Lana’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘I refused to take your money because I’d broken the terms of our deal! I’d left you before the year was out. That was why!’
She felt her face work. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, words were tumbling within her, but she must make sense of them—she must. And above all she must say what she had to now.
‘I never left you for Malcolm—even though, yes, he did repay what he owed me! You saw him leave my flat,’ she said, her voice hollow, ‘because he’d been sent there by his fiancée—who hadn’t dumped him, whatever the gossip said! She discovered that I’d claimed he’d defrauded me, that I was seeking to press charges. She didn’t want any scandal attached to him so she sent him there, gave him the money to repay the mortgage, in exchange for dropping all my accusations. Which I did.’
Salvatore was staring at her. Something different in his face now. ‘So you got your money back, and you slept with him one last time, for old times’ sake?’
There was no expression in his voice.
Nor was there in Lana’s as she answered him.
‘No,’ she said again. ‘It wasn’t like that, Salvatore.’
She made herself look at him. The thud of her heart was deafening her. She gave a cry. Launching herself to her feet.
‘Why do you think I left you?’
The words broke from her—impossible to halt them, to silence them, to keep them locked within her any longer. Not a second longer. It was no longer possible to keep hidden the truth she’d had to hide.
He stilled. Utterly motionless.
‘I left you because I found out I was pregnant,’ she said, and each word was forced from her. They were the most important, the most vital words she would ever utter in her life, and her whole life now depended on them. ‘And when I did, I knew I could not impose upon you what you had never agreed to. What broke our agreement into pieces. It...it would not have been fair on you.’
She took a breath before plunging on, saying what must be said—what could not be left unsaid. They had gone way beyond that now.
‘You were always honest with me, Salvatore...’ Her voice changed as she spoke now, and her eyes echoed the truth of what she was saying. ‘Honest about the reasons we married, about when it would end, and why—honest when you said that we would only have a year together...honest about what you felt for me. Desire, yes, but nothing more. And, wonderful though our time was—and I am joyously glad that we had what we had together, and it felt right to be with you and to want you, be wanted by you—for all that... I always knew I was on borrowed time. That we would part.’
She shook her head.
‘There was nothing...nothing that gave me any claim on anything else from you. Like...like being pregnant. So,’ she finished, ‘because of that I knew I could only do what I did. I left you. And although I would have given all the world not to have had to leave you, it was as simple as that.’
She fell silent, but she could hear each beat of her heart, each pulse of her blood.
‘And when you did...when you left me,’ he answered her, ‘my world ended. It was as simple as that. And devastating to me.’
He shut his eyes for a moment, then they flashed open again, gold blazing in their night-dark depths. Gold that could melt her where she stood.
He took a step towards her. Halted. ‘When I married you, Lana, I did so for hard-headed reasons—and I was honest with you, as you say, from the off. I wanted nothing more than what I’d planned—a year with you, no more.’ He drew a razoring breath. ‘I’ve never done long relationships because...’ The razoring breath came again. ‘Because I never...never...wanted to cause any woman the misery my mother endured because of my father. The father I thought I was like. Feared I was like...’
He was silent a moment, his face drawn. Then he spoke again, and now there was something different about him. Something clearer in his eyes.
‘I thought all I wanted of you was an affair—that it would end like all my affairs end. That the time would come when I would stop wanting you, as has always been the case with me—as it was for my father. But it took your leaving—leaving me for another man, as I so insanely thought—to make me realise something that I had never known...something only the agony I felt when you left me could show me.’
He took a breath, but this time it was not razoring at all. Only resolute. As resolute as his voice when he spoke to her again.
‘Show me,’ he said, his eyes holding hers as if they were precious jewels he must never lose. ‘Show me that I am not my father’s son, Lana, but that I am my mother’s. And that as my mother’s son I can know—as I did not when I thought I was like my father, incapable of emotional attachment—that all the time we were together I was falling in love with you, even though I had no idea of it.’
He took a breath from the very depths of his being, his eyes pouring into hers with such intensity that she reeled from it.
He shook his head. ‘I did not know it...did not recognise it. But now...’ He took another, deeper breath, his eyes still pouring into hers. ‘Now I do recognise it—I know it for what it is. And even if it’s only the sake of the baby...’ his voice was diffident now, hesitant, unsure ‘...if you will come back to me, then—’
She cut across him instinctively, her words as heartfelt as everything that was in her. ‘Then I will have found my paradise, Salvatore.’
She took a step towards him, reached out her hands to him. Her heart was singing, soaring to the very heavens.
‘Oh, my most dearest one, I have known I loved you ever since I left you. It nearly killed me to have to leave you!’ Her voice twisted, emotion breaking in it. ‘But when I discovered I was pregnant I could not bear to make you resent me, make you feel that I was trapping you! I knew, for your sake, that I could not tell you I was pregnant! I could not do that to you. Not for your sake, Salvatore, or—’ her voice broke ‘—or for mine.’
The words poured from her—all that had been stifled, all that she had not been allowed to say but now she could. She could speak at last.