Bella compressed her lips with disapproval.
“I need to remember,” he said, moving closer to her, his eyes imploring. “In my mind, you said, ‘we need to talk’, and then it’s blank.”
The sound of the keys in the door came at the worst possible moment. “Your fiancé?” Arabella asked with pleasant anticipation and relief in her voice as she stood – relief that he wasn’t going to continue down this self-destructive course of action. When his memories began to surface, he was supposed to let them rise of their own accord, not pursue them with his every conscious thought.
The sound of Elizabeth moving through the house cracked through his thoughts. Xavier swore softly.
“Yes. That’s Elizabeth. But she isn’t expecting you.”
“Oh, Xavier,” Arabella smiled tightly. “She’s hardly going to care that a woman you divorced years ago is having coffee with you in the middle of the afternoon. I know you – you could never marry a possessive woman, or she’d leave you within a day.”
He grimaced at the truth that underscored that comment. The implication that he’d given Arabella reason to be jealous?
“Xavier?” The little boy’s voice rang through the house and a moment later, Joshua pitched into the kitchen, a certificate in his hands.
“Master Congeniality” it read, in big, happy letters.
Arabella was now the one who looked as though she’d seen a ghost.
“My God, Xavier, this is… he looks…”
Xavier’s insides churned at the mess he knew was to follow – the pain he was about to cause both Arabella and Elizabeth. It could not have been timed worse. Why the hell hadn’t he thought this through better? Because his head had been banging all day, robbing him of his usual mental strength.
“Joshua,” Elizabeth’s voice followed right behind. “I asked you to take your shoes off. They’re covered in mud and now the house is…” She stopped dead when she entered the kitchen, and it was immediately apparent that she recognized Arabella.
Elizabeth reached out and braced herself on the doorframe.
Arabella regained her composure first. She was emotionally more distant from the situation, and able to school her features into a mask of polite inquiry.
“And who are you, young man?” She asked, crouching down to Joshua’s eye-height.
“Joshua Jones,” he said with an impatience that channeled Xavier’s. He turned to his father. “Look, Xavier, I won a prize!”
“So you did.” The words were heavy. “Why don’t you go to your room and get some tape so we might put it on the wall?”
“Um, okay,” Joshua shrugged and left the room.
“He’s your son?” Arabella asked, standing, her expression tight. Elizabeth had barely moved.
Xavier nodded, the awkwardness of the situation made all the worse by his damned incomplete memories. A white-hot anger flashed inside of him – why couldn’t he remember? Where had those months gone in his mind? And would he ever get them back?
“I … Excuse me.” Elizabeth muttered, spinning and almost knocking her head on the door jamb as she went.
Xavier went to follow but Arabella caught his arm, grabbing him and spinning him around. “How old is he?”
Xavier’s chest was being ripped in half. “I have to explain to her – and to you – but Elizabeth first –,”
“How old?” Arabella was more determined than he’d ever seen her.
Xavier’s head was in agony. “Three. But I must go to her…”
“Three? But … You… I don’t understand. When?”
“I wish I could understand how I ever came to cheat on you,” he said, thinking of Elizabeth and knowing instinctively that she was the only woman he would ever have broken his strong moral code for.
“When did you and she meet?” Arabella asked urgently, lifting shaking fingers to her necklace and toying with it.
“The weekend before the crash,” he said. “I apologise, Arabella. I can’t defend my actions. There is no damned defense for them.”
“Stop.” She swallowed, her expression grim. “You’re not at fault.”
“Don’t.” His word held a warning. “You always make excuses for me, you tolerate everything. But this is beyond excuses.”
“No, you don’t understand. Oh, God, Xavier.” She lifted a hand to her mouth, covering a mangled noise of pain.
But Xavier barely heard it. “I have to go to her.”
“No.” Arabella reached for his hand and squeezed it. “You have to hear me out first.”
* * *
There was a ringing in Ellie’s ears.
She watched as Joshua kicked his legs to coordinate his swinging – up and back, up and back. It was a cool afternoon but Ellie had left the house without thinking to grab a coat, so she huddled down deeper on the park bench, her eyes trained on their child as he sailed through the air, care-free and giggling.
“He’s adorable,” a woman with a heavy European accent admired, sitting beside Ellie.
She nodded her thanks, but didn’t reply. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t know what she wanted.
Only that coming home to see Xavier with his ex-wife in the kitchen had filled her with the strangest feeling that she was being drowned, her head being pushed beneath water, her lungs filling with liquid until she couldn’t breathe.
The worst of it was that Ellie had felt like an outsider – again. She had loved Xavier, and she’d loved him with all of herself. She’d made a child with him, and then he’d married someone else. And seeing that someone else in the present had rocked Ellie to the core because it reminded her that she’d always be an outsider. His second choice bride.
None of this was about her, for him.
God, and for Ellie?
She swallowed convulsively, fiddling her fingers in her lap. To Ellie, he was so much more than that. He was her first lover, and her first love. He was also her first heartbreak and her biggest lesson in not trusting her heart.
“Mummy!” Joshua came running over, his little hands outstretched, and when she looked down, saw that he’d found a small rock, shaped like a perfect heart. “Look! It’s for you!”
She smiled slowly, wistfully, and grabbed for him, lifting him to her lap and cuddling him close. “Is it, baby?”
“I’m not a baby!” He disputed, then giggle when she tickled his tummy. “I’m such a big boy now! Xavier says so!”
Ellie nodded, her cheek pressed against his soft, downy curls. That was true – he was growing up too fast.
“Do you want it?” She looked down at the little heart stone he was offering so freely and swept her eyes shut for a moment. Hearts were special, and should be given freely, just like this.
She’d given all of her heart to Xavier four years earlier, and he hadn’t deserved it. And now? He still held it. She’d given it freely, a long time ago, and it turns out, there was no taking it back. She’d loved him and probably always would.
That was why the pain of seeing him with Arabella was corking through her like a stick of dynamite.
It was why her chest felt like it had the weight of a ten tonne cement mixer pressing down on it. It was why her ears were screeching and her eyes were stinging and her stomach was rolling with waves of panic.
It was why adrenalin fired in her veins and she felt like she wanted to fight or scream or run and run and run.
“Here.” He reached for Ellie’s hand and placed the rock in it, then jumped off her lap. “Five more minutes, mummy?” He asked sweetly, repeating her standard refrain before she’d had a chance to offer it.
“Ten,” she said with an indulgent smile. He was thrilled – he didn’t know that this park was a refuge. He didn’t understand that they were hiding from home.
Her heart twisted painfully in her chest because she knew it was just a temporary respite. Soon, they would need to return to Xavier’s, and the life that was waiting for them, and somehow, she’d have to learn to protect herself from this a
ll-consuming love and need.
She’d have to learn to at least appear not to care, when all of her was still as bound up in the Spaniard as ever before.
* * *
By the time he’d disposed of Arabella and gone in search of Elizabeth and Josh, he found them gone. And a stone of concern landed heavily inside of him. Worry perforated his gut.
He called her phone; it was off.
He thought of going in search of her but had no clue where she might be. Her house had been rented quickly after she’d moved out. Nell’s?
Where did she stay while in London?
He groaned, pacing the lounge room floor until finally, a little before six, the door flew open and an ice wind followed.
“Elizabeth,” he sounded angry, yet he wasn’t. Concern and the bastard of a headache were robbing him of the ability to think straight.
She flinched.
He tried to soften his question. “Where have you been?”
She spoke calmly, and without meeting his eye. “At the park,” she said. “I thought I’d give you some space.”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “It’s not what you think,” he said, impatiently. “I need to explain…”
Her smile was forced, over-bright, and brittle, like it might crack on her face. “I need to get Josh ready for bed,” she said. “He’s tired.”
And he became aware of the small boy, his miniature version, with huge eyes that saw everything, roaming from one parent to another.
“Let me,” he offered, the exhaustion in her face impossible to bear.
“No!” For a second, her façade dropped and she was shrill and desperate. She shook her head, clearing the tone from the air. “I want to do it. Excuse me.”
She reached down for Josh and lifted him, holding him close as though he were her salvation.
It took Xavier several moments to gather his thoughts. “I’ll make his dinner…”
“We ate while we were out.”
He compressed his lips and resumed pacing, waiting, impatient, frustrated and still reeling from his conversation with Arabella.
By the time Elizabeth returned to the lounge area, her face was drawn. “I only came to get a cup of tea,” she murmured, moving to squeeze past him.
“Listen to me,” he pleaded urgently.
“It’s fine. I don’t know why I was surprised. You cheated on her with me and now… you’re seeing her again. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”
“Would you stop for one damned second?” She flinched again and he cursed inwardly. He needed to do this quickly, like ripping off a bandaid. “I called Arabella because I’d had a strange recollection this morning, and I had no idea if it was true or not. It’s hard to know, sometimes. My memories are like ghosts, shimmering in front of me, sometimes make-believe, figments of imaginations, or memories of dreams. Other times, true, but incomplete, so I have an impression of something that occurred but no clue as to the circumstances surrounding it.”
Her eyes were cool when they sliced to his. “I don’t want to hear it.”
She moved into the kitchen and he followed, watching as she flicked the kettle on.
“She came here because she was worried about me. The headaches I get can be debilitating – and they always accompany a memory.”
Elizabeth’s back stiffened visibly, her tension a force in the room.
“I asked her about what I had remembered, and she lied.”
Elizabeth said nothing.
“She didn’t understand the significance of the memory until you and Josh came back here.”
Nothing. He couldn’t blame her.
“Elizabeth? Arabella and I broke up a month before I met you.” At that, Elizabeth stilled – if it was possible. Before she had been unmoving and now she was like stone. Every cell of her body was held tense, taut, frozen.
“I couldn’t recall it; I lost so many memories. And she was wracked with guilt after the accident. She thought maybe I’d been drinking or something, mourning the demise of our relationship,” he spat the words, finding it impossible to conceal his anger with his ex-fiancé now, even when he knew her lie had been innocent enough.
He sucked in a breath, trying to cool his temper. “I didn’t cheat on her with you. Whatever happened between us that weekend was honest. Whatever I said to you, I meant.”
She was still not-moving. He made a growling sound and paced across the kitchen turning her in his arms. But her face was stricken, her eyes not meeting his.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” He demanded. “It was over between Arabella and me. Long over. We weren’t in love. The engagement had made sense but she knew I didn’t care for her the way she wanted. It was all very sensible. Amicable. And over.”
Ellie shook her head. “But your parents – did they know?”
He frowned. “Why does that matter?”
She bit down on her lip. “I’m just trying to make sense of everything.”
“They didn’t,” he said. “We decided we’d break it to them together – they adore Bella, like a daughter – and I was travelling so much. We hadn’t had a chance to tell them.”
“But I thought you were engaged,” she said, still unable to implicate his parents in all of this, even when her heart desperately wanted her to. “She announced herself at the hospital as your fiancé. You got married.”
“She was caught between a rock and a hard place. My parents didn’t know we’d broken up and she didn’t want to tell them right after I’d been in an accident. Then I came to and didn’t even remember that we’d ever broken up. I thought she was my fiancé, and she believed it would be bad for me to go through our break up again. So she married me, when it was the last thing she wanted.”
“Oh, God.” Elizabeth shook her head from side to side and stared at him. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“What?”
She shoved him aside and ran to the kitchen bin, retching over it and vomiting, her back wracked with the movements. He closed the distance and rubbed a hand along her spine until she was done. And then, she straightened, shaking his touch away.
“I wasn’t engaged, Elizabeth.”
“God,” she swallowed, and he reached for a glass, pouring her a water. “I can’t believe this.”
“I don’t understand? I thought you’d be pleased?”
“Pleased?” She repeated with obvious disbelief. “Why the hell would I be pleased?”
“Because I didn’t cheat on her. Or you. It was all genuine.”
“But I would have known that if I’d told you about the pregnancy! Don’t you get it? I’ve put us both through hell because I chose to keep Joshua secret from you! At least when I thought you’d cheated, I believed us both to have done wrong. I almost thought you deserved to have missed out on having Josh in your life because you were such a lying bastard! Can’t you see that? We were both culpable, or so I thought. But that’s not true. It was all me, all my fault.”
“No,” he spoke harshly, then frowned, because technically, he supposed, she was correct. But he couldn’t put the blame at her feet. Not when so many circumstances had been beyond her control.
“Yes,” she nodded, sipping the water then placing the cup down so abruptly it splashed liquid out of the sides.
She stared at him for several long seconds and he stared back, and then, with a softly mouthed, ‘I’m sorry’, she stalked quickly from the room.
Fourteen
HE SLEPT IN THE guest room that night. If he’d gone to bed he knew what would have happened. No matter what passed between them during the day, their bodies sought solace and comfort in their inevitable coupling. If he’d gone to bed, they would have made love, and he wasn’t sure he could do that to her.
Not when she was so obviously being torn apart by guilt.
A guilt he would have said he wanted her to feel, only weeks ago. A guilt he would have sworn until he was blue in the face that she deserved. And now? He knew only that he couldn’t tak
e her in his arms, make her desperate with her own desires, and offer her nothing other than pleasure in return.
They barely spoke the next day. She was quiet and insisted she had to get herself ready for the wedding.
He slept in the guestroom again that night. It was ridiculous, but he was holding onto the fact that they would deal with all of this after the wedding.
And in the meantime, he had Joshua. He took him to school, picked him up, and he was certain that they were doing the right thing. The current state of affairs wouldn’t continue. They’d find a better way to interact in time, he assured himself.
On the day of the wedding, his parents arrived, and he was glad to see them, despite his mother’s consternation.
“You’re getting married?” His mother demanded, as she swept into the house, her eyes looking for whoever his bride might be. Maria Salbatore was clearly unhappy with this development – doubtless because she expected to have been consulted prior to the day of the wedding. And given her closeness to Bella, he could understand how this situation would have blindsided Maria.
“She’s upstairs,” he answered her unspoken question, hugging his mother and then shaking his father’s hand.
“I’ll say. How could you not have mentioned her to me?”
“Mother, do we have to do this today?”
“It’s all a surprise,” Roberto interrupted. “That’s all.”
“I wanted to tell you about her in person,” Xavier said, gesturing for them to take a seat.
“You could have done that weeks ago. Spain is only a short flight away; you couldn’t have brought your bride home to meet us? Is your wedding day really when you’d choose for us to see her for the first time?”
“It’s better this way.” And at precisely that moment, before he could expand, the door to the lounge room flew open and Joshua tore into the room, a shoe in one hand and a giggle erupting from his mouth.
Janice followed. “Come here, you little Master Salbatore, and let me straighten that suit up.”
“No,” Joshua giggled and then, realizing that there were other people in the room, coming to an abrupt stop. With his innate sense of curiosity, he stared at the two newcomers, and they were staring back, utterly watchful and completely robbed of breath and words.
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