Three months later.

 

The coffee was bitter. In the several weeks she’d been frequenting this little bar, she’d never had a coffee that wasn’t exceptional. Kate was strict about drinking only one a day, and so it was an insult beyond bearing to have it wasted on one as unpalatable as this, but she was desperate. She’d been kept up all night by the revelers in the downstairs apartment. She had been on the cusp of going downstairs to complain when they’d begun calling loudly, Buon Anni!

Was it really the first day of the year? Kate threw back the last of her macchiato and placed the delicate cup on the bar.

“Grazie, ciao.”

“A domain, singorina,” the handsome young man called after her.

She waved and pushed out of the door. It was bitingly cold. Kate pulled her jacket more tightly around her shoulders and began the walk through the winding streets of Firenze back to her small apartment. She passed the florist and admired the beautiful flowers, as she always did.

“One day you buy the bunch, si?” The woman called with a grin, and Kate smiled. At least, she did her best to impersonate the kind of smile she’d seen on other people. It seemed to be similar to what she remembered doing, before Benedetto.

Something kicked inside of her and she sighed. How she loved flowers. Only now, even they reminded her of him. More specifically, of the farm house in Tuscany. She pushed one foot in front of the other, moving closer and closer to the flat. But she was unable to control her mind as well as she could her legs.

The farm house was only perhaps thirty minutes from Florence. She’d thought about hiring a car and driving past it, to see how strong she was. But it was too difficult to imagine. How could she bear to see that house? The house she’d come to love, as she loved Benedetto?

“Buongiorno.” She waved at her neighbor and then fumbled for her keys in her bag. She slid the heavy brass key into the lock and pushed the door inwards.

There was no relief from the frigid cold there. She bent down to pick up a pile of letters on the floor and sifted through them. None of the envelopes bore her name. Then again, that was hardly surprising. Melania was the only person who knew where Kate had moved to, and only because she’d allowed Kate to stay on doing basic administrative jobs from the safety and privacy of her home.

Kate placed the pile of mail neatly on the communal table and took the stairs quickly. She unlocked her own door and opened it, rubbing her hands together as she stepped inside, before pulling the door shut behind her.

A frown flickered across her face as she saw the flowers in the middle of the table.

Flowers just like she admired every day at the little street cart in the alley.

Her heart began to race as her eyes quickly scanned the room.

And there he was.

Benedetto Arnaud, conjured from her memories, standing in her small kitchen, staring back at her as though he too couldn’t believe his eyes.

She loosened her scarf self-consciously, leaving it hanging around her neck and down her front. He looked so good; dressed in a charcoal suit with a crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the throat to reveal his thick column of neck and hair roughened chest. She swallowed, pushing down on the instant flash of desire.

That was a base physical reaction. It had no place in what she should feel for him.

“What are you doing here?” She demanded, dropping her handbag to the floor and taking another step into the flat.

“You need to start living in apartments that have better security,” he responded, attempting a joke to ease both of their discomforts.

But Kate didn’t smile.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t see Benedetto again. Not now, not ever. She swallowed and took a step away from him, towards the wall on the other side of the room.

“You have no right to be here.” She shook her head. “You broke into my apartment.”

“I had to see you.”

Her enormous eyes were closed to him. She was cold and unavailable, as he’d believed her to be when first he’d met her.

“No, you didn’t,” she responded caustically. “Ben … I can’t …” Kate felt as though she’d been winded. She dug her hands in her pockets, simply for something to do. Her heart was pounding so fast she couldn’t believe that he didn’t hear it. “I just can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what, Kate?” He murmured, taking a step towards her. She flinched as though he’d struck her and Ben felt pain slash his core.

“This is over. You and I said … we’re over. You can’t be here. My father …”

“You cannot live your entire life in hiding. You cannot fear him forever, cara.”

“Don’t. Don’t call me that,” she snapped angrily, pacing away from him. “And I was doing better until I met you. Do you know how long it took me to settle into life in Rome? How long it took me to feel like I finally had a place that was my own? A little slice of earth I could call home? And you ruined that. You’re going to ruin it again.”

A muscle jerked in his cheek. “I did not come here to ruin your life.”

“Then why did you?” She stalked over to the windows, and stared down at the street below. The beautiful street that she had come to love, would soon form another part of her past. How could she stay here now? “No one is meant to know where I am.”

“No one does. Except me.”

“If you found me, he will too.”

Benedetto raised a hand in front of him, imperiously commanding her to be quiet. But Kate’s emotions were going haywire.

“You can’t be here!” She shouted. “You can’t just … break into my flat! Again! I need you to go.”

“I came here to talk to you.”

“We have nothing to talk about,” she snapped, pulling the ends of her pony tail over her shoulder and toying with the hair nervously. Did he know? Had he somehow discovered the truth about her?

His lips twisted in a sardonic grimace. “That is completely untrue.”

“My father …”

“Is in prison.”

The words dropped into the room like tiny little pieces of flint. Kate stared at the ground as though she might even be able to see them hitting the floor. Is in prison. Is in prison. My father is in prison.

“I don’t understand.” Her enormous eyes sought his. “When? What happened?”

And shock kept her immobile, even when he crossed the room and stood right in front of her. “I found Connor.” Benedetto’s eyes searched hers. She stared up at him, waiting for him to continue. Kate wasn’t sure she would be able to speak, even if she knew what she wanted to say.

“He was working in Australia, doing research for a Supreme Court justice. Living in fear, as you were, of Augustine.”

“Why?” She stammered, her expression completely unreadable.

“You do not want these details, dear Kate …”

“Why?” She repeated through gritted teeth.

Benedetto weighed his words carefully, afraid that Kate was about to pass out. She was so pale, so fragile looking. “Augustine exercised his power over Connor to make sure Connor never revealed what he knew. Please do not make me discuss how, for I do not think you want to hear it.” He pressed a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. “Suffice it to say, your father knew how to get to Connor, and Connor took the threat seriously.”

Kate shuddered. “But Connor told you …”

“Connor did better than that,” Benedetto corrected darkly. “He had kept documents that proved your father’s guilt. If I had not felt jealous as hell of the man, I might even have walked away liking him.”

Kate shook her head. “You had no reason to be jealous of Connor,” she whispered.

Benedetto arched his brows cynically. “Of course I do. Kate, you slept with him. You cared for him. How do you imagine I would not envy this man?”

She swallowed. It didn’t mean he cared for her. Or that he ever had. It meant only that he viewed her as ‘his’, someone he had possessed for a time, as one might a pair of shoes or a coat. “That’s absurd. And irrelevant.” She forced her eyes to meet his. “You’re serious about this? Dad being in jail?”

“Si. I was close to having enough evidence to take to the authorities before meeting you.” He frowned, his expression somber. “If I could go back in time, I would do that, Kate. Instead of indulging a childish need to wound a man not worth such consideration. And to use you as my instrument.”

Kate nodded. “You and me both.” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Why are you here?”

He furrowed his brow. “I thought you would want to know about Augustine.” He shook his head then, a rueful expression at the corners of his eyes. “And I wanted to see you.”

Her stomach rolled. Anxiety caused perspiration to gather at her hairline. “I’m glad you told me, but it doesn’t change anything.” She sidestepped away from him, putting distance between them physically.

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed with the appearance of calmness.

Kate lifted a hand to her stomach on instinct and then dropped it. Guilt perforated her gut, but she knew it was for the best. “Can you please go, Benedetto?”

“No.” His smile was wry. “I don’t think I can. Having seen you again I don’t know why I waited until now to do this.” He propped his shoulder against the wall, perfectly affecting the appearance of nonchalance.

“To do what?”

“To tell you that we should still be together.”

She sucked in a breath and shook her head instinctively. “No. That’s not possible.”

“Of course it is possible,” he contradicted. “Especially now. You can come out in the open. Live with me in Rome. Live with me freely, and openly. Come back to me, Kate.”

“No,” she snapped angrily, clenching her hands to her side so that she didn’t give in to the instinct to slam her palms against his firm, muscled chest. But fury was whipping around her! Fury that he would think he had any right to come back into her life. To find her, again, when she’d gone to such lengths to be hidden.

He was undeterred. “I thought I slept with you because I wanted revenge. I did believe I had used you.”

She stared at him, silently urging him to continue. But when he didn’t, she let out a frustrated breath. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see that? I could never forgive you for what you did.”

Benedetto opened his mouth, perhaps to interrupt, but Kate shook her head. “You were upset. You were angry. I understand that. I do understand how awful your father’s position was, and all because of my father.” She spat the words as though they were loaded with venom. “But you made a choice. You made a choice to buy me at auction. You made a choice to seduce me. And you made a choice to take an intimate photo of me and send it to him.” She sobbed now, unable to stem the tide of panic that was swallowing her. “Choice after choice after choice and all the way you continued to choose what was bad for me. What my father did to you was terrible, but he didn’t owe you anything more than the common decency one human should give any other. You were my lover.” She clenched her jaw and exhaled through her nose. If she didn’t stay strong, the alternative was falling apart. “You made me love you. And then you did that. There is no walk-back from this. There is nothing you can say to me that will make it okay.”

She dashed her tears away and studied him angrily. It was obvious that he had not thought her response would be so final. Kate had surprised him. The realization filled her with power.

“I wanted to tell you,” he said thickly. “That last day, I thought about you non-stop. I could not believe the way things had unraveled. I thought we would sleep together and that would be the end of it. I never anticipated how difficult I would find it to let you go. I never imagined I would start to care for you.”

She rolled her eyes in obvious disbelief, even though her heart was begging to clutch at the words. “You didn’t care for me. You told me you didn’t want someone to spend the rest of your life with, or words to that effect. You don’t believe in happily ever afters. And nothing’s changed.”

“Everything’s changed,” he contradicted firmly.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“Like I spent three long months waking up every day feeling like my life no longer has purpose because you are not in it. Three months staring at that one stupid photo, wishing on everything I hold dear that I could go back in time and not take it. Certainly not send it. Wishing that I had told you the truth before it was too late. Wishing I had realized that the lurching feeling I got whenever I looked at you was because I loved you, not just because I find you so distractingly sexy. I spent three months fingering your clothes, breathing in your scent, making you so real in my mind that I could almost have touched you.” He braced his hands on either side of her face, his expression filled with despair. “I spent three months loving you, knowing I would do anything I could just to see you again. Three months knowing that if I saw you again I would say to you: I love you. That I would say it again and again and again until you got so sick of hearing it that you’d agree to forgive me just to shut me up.” He leaned his body forward, so that their hips were connected.

It was such a perfect moment despite their past that Kate groaned softly. But it wasn’t perfect enough to erase her pain; could anything have done that? “I can’t do it,” she whispered, dipping her head forward.

“You had a terrible childhood.” He kissed her temple gently, his voice thick. “One day, you might want to talk to me about it, and when you do, I will listen. But I understand, without you saying the words, that your father was a monster, and that he monstered you. I understand that you were made to feel that you were never safe.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I understand that you have never had the security most people can count on when they are small.” He moved his lips closer to hers, but still didn’t kiss her.

“And then you fell in love with me, and felt safe for the first time in your life. I begged you to trust me, I promised you I would keep you safe, and then I too endangered you. I don’t deserve you, Kate, and I am all too aware of it.” Now his lips lightly pressed against hers. He could taste the salt of her tears and it made his chest burst with dark emotions.

“You told me you knew how you felt about me immediately, because you had never felt it before. Nor had I, and yet you blindsided me. I fought it. I fought it so hard! How could I care for the daughter of a man I hated? Every time I looked at you, I saw him in your eyes, and I remembered my father, and I swore I hated you, Kate. I swore that I hated you.” His voice cracked with the strength of his feelings. “I was so, so wrong though.”

Kate sobbed, pulling her head back, but there was nowhere to go. She let the tears fall unchecked, keeping her eyes shut. “This is hopeless.”

“No.” He ran a thumb over her cheek. “On the contrary, I am full of hope. I love you to the point of madness. I know that it is the kind of love that will last our lives through, because I fought so hard not to feel it. And yet here I am. Begging you to give me a chance. Just a chance. Not your heart. Not yet. Just a small chance to show you that I understand how special this is.”

“Damn it,” she lifted her hands to his chest now and pushed. “I can’t.”

Kate was suffocating. She drew in a breath and then another, but her lungs seemed incapable of inflating; they were burning.

“I’m pregnant.”

She stared at him for a long moment and then closed her eyes. “We’re going to have a baby together.” Her words were completely devoid of emotion and he felt that sting of rejection anew; it was cold Kate: The Kate who was so clever at pushing people away. It was in stark contrast to the way her words made him feel. For Benedetto had reunited with the woman he loved and learned of his impending fatherhood in the space of ten minutes.

But Kate wasn’t happy and that weighed heavily on his happiness. “You wish you were not carrying my child.”

She glared at him with disbelief. “You and I both know why! You said … you told me you would never want me to have your baby.”

“No! I did not. You asked and I agreed.”

“Yeah. You agreed emphatically.”

“And at the time, I believed what I said. I thought my hatred for that man would always overrule everything I felt for you.” His eyes scanned hers. “But three months, Kate. Three long months of missing you and wanting you and wishing I could just hold your hand for two minutes … this has awakened me. I realize how wrong I was that night. How wrong I have been all along. Can my mistakes truly ruin what I believe should be a lifetime of our joy together? Can you not forgive my stupidity and see it for what it was?”

“And what’s that?” She whispered softly.

“A foolish, foolish man’s hatred. I had forgotten the goodness in life until I met you. And now? All I see is goodness. Kate, I love you. I adore you. I want to have ten little babies with you and I will love them with all of my heart that is leftover from the love I feel for you. I want to marry you. Now. Tomorrow. In a year. Whenever you can find it in that beautiful heart of yours to forgive me.”

“And if I say I can’t?” She asked quietly, that heart he found so beautiful pounding hard into her rib cage.

“I cannot yet contemplate it,” he said simply. “Because I do not want to. And I don’t believe it’s what you want. I think you wish you were angry with me. That your brain is angry, and your heart is still as much mine as ever.”

“I hate you,” she corrected softly.

“You hate what I did,” he responded with a small smile. “As do I. But you do not hate me.”

Didn’t she? Kate wasn’t sure anymore. Her feelings were a tidal wave of confusion.

“Will you come with me? This one last time? And if you say, afterwards, that you want nothing to do with me, I will respect your wishes, as much as that pains me.”

She swallowed down her objection. She swallowed past the desire to tell him to get lost. Curiosity and something else, something  a lot like love, were knotting in her chest. “Fine,” she said. “Against my better judgement.”

He turned so she wouldn’t see his smile.

When they emerged on the street below, she realised his motorbike was parked right by the door. How had she failed to notice it minutes earlier?

He handed her the helmet and she took it, weighing it carefully in her hands. “Like the first night we met.”

He nodded, a muscle twisting in his jaw. “I wish it were,” he said seriously. “I would do it all so differently.”

Kate looked away as she clicked the helmet into place. When she took her seat on the bike, she avoided looking at him, and touched him the minimal amount.

It took her a long time to realize where he was taking her. But eventually, the village near his father’s townhouse came into view. He zoomed past it, and before long, pulled the bike through the entrance to the farmhouse.

Her heart throbbed painfully.

He stopped the bike out the front and kicked down the support. She climbed off quickly, stepping several paces away from the bike.

“Why are we here?” She whispered, the helmet suffocating her now. She reached up to unhook it, but her eyes clung to the whitewashed buildings and the garden that had housed the poppies earlier in the year.

“You told me that you never wanted to leave,” he said simply, his eyes locking to hers. “So stay here.”

She swallowed, her heart turning over in her chest. “I can’t.”

“Come.” He put a hand out, and she put hers in it thoughtfully. Sparks of fierce electricity burned through her.

The moment they stepped inside, she could appreciate the differences. Subtle renovations had been undertaken in every room. Fresh paint, new light switches that indicated re-wiring, and in the last room they looked in, a state of the art office had been set up, with several monitors, phones, and a big desk in the middle with six chairs around it.

“I will have my team flown in for meetings,” he said. “Occasionally I may have to travel to Rome. But I will work here, and you will love here.”

Her smile was wistful. “And we’ll make jam with our children?” She murmured with a hint of disbelief, for the dream seemed so far away.

“Jam, and memories,” he said seriously.

Kate wanted, so badly, to reach out for what he was promising. But how could she? “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I told you,” he slid his hands behind her back and pulled her against him. He hugged her kindly, gently; he hugged her with compassion, not sensuality, because he wanted to reassure her. How easy it would have been to overwhelm her with the desire that had been the hallmark of their union.

“Just give me a chance.” Slowly he brought a hand to her stomach and felt the slight roundness there. “From the minute you left me, I knew I would fight for you, for us, Kate. I didn’t dare believe I deserved you, but I don’t want to lose you. I have had the farmhouse fixed, to make it comfortable for you, and I have dealt with Augustine so that you may live – with or without me – in safety and out of hiding.”

Kate’s enormous blue eyes blinked up at him, shimmering with tears.

“I do not expect you to live in my room, to come to my bed. Just move in with me. So that we can have dinner together every night. So that we can talk and laugh, as we did. So that we can share stories of our day. I will make whatever you wish work, Kate, just please tell me there is room for me somewhere in your life.”

Kate had been afraid for so many years.

She stared at Benedetto Arnaud, and felt that she was on a tightrope with her head on one side and her heart on the other. Just like he’d said. One tiny thing would tip her to the ground.

“Ti amo, cara, per sempre.”

And Kate found her lips forming a real smile. A smile that she could not suppress. A smile that spoke of trust and love and a future that she had never dared hope for.

“Is that a yes?” He murmured, squeezing her around the middle.

“It’s a yes, to a second chance,” she qualified, though her heart was already flying into the heavens. “It’s a yes.”

His laugh was jubilant. “Dio mio, cara,” he muttered. “You mean it?”

She nodded, her eyes wet with tears. “What you did,” she searched for the words. “I don’t condone it, but I understand it.”

“I fell in love with you, cara. Even when I thought I was using you, I loved you. I will always love you. I hope you understand the depth of my feeling.”

And she nodded, because she did. He loved her, as she loved him. Proof of that was littering their past and it was everywhere she looked then. The house was a physical testament to the emotions that filled his heart.

Dark deeds had brought them together, but love and hope would see that they stayed that way, happily and forever … just as they deserved.

 

THE END