” Mari gazed into his eyes. “I know I’ll never have the former. I never knew my real father and my childhood was a nightmare. But…but I think I’ve made a place for myself here.”

“I know you have. I know it because I could see it from the beginning. You belong here. You fit. You fit in a way I never seemed to.” He looked around the cottage. “I can see you within these walls. You’ve made this into a home, one that is only yours.”

“It doesn’t mean I’m not lonely.”

“Are you lonely, Mari?”

She bit her lower lip and nodded slightly. “Yes, yes, I am. At least I was, and never knew it. You changed that for me.”

“I never expected to find you, you see.” He grabbed her hand, lifting it and kissing her fingers. “And when I did, I still didn’t believe in it. I didn’t trust in it. I had feelings for you but I pushed them away, pretended they weren’t real. I told myself it was temporary and that I’d go back to Italy and I would be fine. And then you told me you loved me.”

“I do love you.”

He looked down then, for several seconds. When he lifted his head, he said simply, “You humble me, Mari.”

He leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers.

“You, the one who had every right to be afraid…you’re the one who has taught me. You’re my miracle, Mariella. And I’m terrified you’ll get up one day and realize I’m not good enough for you.”

Tears clogged her throat. She couldn’t imagine being anyone’s miracle. Not after where she came from. After all she’d endured.

“I fell in love with you, and I thought you only needed me because of your stepfather.”

She swiped a finger beneath her lashes. “Oh, Luca, how could you think that?”

“I wanted to be the one to make you see, but then you did and I couldn’t bear the thought of you with anyone else. And I knew you deserved more than me and nothing made sense. Until you were gone yesterday and it all became very, very, clear.”

“It had nothing to do with Robert and everything to do with me,” she assured him. “You were the first person to see beyond what he’d done to me. The first person to make me forget and make me feel like it didn’t matter. The first person to make me feel like the real Mariella. You could never disappoint me, Luca.
Never.
”

He rested his elbows on his knees, his hands on the outside of her thighs now. She smiled; when he’d arrived he’d had a penchant for touching that she couldn’t stand and now she couldn’t get enough.

“I’ve grown weary of all the travel. I have a villa, but I’m rarely there. When I was younger it was exciting. I never wanted to settle down. I thought I had life by the tail. But things change.
I
changed. I started to hate having to drop things at a moment’s notice. I enjoyed building the business—being here with you and reimagining the Cascade was wonderful.
And then…then my father called the morning after you told me about Robert and said I was being sent to Paris right away.”

A wistful smile fluttered on her lips. “That was why you acted the way you did?”

“There was so much going on with me. I was suddenly involved with you on a much deeper level than I was prepared for, and it scared me. I wanted to show you that none of it mattered to me. And then on the other hand was my father telling me I had to leave and I resented the order. I’d put him off the day before and it didn’t go over well with him. And I wanted to make a change and didn’t know how, and it was all tied in with these feelings for my family and for you.”

It all was starting to make sense.

“I was certain that leaving was the best thing. I didn’t want to be in love. I didn’t want to put myself in the position of letting someone hurt me.”

Mari couldn’t believe she’d ever had that kind of power. Yet here he was, clasping her hands, telling her how he felt and with every passing moment the crack he’d opened in her heart grew wider.

“I’ve never been in love before, either,” she admitted. “But it came down to knowing I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I had to tell you. And I had to ask you to love me back.”

His tongue slid out to wet his lips and Mari’s pulse thudded.

“I want to kiss you right now,” he murmured huskily, “but I need to tell you the rest first.”

“Then hurry.”

She breathed the response and again she felt the tug between them, the one she hadn’t imagined all those weeks ago.

“I spoke to my father. About Fiori, about my discontent, about you. And we talked about my mother.”

“You did?”

“A child’s wounds take a long time to heal, don’t you think? He forgave her long ago. But I never did. I always
carried this bitterness with me. It made me jaded. But I need to move past it. If you can move past Robert, surely I can find a way to forgive my mother.”

Tears burned on her lashes. “You’re not the only one, Luca. I’ve been thinking about my own mother a lot lately. How can I judge her for making decisions out of fear, when I did the same thing for years?” Their hands were joined and she ran her thumbs along the base of his. “I’m going to try to find her again. I’m pretty sure the police officer that sent the letter will help me.”