He could still remember the way she’d looked at him.
“Living things need more than that to flourish. Even these trees. Even you.”
Marco sipped at the coffee.
He’d ended the foolish conversation by taking her back to bed but their affair had not lasted very long after that.
“I want more,” she’d told him, and they’d both known she hadn’t meant more jewelry or clothes or other gifts, just as they’d both known that he didn’t have more to give.
He had, once.
A decade ago.
In two short, amazing years he’d made his first million, made his second, his third and fourth. He’d also met a woman, lost his heart to her, or so he’d thought, and asked her to marry him.
At first, things were fine. Coming home to someone at the end of a long day was new to him. He liked the feeling. He liked having someone to care about.
A business opportunity came along.
It was risky. If he invested in it, he could make millions. He could also lose almost everything he had. He didn’t think that would happen, but when you took risk, there was always that possibility. Still, he was young. Hardworking. And he had a woman standing beside him who loved him.
Wrong.
He told his wife about the investment. He wanted to hear her opinion. And she gave it.
If he lost everything, she said calmly, he would also lose her. What about love? he said, and she said, What about it?
The divorce was quick, the settlement her lawyers got out of him substantial.
The last time he saw her, he’d heard himself ask the question he’d sworn he would not ask.
“Was it all a lie?” he’d said.
She’d smiled, touched his shoulder.
“Not the sex.”
It had been a hard lesson. An awful lesson, but he had learned it well.
He was not a man meant for love. He had raised himself out of poverty, alone. He had created a life for himself, alone. He had become the man he was, alone.
He needed no one. He never would.
The trees bent to a gust of wind. Marco shivered.
Why was he thinking about these things? More to the point, why couldn’t he sleep?
No, it had not been a good day. The Ferrari. His PA. Jessalyn. Annoyances, all of them, but he’d had worse days, especially years ago, days when he had not known where he would get his next meal, when his dreams of success had seemed more distant than the stars.
Nothing that had happened today came close to that.
And yet here he was, standing on his terrace at four-something in the morning, facing another long day ahead, needing sleep and knowing it would not come.
For what reason?
He was not a man given to insomnia. He worked hard, played hard. Literally. He had a workout room on the lower level of the penthouse. He played racquetball. Soccer. American football. He had little time for those things, of course, but when he did, he gave no quarter and expected none. And he slept soundly.
So, what was he doing out here at this hour?