ANTONIO HEARD THE pounding on his New York penthouse apartment door and honestly couldn’t tell if it was real or the manifestation of his hangover. Each strike followed the words that had been turning over and over in his mind since he last saw Emma.
You’ll be worse than your father.
They had become a mantra, a taunt, a final threat hovering over him. One that he couldn’t escape. Because he couldn’t help feeling that Emma might be right. That in seeking his revenge he would actually be worse than his father.
The thought scoured him from the inside out, carved away at the deep ache in his chest.
Reluctant to open his eyes, he turned over and promptly fell onto the floor. The sofa. He’d been on the sofa.
He heard the door swing open and a pair of expensive black leather shoes came to stand very, very close to his head. He heard a string of Greek swearing, fit to turn the air blue, and the shoes disappeared. Antonio groaned, knowing that he’d sunk pretty low this time.
He’d been back in New York for two days since returning from Argentina, and in that time he’d answered none of the phone calls from his office, despite the rising panic in his CFO’s tone. Instead he’d done nothing but drink and stare at the dossier on a woman he’d never met, might never meet, but who had come to represent the final blow to his relationship with Emma.
Antonio mustered the energy to roll onto his back, every muscle and brain cell protesting. Apart from his heart. His heart relished it, clearly deeming him worthy of such extreme levels of—
Ice-cold water crashed down on his head, the shock making him inhale quickly and deeply, taking half of the liquid into his lungs. He lurched up and bent over, choking and ready to kill Dimitri, holding a now empty jug.
‘I’ve seen you in some pretty bad states, but this is just pitiful.’
‘Get out.’
‘No.’ Dimitri held out a hand and hauled Antonio off the floor.
‘Coffee,’ was all about Antonio could manage to get out of his mouth.
‘Shower,’ Dimitri commanded.
It took a moment, but Antonio finally got himself off the floor and made his way through to the kitchen of his apartment, to find Dimitri manhandling a miniature saucepan on the stove.
‘Did I fall through the rabbit hole?’
‘It’s called a briki. For an Italian, your coffee equipment is woefully lacking. It’s a disgrace.’
‘And you just happened to have this in your pocket?’ Antonio asked, even the image of his friend with a briki in his pocket failing to raise a smile to his lips.
Dimitri looked affronted. ‘Last year—Christmas. I didn’t know what to get you. Emma suggested something that would make you more human in the mornings. It was in the back of your cupboard.’
‘And the coffee? It doesn’t look like it takes ground beans.’
‘That I did bring with me.’
Antonio leant back on the kitchen counter that he rarely used and waited as Dimitri poured thick dark liquid into two small coffee cups.
‘What are you doing here?’ Antonio demanded, thankful that Dimitri ignored the hostility in his tone.
‘You didn’t answer your phone.’
‘What’s happened? Is everything okay?’
Panic rose in his chest, filling up the spaces and making it impossible to breathe. Had things got so bad that he had turned his back on his friends? Had something happened to Emma? For just a moment he felt the sliver of guilt as sharp as a chef’s knife.
‘Well, Danyl’s trade negotiations are hanging by a thread, but he’ll fix that. My father’s company is on the brink, but I’ll fix that. What are you going to do?’
Antonio cursed.
‘You really messed this one up,’ Dimitri said, casting an angry glance in his direction. ‘And Emma is too good a person to mess with. So get in the shower. You smell like self-pity and alcohol and I don’t like it. Be quick.’
Antonio forced himself under the hot water jets of his powerful shower. But it did nothing to remove the taint of dark grime he felt on his skin—had felt ever since seeing the photos of Mandy Bartlett his PI had dug up...ever since Emma had walked away from him. dpg!
Antonio decided to leave his hair wet. Although he was feeling much better, rubbing his head didn’t seem that appealing. He entered his kitchen to find Dimitri poring over the images in the folder on Mandy Bartlett, and felt oddly furious that yet another person had seen them.
‘Damaging stuff.’
‘Yes,’ Antonio practically growled, feeling oddly proprietorial over the contents of the folder...over Mandy’s downward descent.
‘Girl needs some sense knocked into her.’
‘She needs help, Dimitri.’
‘Yeah. Not sure her father will give it to her if he gets hold of these, though,’ Dimitri mused. ‘So Emma’s gone, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘A shame. I like her.’
Antonio felt himself bristle.
‘Don’t be stupid—not in that way. So you can put the caveman back in the box.’
Antonio took a sip of the rich, peaty coffee, almost scalding his tongue in the process. He wasn’t sure whether he was ready to hear what Dimitri had to say, but he knew Dimitri would say it anyway.
‘Look, I know how much this deal means to you. I know your need for revenge, Antonio—trust me,’ said Dimitri. ‘I really do. And I will support whatever decision you make. Because you’re my brother. You’re my family. I don’t believe those people who say you can’t pick your family because I can and I have. You and Danyl—you’re it. Whatever you choose to do with Bartlett is your own matter. I’m not here about the deal. I’m here about her.’
And finally all the resistance, all the avoidance that he’d practised since Emma had left him in the hotel suite in Argentina, dropped away.
‘She held a mirror up to me, Dimitri. And I didn’t like what I saw,’ he admitted finally. The ache in his chest was opening up into a river of pain. ‘The horror in her face...the betrayal... I don’t think I can come back from that.’
‘We all have to face the darkest parts of ourselves at some point, Antonio.’
There was no judgement in Dimitri’s eyes, but in a way it only served to enrich the last memories he had of Emma and all the emotion he had seen in her eyes.
‘Do you love her?’
‘Yes. I do,’ he replied—without thought, without pause.
He’d known it when he’d gone to the hotel suite that last night in Buenos Aires—known it as he’d allowed her to walk away from him. Had known it because it had hurt more than any other single thing in his life.
She had offered him everything. Love, acceptance, a way forward—a way other than the path of his revenge—and he had refused it all. He had refused her.
‘Then you do what it takes, Antonio.’
‘Even if that means letting go of the feud I have with my father?’
*
Emma pulled the cotton robe around her shoulders as she sank into her mother’s sofa in the small house in Hampstead Heath. She had flown back into London four days ago and had slept for practically all of them, as if her body’s learned response to trauma—emotional or physical—was rest.
So much had changed since she’d last left this house. Not only for her, but for her mother. Her old bedroom was now the spill-over storage area for Mark’s hobby—his cars. Spare bits of machinery, cases of tools, several worn, torn and oil-stained clothes hung over the corners of barely held together boxes.
She was surprised to find that it didn’t upset her. She was glad that her mother had found Mark—a kind man who loved her deeply. How could she begrudge her mother the very thing she wanted for herself? But every time she thought of Antonio her heart ached a little more. She knew that she was feeling grief—grief for him, for herself. But even through that pain, the exhaustion and the upset, she knew that she should get up every day and fight for the future she had once closed herself off from.
The sitting room was still just how she’d remembered it. Books lining two sides of the room, paintings framing the windows on the front wall, and covering the back wall completely, as if they were puzzle pieces, separated by only the thinnest of gaps of wall. It felt familiar—but not as soothing as it had once been.
Her mother entered the room, her jeans and loose shirt covered in mismatched blotches of cast-off paint, thin lines from where she had cleaned the pallet knife she used against her thighs.
Louise Guilham was beautiful. Emma had inherited her mother’s thick dark hair and slender form. But it wasn’t her physical appearance that made her beautiful. It was her happiness in following her dream of painting, in her love for Mark. It glowed from her skin and Emma felt sallow and shadowed in comparison.
She mustered a smile as her mother looked momentarily confused to find Emma curled up on the sofa at five in the afternoon, a robe wrapped around clothes she had slept in, not having had the energy to change. That was her mother’s way when she was locked into a painting. The world could descend into Armageddon and she’d still be considering which colour to put where.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Louise asked.
‘I don’t suppose you have any whisky?’ Emma replied, memories of a conversation with Antonio so very close to the surface of her thoughts.
Her mother raised an eyebrow, but disappeared into the kitchen, returning with two glasses full of ice and amber.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked Emma, pressing the glass into her hands and taking a seat beside her on the old, battered but comfortable sofa.
Emma turned, resting her back against the sofa’s arm, stretching out her legs. Her mother took Emma’s feet in her hands and put them on her lap, passing soothing strokes over her bare skin as she had once done so many times when Emma had been ill.
Over the last four days, between hours of sleep, Emma had unfolded the story of her and Antonio, opening her heart and her mind to the mother she wouldn’t hide a thing from—ever. But now Emma felt the stirrings of the question she had always wanted to ask and never had the courage to.
Until now.
‘Not about Antonio, no. But I want to talk to you about Dad.’
‘Oh? Okay.’
Mark hovered in the doorway. He must have heard Emma’s question, and now he sent them both a gentle smile. He announced that he was ‘just going to pop to the pub’, and left them alone, free to talk openly.
Yet another thing for which she was grateful to Mark.
‘Mum, was it my fault that you and Dad split up? Was it because I got ill?’
‘Oh, Em,’ her mother said. ‘How long have you thought that?’
‘Since it happened,’ Emma admitted guiltily.
‘Oh, my love. No. No, it wasn’t your fault at all—and neither was it because of the cancer,’ she said, both sincerity and sadness in her voice.
Her mother’s attention drifted to the window and she sighed.
‘Your father and I met and married when we were very young. We loved each other greatly. And when you came along we loved you even more. But unlike some couples who are able to grow together, grow up together, we just...didn’t,’ she said, with a small shrug of her shoulders.
‘So you stayed together because I got sick? That’s even worse,’ Emma said, guilt piercing her already fractured heart.
‘No, sweetheart, we stayed together because we loved you,’ her mother said, her voice and tone adamant and powerful. ‘And that love was a strong, beautiful amazing thing that saw us all through the darkest of times. Neither me nor your father would change a day of it.’
Emma felt a huge weight lift from her chest as the fear that had been holding her back for so long left and was replaced with the truth in her mother’s words.
Looking back, it was as if the memories that she had always shied away from had been freshly painted over, dusted in fine golden light, showing her different images. Where once she had felt guilt and sadness, she now felt strength and light. Seeing the way that they had stayed together as a gift.
And in that moment she realised that Antonio had been right. She had been running away from him. Consumed by her own fears, she had run away from her feelings. She had not stayed with Antonio when he had most needed her. Worse, she had done the very thing she had always been scared that someone would do to her.
‘Oh, Mum...’ Emma couldn’t help the cry falling from her lips. ‘I left him...’ she said, tears trembling at the edges of her eyes.
Her mother laid a reassuring hand on her legs. ‘From what you told me, Emma, he had a decision to make and he had to make it by himself.’
‘Mum, I love you. So, so very much. But I have to go.’
*
Antonio resisted the urge to place a finger between his collar and his neck in an attempt to loosen the feeling of a noose tightening around him. He could not—would not—show any sign of weakness in front of his father or Bartlett.
They were in the boardroom at Bartlett’s sleek offices, just a few blocks over from Antonio’s own office. That he was being forced to breathe the same air as his father angered him. But he had to let that anger go. Bartlett had promised a decision today, after final pitches from himself and Michael Steele, in a move that was both highly unusual and had taken on the air of a courtroom with closing arguments.
His father had blustered through his determined statements—more of the same kind of financial arguments that had been printed in the world’s international press over the last week. About how Michael’s age and experience gave more weight to his investment and the promise that he could best his son financially.
Which he couldn’t.
But apparently the more he said it, the more Michael thought Bartlett would believe it. Michael had also made asinine suggestions as to Antonio’s scandalous reputation and the damage it would do to Bartlett’s company—in spite of his recent, perhaps even convenient engagement—and once again Antonio’s anger that his father should involve Emma in this had been swift.
But just as swift was the recrimination that he had brought Emma into it himself.
Antonio took a moment, after his father had finished, and Bartlett turned his attention to him. He checked his feelings, checked his decision and felt at peace. Possibly for the first time in years.
‘So much has been said about the strength, might and determination that got my father here,’ Antonio began. ‘About how he’s the right man to invest in your company and see it into the future. But I disagree. And not just because I don’t believe him for a second.’
He pushed the threads of anger aside, holding on to the purpose of his intention for the meeting. Holding on to the memory, the realisation of what Emma had shown him.
‘It’s not very often that business deals come down to right and wrong. You’re a man of strong morals, Mr Bartlett,’ he said, holding the older man’s gaze, needing him to see the truth of the words he was about to say. ‘And if I’m honest—truly honest—I can’t say the same of myself.’
He saw the shock on Bartlett’s face, heard the small gasp that spoke of his confusion at a man appearing to sabotage his own pitch.
‘I came after this deal not because I want to invest in your company, Mr Bartlett, but because I want my father not to.’
He didn’t have to look at his father to know that he was practically vibrating with glee—he could feel it in the air, the drop in temperature from Bartlett’s end of the room matching the raised heat from his father’s.
‘And in order to do that I betrayed and treated badly a woman of such high integrity that she would put us all to shame. She certainly put me to shame,’ he admitted, feeling the words ring true in his heart. ‘She showed me that I was reaching only for revenge when what I should have been reaching for was to be better than him—better than my father. A better man for myself and the woman I love. I did and still do want to invest in your company, Mr Bartlett. But not at the price of my morals or my heart. And I should warn you that if you choose my father, you’ll be selling your soul to the devil. Make your decision, Benjamin. And once you have—whatever it is—there is a matter I’d like to discuss with you. One that I’d like to help with, if you’ll let me.’
With that, Antonio got up from his chair and turned—expecting to leave, expecting to walk out into the sunshine of a New York summer, expecting to track down Emma wherever she might be and beg her forgiveness.
But it seemed she had other ideas.
Emma was standing in the doorway of the boardroom, and his first thought was how truly amazing she looked.
Her eyes shone, and her hair was loose around her shoulders—it was the first time he’d seen it so during the day, outside of the nights of passion they had shared. She was dressed in a brightly coloured dress that hugged her chest and waist, flared about her legs, and a simply outrageous and uncharacteristically Emma pair of high heels encased her feet.
But it was exactly how he’d always imagined her. Bright, feminine, sensual and powerful.
‘How much did you hear?’ he asked, walking towards her, hoping that she wasn’t a figment of his fevered imagination.
‘Everything,’ she said, allowing him to guide her away from the office.
He couldn’t take his eyes from her—couldn’t bring himself to say another word until they were free from the office, the deal, his father. He wanted to leave it all behind him.
Well, not all. He had meant what he’d said to Bartlett. Once the deal was made—whether Bartlett chose him or not—Antonio wanted to speak to the man about his daughter. He either knew and wasn’t sure how to proceed, or he didn’t know and would need help and support to get through to her. But Antonio wouldn’t allow the situation with Mandy Bartlett to go unchecked.
They emerged from the office onto the sidewalk and, still without a word, he took her hand and led her as quickly as her heels would allow across the road, towards the lower entrance of Central Park. He wanted life, greenery and peace to be the background of their next conversation. Not the high-rise hustle and bustle of Manhattan.
Walking away from the summer crowds of tourists gathering around the ice-cream sellers and busking musicians, Antonio drew them towards the quieter pathways, dappled with leafy shade and cool breeze. But when he got where he’d wanted to be he suddenly found himself unsure. What if she didn’t want him? What if his decision hadn’t made any difference to her feelings?
In the end it seemed that Emma found her courage before he did. She stopped, gently pulling on his arm, turning her towards him.
‘Antonio, I’m so sorry that I left you,’ she said. ‘I never—’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he interrupted, hating it that she felt an ounce of sadness or regret about the actions that had forced him to confront his feelings in a way that nothing else had. ‘I needed to see the true depths of the darkness I was about to fall into before I could reach for you, before I could reach for the light.’
He paused, hoping that she understood his words, took them into her as deeply as he meant them.
‘I want to be worthy of you, Emma. I want to be better than him. I am now and will continue to be. Whether you’ll do me the honour of becoming my wife or not. I know you will—’
‘Wait,’ she said, throwing up a hand between them. ‘What?’ she asked.
He cursed, realising that he’d blundered over the most important thing he’d ever asked in his life. The first time they had done this it had been for the deal. This time he wanted it to be a moment that she cherished, that she remembered, might even tell their children about one day.
‘Emma, I love you. So very much,’ he said, digging into his pocket for the small box he’d arranged to have sent over from the shop in Buenos Aires. ‘I know you heard what I said in the room with Bartlett and my father—but I want you to hear it now. Here, without them present, not for show or for a deal, but for you. For years I’ve shied away from love, from meaningful relationships, because I thought that love was a destructive, harmful thing. Something my father used against my mother—something that left my sister destroyed when it was withdrawn from her. And something that left me with my own scars. But that wasn’t true. You showed me, that last night in Argentina and in so many ways preceding it, that love is a healing, powerful, amazing thing. I know now that what my father did wasn’t borne of love. And no matter what happens—whether you say yes or not—I want you to know that I love you, and I will love you every single day for the rest of my life if you will let me.’
He got down on one knee, drawing the curious gazes of some of the few people passing by. And it was then that Emma truly knew the power of their love as it washed over them both from his words, his eyes, his heart.
‘Emma Guilham,’ he said, taking her hand in his, ‘would you do me the incredible honour of being my wife?’ he asked, sending her heart soaring higher than she had ever felt.
She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her lips, but she too had words she wanted to share. Things she wanted him to understand so that they could move ahead with all the love and security she knew they would both feel.
She gently tugged at him, attempting to pull him up from where he knelt. And she laughed again when he shook his head and refused, drawing even more attention from the people passing.
‘If you won’t stand then I shall have to come down to you,’ she taunted.
‘So be it. I will not move until I’ve had your answer,’ he said, a stubborn determination filling his words in a blissful promise that she wouldn’t have thought him capable of when she’d first met him.
So she did as she had said and took to her knees, facing him, holding her gaze with his and, just like Antonio, not caring of the attention they were drawing.
‘For so long I thought myself strong, capable—no,’ she said as he tried to interrupt her, knowing that he would contradict her words, but knowing too that she needed to say them. ‘I was, am and will continue to be a survivor. But for all the promise and hope put into that list I made as a seventeen-year-old, I never had the courage to ask for the things that I truly wanted. Self-acceptance, self-love and ultimately true love itself. Antonio, you showed me that my scars are beautiful, you taught me to reach for the things I was too scared and too unwilling to admit to myself that I wanted, and you proved to me that doing so, whether successful or not, was the real gift. You showed me that it was okay—more than that, vital for me to put my whole self out into the world. And I love you for it, and I will love you for it until my last breath. So, yes, Antonio Arcuri, I will marry you.’
The moment the words had left her mouth Antonio pulled Emma to him in a kiss that she would never forget. It was full of the taste of love, passion and everything in between. It was full of light, laughter and finally, the knowledge that they would live happily ever after.