“If this is how you really feel, I don’t know why you bothered to open your door to me tonight.”
“Because I feel sorry for you,” he’d said, wiping a weary hand down his face and sounding as drained as she felt. “Almost as sorry as I do for the man you’re about to marry. Thank God it’s Baron and not me!”
“I wouldn’t have you if you were the last man on earth!”
“Good, because I’m not offering! You want a pain-less life, and I know better than to think I can give you one, because there is no life without pain. How does anyone learn to savor the good times, if they never learn to cope with the bad?”
She’d started to cry then, hopeless, helpless tears that just wouldn’t stop. He might not have come right out and said so, but he despised her, and who could blame him? Good grief, she despised herself—for her weakness and timidity and dishonesty. He was right. She was afraid—of him, of herself, of living life to the fullest—and quite willing to hide behind someone else so that she never had to face up to her fears.
He’d watched her dispassionately for a while, then handed her a tissue from the box beside the bed, and said, “Go home, Chloe, and do yourself a favor. Unless you want to wind up in the divorce court a second time, take a long, hard look at what you’re asking of yourself and Baron, by going ahead with this marriage.”
“What do you care,” she’d sobbed, “as long as you don’t have to clean up the mess?”
“I don’t care,” he said flatly. “But only because I won’t let myself.”
“And if Nico did want you, would you go with him?” Baron asked now.
“No,” she said, the endless tears of the previous sleepless night having at last washed away all the clutter from her mind and left it receptive to the kind of brutal soul-searching so long overdue. “I’ve been running away from myself for a long time now, and it has to stop. I don’t much like the person I’ve become, Baron. I’ve never thought of myself as a user, but I’m afraid I’ve taken unconscionable advantage of you and Nico. The difference is, he won’t let me get away with it, whereas you always make allowances, always show yourself ready to settle for what I’m willing to give, without once asking for more.”
“You don’t hear me complaining, Chloe. And in all honesty, neither of us has ever pretended ours was the love match of the century. I think we both know that’s something that rarely happens in real life.”
“But it did happen to me, that’s the trouble. I know how it feels to love a man so madly that he fills my dreams and occupies my every waking thought to the exclusion of everything else.”
Baron beat his fingertips in a soft tattoo on the linen tablecloth. “Perhaps that’s where we differ the most, then, because I’m not sure I’m capable of that kind of passion. I’m not sure I ever want to be,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s why we made such a good couple—or at least, I thought we did. But I’ve seen another side of you this last week, Chloe, and I realize I was wrong. The real you has been undercover all this time, and it took Nico to bring you out of hiding.”
“It’s not that I don’t love you, Baron, because I do,” she said, hating that she sounded so trite and condescending.
“I love you, as well. You will always be very dear to me. But you know, I’ve been divorced for over thirteen years and I have to confess that there’ve been times when I’ve questioned my ability to give up the rather solitary life I’ve enjoyed for so long.”
“You say that now, because you want to make me feel better about jilting you at the last minute, but if I hadn’t called off the wedding, you’d have gone through with it.”
“Yes, I would have. As I said before, you’re not the only coward in the mix, Chloe. I’d have gone ahead and made the best of things, and I don’t suppose it would have been too difficult. We are, after all, very good friends.” He smiled again. “Perhaps that’s all we were ever meant to be.”
“You’re one of the finest men I’ve ever known, and your friendship means more to me than you’ll ever know.” She shook her head, her relief at having at last done the right thing diluted by a terrible feeling of regret for all the hurt she’d caused. “So where do we go from here?”
“I suppose the first thing is to cancel as many arrangements as possible. Have you told anyone else what you’ve decided?”
“No. The least I could do was let you be the first to know.”
“Then I suggest you tell your mother and grandmother next. Let them help you. I’m sure they won’t—”
“There are bigger issues at stake than canceling the wedding arrangements, Baron! What about the town house, and our working together?”
“The real estate market’s very hot right now. We’ll have no trouble selling the house. As for working together, there’s no reason we can’t go on as before. It’s not as if we see that much of each other in the office, anyway.” He regarded her over the rim of his coffee cup, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “In any case, I rather think you’ll be leaving the country eventually. It’s a very long commute from here to Italy.”
She started crying again at that, overwhelmed by a generosity she didn’t begin to deserve. “If that ever happens,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin, “I’m going to miss you very much.”
By noon, the most urgent phone calls had been made, and word that the wedding was officially off had gone the rounds. There was a host of details still needing attention, of course, perhaps the most time-consuming being to return wedding gifts with an appropriate note of thanks and explanation. But the most onerous task in Chloe’s opinion, once she’d spoken to Baron, was facing Nico again.
She didn’t expect him to fall all over himself just because she’d finally had the guts to do what she should have done at least a week ago, if not before. But she hoped she could at least regain a little of his respect.
Any such notion died as she pushed open the gate at the bottom of the garden. Such an air of quiet solitude enveloped the lodge that she knew what she’d find, even before the front door swung open to confirm there was nothing behind it but empty rooms. He was gone, not just to walk on the beach, or attend another business meeting downtown, but gone—as in left completely, never to return.
The kitchen was spotless, the cushions on the sofa in the sitting room tidily in place, the clothes closet empty. Nothing remained to remind her that he’d been there, except for the sheets and towels dropped in the laundry hamper in the bathroom—and the photograph of her, which he’d removed from the double picture frame and left torn in half on the nightstand as a telling finale before he’d rung down the curtain on their relationship.
If there was to be a sequel, she’d have to be the one to enact it, and for both their sakes, it couldn’t be soon. Aware of the risk invited by delay, because there surely were legions of women who’d be happy to fill the shoes she’d left empty, it was nevertheless a chance she’d have to take. Nico wanted a partner able and willing to share the load, and until she could offer him total commitment, she had no right to importune his love.
I don’t care, he’d said last night, shortly before he’d booted her out of his life, but only because I won’t let myself.
It wasn’t much on which to pin her hopes for a happy ending to their love affair, but it was all she had, and she clung to it as she faced the long road of recovery ahead.
The wedding didn’t happen, after all, Jacqueline wrote, at the beginning of October. Just as we hoped, Chloe came to her senses at the last minute, and it didn’t seem to come as much of a surprise to anyone, least of all Baron. They remain good friends and colleagues, and though it was all a bit frantic for a while, everything’s settled down now. She moved into her own place last week, a condominium on the west side, and plans to spend Christmas in Mexico. She never mentions you, Nico, and I don’t ask, but Charlotte and I both so hoped the two of you would kiss and make up. Perhaps, the next time you come over here, you’ll find a way….
It wasn’t going to happen. He�
��d appointed Donna Melino CEO of his North American operation, leaving him free to concentrate on his other business holdings and his nonexistent private life. He’d suffered punishment enough at Chloe’s hands, and only a fool would keep going back for more. It was time he shed the emotional baggage he’d carried around for so long, and made a fresh start with someone whose wounded, reproachful eyes weren’t a constant reminder of all he’d lost.
While she was sunning herself on the Mexican Riviera, he’d be actively shopping for a new wife. The next time a wedding was in the offing, it would be his.
Trouble was, although women were easily come by, finding one who held his attention for more than a week or two proved next to impossible. Either they were too much like Chloe, or not like her enough. When the new year rolled in, he celebrated with his sisters and their families, and was the only man at the party who didn’t have a woman in his arms at midnight.
“Your problem,” his brother-in-law Hector told him, in a hung-over bout of confidence the next morning, “is that you want to turn back time. You want Chloe the way she used to be, before your little son died. But you know, l’amico, losing a child changes a person forever. You’re not the same man she married, either.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out,” he’d replied shortly. “You’ve only got to look at me to see I’ve changed.”
“I’m not talking about the fact that you appear more successful on the surface. It’s what’s going on underneath that counts. Even though you’ve achieved so much, can you honestly say you’re ever able to forget you were once a father? Can owning a fleet of cargo ships deflect the grief that sneaks up when you’re not expecting it, and leaves you feeling as if you’ve been punched in the kidneys? If you were to take another wife, would that be enough to make you put away your memories and never think of Luciano again, or to forget that Chloe is the only woman you’ll ever really love?”
Depressingly probing questions that would accept nothing but the truth for answers! He’d never forget his son, and Chloe…? Damn her, she was in his blood still, and no number of fresh transfusions seemed able to get rid of her.
So he stopped searching, stopped the interminable round of dating, and devoted himself to the one thing that never failed to bring him satisfaction: he made more money, with a series of daring investments that left his broker on the verge of a heart attack. Ironically, because it didn’t much matter whether or not they paid off, they brought in handsome returns.
He bought himself a new Ferrari and a classic Bugatti.
“What’s wrong with the Lamborghini?” his sister Delia wanted to know. “You can only drive one car at a time. Why own three?”
Annoyed, he said, “Because I can afford them.”
He bought a place on the shores of Lake Garda, a mansion just outside Sirmione, formerly owned by an American movie star, and large enough that all four of his sisters and their families could stay there at one time.
“You already gave us that chalet in the Alps,” Abree reminded him. “Why this house, too, when we spend most of our time in Verona?”
“Does there have to be a reason?” he snapped. “Isn’t it enough that I enjoy spending money on my family?”
It sounded all very fine in theory, but the fact remained that he gained no pleasure from any of it. Once upon a time, his ultimate dream had been to have more money than he could spend. Now that he’d got it, he found it was as empty as any other dream based on ignorance of what really counted in life.
CHAPTER TEN
April 14, the following year
SHE’D come to Verona as a young woman, been entranced by its history, and fallen in love in the summer shade of its medieval buildings. In the end, though, she’d endured some of her darkest hours there, and left it, vowing she’d never return. Yet the second she set foot on the ancient streets of La Città degli Romeo e Giulietta again, she felt she’d come home at last.
Nico hadn’t the first idea of what lay in store. Indeed, she hardly knew herself. There’d been no contact between them since the previous August, when he’d unceremoniously turfed her out of the gardener’s lodge, and out of his life. For all she knew, he might well be in love with someone else by now, and that would be a hard thing to accept. But Chloe was willing to deal with the possibility, if only to prove to herself and him that she was in control of her life and ready to confront whatever shape it might assume.
He was in town, she knew. Her mother had agreed to release that much information, along with his address. But Chloe didn’t expect him to be home until the end of the business day, which was just as well. There was another place she needed to visit first, one she’d left too long neglected.
The churchyard lay bathed in sunshine. Making her way unerringly to her son’s burial site, she crouched on the grass, a bouquet of spring flowers in her arms. She was not the first to stop by that day. Another arrangement, as freshly cut as hers, lay at the base of the simple marble plaque marking his place.
She traced her finger over his name, let it linger on her lips, then knelt, spread her hands palms down on the warm sod covering him and, for a little while, she cried. But not as she’d expected she might. There were no great, convulsive sobs, no feeling that her heart was being torn from her body. Rather, they were quiet, cleansing tears that ran down her face, and when they were done, she was left with a sense of peace she had not known in years.
She stayed there for nearly an hour, then walked back to where the taxi driver patiently waited, and directed him to take her into the center of town. Once there, she wandered the familiar streets and revisited some of the places to which Nico had introduced her, that passion-filled summer they met.
The trattoria in the sun-splashed square where they’d shared their first meal was there still, also the bakery above which he and his sisters had lived as children. The red geraniums his mother had loved bloomed in profusion from the window boxes, just as they had when she was alive.
The market in the Piazza delle Erbe bustled with its usual lively activity. He’d stolen two tangerines from a fruit stall, she remembered, and had laughed at her horrified gasp at his lawlessness.
After that, she strolled to the simple gray house at 23, Via Cappello—the famous House of Capulet, as it was still called, with its delicate balcony still hanging on the wall outside Juliet’s window.
“You are my Giulietta,” Nico had told her, the night they became lovers, “but our story will have a happier ending than hers. We’ll live and love to a ripe old age together.”
She’d believed him, and why not? Who could have foretold that it was their son who’d meet an early death, and not either of them, or that losing him would rob them of each other? But, God willing, it wasn’t too late for them to make good on that early promise.
Dusk was falling when she finally found herself on the street where he lived, in an area of town clearly too high-rent for the average man. His front door was painted shiny black, with brass numbers marching vertically down its center panel. The white interior shutters at his windows were angled so that he could observe passers by without their being aware of his surveillance.
For a moment, the courage which had carried her this far evaporated. What if he happened to be looking out now, and saw her standing on the sidewalk? Would he be happy, angry, amused?
There was but one way to find out. Composing herself, she marched up the short walkway fronting the house and pressed the brass bell on the wall beside the door.
He took his time answering and looked none too pleased at being disturbed. When he saw who his visitor was, he wiped his face clean of all emotion and didn’t betray by so much as the flicker of an eyelash his inner response to her presence. He merely stood there and waited for her to speak first.
Her own reaction was much more difficult to hide. Even though she’d been prepared to see him, her insides rolled over in one long, dizzying somersault. Her blood churned, her lungs froze, the calzone she’d eaten for lunch, nearly
six hours before, rose up in her throat. As for her poor, beleaguered heart, it beat so hard and fast that the front of her blouse fluttered.
How long the silence lasted, she couldn’t have said. All she knew was that she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the sight of him. Even with a five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw, and his hair slightly mussed, he looked so handsome…so wary…so remote. And oh, so unmoved by his uninvited caller! Clearly, it would be up to her to break the ice—a metaphor, she thought dazedly, that all too well fit the occasion. His reception couldn’t have been colder.
“Ciao!” she said, pasting what she hoped was a poised and relaxed smile on her face, but suspecting she looked as rattled as she surely sounded. “I guess I’m the last person you expected to see.”
He inclined his head slightly, said, “Sì,” and continued to regard her without a trace of expression.
More discomfited by the second, she shifted from one foot to the other. “I…um, I arrived this morning.”
No reaction, no curiosity, no interest. She might as well have been speaking in foreign tongues for all the acknowledgment she received.
Hating the desperation surely evident in her tone, she said, “I went to see Luciano today. Took some flowers to his grave, but there were others already there.”
At last, a sign that he had heard, that he was listening. “I visited him myself, just this morning.”
“You did?”
“I go every week, except when I’m away on business, and so do his aunts. We have not abandoned him.”
Though his tone remained neutral, the rebuke was unmistakable and it stung. “And you think I have?”
“I try not to think of you at all,” he replied cuttingly.
Oh, he was not going to make this easy on her! But then, why should he, when, in the past, she’d rebuffed his every attempt to help her? “You’re frequently in my thoughts, Nico.”
The Moretti Marriage Page 13
