“Let go of me.”
“No.”
She yanked her shoulder from his grasp and fell against the wall from the momentum.
His face leached of all color. “Stellina, are you all right?”
“What do you care?”
“I care.” He leaned back against the wall as if his legs wouldn’t quite hold him up. “You don’t have to go. I’ll leave…stay at a hotel. You’re safer here. Please, Tara, let me do at least this much for you.”
“No.” She couldn’t stay where the memories of her doomed happiness with him would haunt her.
He didn’t say another word as she walked out of the apartment. She took a taxi to a hotel, checked in and went up to her room to cry her heart out.
She stayed in the hotel for three days, eating room service for the baby’s sake, ignoring Angelo’s calls on her cell phone and crying until her throat was so raw, she could barely speak to order food over the phone.
On the third day, there was a knock at her door. Her stupid heart leaped, thinking it might be Angelo, but then she told herself it wouldn’t matter if it was. She would just send him away. Her heart returned to being a cold lump in her chest.
She looked through the peephole and recognized Hawk, her husband’s friend from the wedding. His private investigator.
“Go away,” she yelled through the door…more like croaked.
“I can’t do that, Mrs. Gordon.”
She didn’t have the voice to argue. That’s the only reason she opened the door, she told herself.
“What do you want?”
“Are you okay? You sound like you’re sick.”
She shrugged. She was. Sick at heart.
He was carrying a suitcase. It looked like the one she’d been packing when she left Angelo. Because she had no clothes to change into, she’d taken to wearing the terry robe provided by the hotel with her suite. She was wearing it now, her hair hanging down around her face in stringy tangles.
He put the suitcase down. “Angelo looks worse than you.”
Her eyes widened at that. Her husband never looked less than perfectly groomed.
“He’s worried about you.”
She glared, not buying it.
Hawk shook his head, his expression vexed. “You’re both a couple of idiots.”
“I am not…” Her voice refused to function any more.
Hawk shook his head. “Why don’t you let me do the talking?”
Did she have a choice? She shrugged again.
“I know why Angelo came after you initially. Hell, I helped him do it, but he cares about you now. He needs you.”
She shook her head vehemently.
The big man facing her frowned fiercely. “You walked out and I have been with him in that mausoleum of an apartment for three days.”
“Not…mausoleum…”
“It is now, with him mourning your loss like a grief-stricken widower. I haven’t seen him like this since his mother died. It’s always a woman,” the tall man said with disgust and shook his head. “Do you know he has not gone to work since you left him?”
When she didn’t reply, Hawk sighed with frustration. “Whether he’s too stubborn to admit it, or you are too angry to accept it, he needs you. The real question is whether or not you care enough about him to give him the chance to prove it to you?”
“I’m not too stubborn.” The voice came from the doorway and she turned to look, gasping at what she saw.
Hawk hadn’t been lying. Angelo looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week, not a mere three days. His cheeks were hollow and lined with strain. His jaw line was shadowed with three days of stubble…it was almost a beard and his jeans and sweater looked slept in. But it was his eyes that were the worst.
They reflected the tortures of the damned in their indigo depths. “I do need you, Tara. More than I can ever say with simple words.”
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Hawk said, as if Angelo hadn’t just made an impossible declaration.
“I couldn’t stay away. I had to see her.” Angelo’s gaze was glued to her face.
“Well, it looks like she’s not faring any better than you.”
“My fault.” Angelo turned away, his proud shoulders slumped. “I should go.”
Hawk said something ugly under his breath. “Don’t be an idiot, Angelo. Does she look like she’ll be better off if you go?”
Angelo turned back. “I had Hawk bring your clothes. If you need anything else…” His voice trailed off, his throat working like he was trying to hold in some intolerable emotion.
“You,” she croaked, unable to let him walk away.