CHAPTER TWELVE
CARLA WAS SWIMMING—slowly but steadily ploughing up and down the length of the pool at her mother’s villa. Had it really only been a week since she’d made her decision to set Cesare free?
As she climbed out of the water she felt a familiar tightening of her chest—an ache of emotion burning within her. Regret? Could it be that? Regret at having walked away from the one chance she would have to be part of Cesare’s life?
No—marriage to Cesare like that would have been unbearable! She had told him so, and it was true. True, true, true. So that was what she must hold to—all that must guide her now. However hard it was.
‘Darling, are you all right? You mustn’t overdo it.’
Marlene’s voice was concerned as she hurried forward with an enveloping towel, draping it around Carla’s wet back.
Carla smiled her thanks, taking a seat in the sunshine while her mother fussed about her. Her mother had been fussing...hovering...ever since she’d arrived back from Italy. And as she’d heard her daughter out Carla had seen the reaction in her face.
‘He’s offered to marry you?’ she’d said.
Her eyes had worked over Carla. Then slid away into her own past.
‘The decision must be yours,’ Marlene had said slowly. ‘But for my part I think it’s the right one—the decision you’ve made.’ She’d paused a moment before continuing. ‘Marrying your father was the worst mistake I made. I’d hoped it would make him love me. But it did th
e opposite. He married me because of pressure from his father, who held the purse strings and did not want any scandal. But when his father died—you were only a toddler—he took off.’ She’d paused again. ‘When he was killed in that car crash there was a woman with him—and he’d just filed for divorce.’
She’d looked at her daughter, her eyes troubled.
‘I ruined his life—and marriage brought no happiness for me either.’ She’d taken a breath, exhaled sadly. ‘No happy ending—for me or for him.’
No happy ending...
The words hovered in Carla’s mind. Her mother’s sorry tale only confirmed the rightness of her decision to leave Italy, to tell Cesare in that solitary voicemail that it was all she could face doing—that she preferred single motherhood to forcing him to marry her instead of the woman he wanted to marry.
‘Go back to her, Cesare, and make the marriage you have always been destined to make. I don’t want to be the one to part you from her—not for any reason. She is the woman you chose for your wife, not me. The time we had together was very...very special to me. But it is over. I wish you well. This is my choice. Please do not try and dissuade me from it.’
She had had no reply. Knew that she must be glad she had not. Knew that she must be glad she had set him free. Must bear the pain that came with that.
To have nothing of him... Nothing—just as I had when he left me—nothing of him.
Yet as she sat sipping at her iced fruit juice, feeling the Spanish summer heat warm her damp limbs, her hand slipped to curve around the swell of her abdomen.
No, not nothing. This is Cesare’s gift to me.
And memories—memories that she would never lose. Never!
Cesare reaching for her, taking her mouth with his, slow and seductive, arousing and sensual, taking his fill of her as her hands stroked his smooth, hard body, glorying in the feel of it beneath her exploring, delicately circling fingertips.
Cesare, his body melded with hers in the white heat of passion, desire burning with a searing flame, until she cried out, her body arching in ecstasy, the ecstasy of his possession...
A possession she could never know again.
She felt that ache form in her chest again, around her heart. An ache that would never leave her. Could never leave her. The ache of a broken heart that could never mend. She could never have the man she loved, loving her in return.
No happy ending...
* * *
Cesare walked up the wide, imposing staircase to the panelled, gilded galleria. Along the walls priceless Old Masters marched on either side. But he did not look at them. He went only to the far end of the long room. Stood before the triptych, letting his eyes rest on the three portraits, thinking of their tangled, entwined lives.
Once he had thought he knew them...presumed to know them...these three people from so long ago. Thought to know his ancestor, whose blood ran in his veins. The ancestor who had been free to choose, flanked by the women either side of him. The woman he’d chosen for his wife. The woman he’d chosen for his mistress.
Free to choose.