“What can I do for you?” the man asked in lightly accented English.
“I was wondering if Alexis was home,” Raoul said awkwardly.
In all the ways he’d imagined this, he hadn’t pictured seeing her father first. He felt about as nervous as he had as a teenager going to pick up his new girlfriend on their first date.
“I am her father, Lorenzo Fabrini,” the man said, his dark eyes full of questions as they narrowed at him from under grizzled brows.
“Raoul Benoit,” Raoul said, putting his hand out in greeting.
Alexis’s father flatly ignored it and Raoul let his hand drop. His stomach clenched up another notch. This was not going well.
“So, now you come to see my daughter?”
“Mr. Fabrini, I apologize it’s taken me this long, but yes. May I see her?”
The older man shook his head. “That is not up to me. If it were up to me you’d be back on the road and back to your miserable existence, where you belong.”
He was right. Raoul’s existence had been miserable—until Alexis had come along. And even then he’d been too trapped in his cycle of unhappiness to see how much better his life was with her in it.
“Please, sir, I beg of you. I know I was wrong, I know I hurt her badly—”
“Hurt her?” Anger flashed in Lorenzo’s eyes. Eyes that reminded Raoul so much of Alexis. “You didn’t just hurt her. You broke her. When she left here she was full of hope, full of purpose. When she returned she was empty, dead inside. Destroyed by you!”
He punctuated the air with his finger, making his point and with it, making Raoul awfully glad Lorenzo hadn’t answered the door with a shotgun in his hand.
“I was wrong.”
“Wrong! Pah! Wrong is denying your child your time and affection. Wrong is taking my daughter’s love for you and belittling its worth. Wrong is using her for your own satisfaction and then sending her away when things got too hard. You call yourself a man?” Lorenzo muttered a curse in Italian. “I call you a worm. You’re a disgrace.”
“I know, you’re not telling me anything I haven’t learned already. I’m deeply ashamed of what I’ve done, of how I’ve hurt Alexis. Please, let me talk to her. Let me explain—”
“No, let me explain,” Lorenzo interrupted, his finger once again pointing in Raoul’s direction. “I am a humble man, a man who has worked hard all his life. I didn’t finish school, I don’t have all the fancy letters after my name that you all find so important these days. But I know what is important—that above all else, you honor life, you honor family, you honor love—and most of all, you honor the woman who brings them all into your life. You don’t hide from her like a sniveling child.”
“Sir, I respect how you feel, and I agree. I’m sorry for hurting her, truly sorry.”
“Your apology is nothing to me and it is not my place to forgive you. It is Alexis you should apologize to.”
“Please, then, let me see her. Let me talk to her.”
“No.”
Raoul felt his heart drop into his boots. “No? She won’t see me?”
“No, she’s not here—yet. If you are serious about making amends to my daughter you may wait here until she returns but you must promise me one thing.”
“Anything, what is it?”
“That if she asks you to leave that you will go. Just go, and never bother her again.”
The thought of never seeing Alexis again, never watching the way her face lit up when she was happy or never again seeing that fierce look of concentration in her eyes when she was working on her designs struck fear into Raoul. It was entirely possible that she would tell him to get lost. Hadn’t he, essentially, done as much to her? Expected her to walk away, carrying his baby, and never look back? To be satisfied with some financial arrangement brokered by a pair of lawyers in separate parts of the country? If her state of mind was anything like her father’s, she might tell him to do exactly that.
It was a risk he had to take.
“If that is what Alexis wants, then that is what I’ll do.”
Lorenzo nodded. “You may wait here,” he said, gesturing to the sagging rattan chairs on the porch. “I will not have you here in our home, until I know she welcomes you also.”
Without waiting for a response, Lorenzo closed the door in Raoul’s face. It was no less than he deserved, Raoul thought as he lowered himself into one of the chairs. Despite being sheltered against the front of the house, the cushions still felt damp. Combined with his already cold, wet clothing, it proved to be an uncomfortable wait ahead. He didn’t care. He’d do whatever it took to have his chance again with Alexis. And this time, if she was willing, he wouldn’t mess up again.
* * *
Alexis drove carefully on the rain-slicked roads. At nearly sixteen weeks pregnant she was already finding it was getting uncomfortable to spend long periods in her car. Her tummy jiggled a little as a tiny occupant moved within her. She smiled. As exhausted as she felt after today’s journey and meetings, those little movements still made her feel as if she was the luckiest woman in the world. Well, almost the luckiest.
She had a father who loved her and stood by her, no matter what. She had a half sister and foster brother who had pledged to support her in any way they could. She had new life growing inside her—a fact that never ceased to awe and amaze her. Her business was picking up again and, in reality, she lacked for nothing. Nothing except the love of the man she’d lost her heart to. Still, she consoled herself as she approached the driveway to her father’s house, she had more than many others. Far, far more.
Through the rain, she caught a glimpse of the rear end of a vehicle standing near the front of the house. She was surprised to see her father had a visitor. He hadn’t mentioned anything about expecting anyone when she’d phoned him to say she was on the road and heading home. As she drew nearer to the vehicle, though, recognition poured through her. The big black Range Rover was painfully familiar, especially with its VINTNR registration plate.
Her belly fluttered and she rested a hand on the movement. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “Looks like your daddy has come to pay a visit.”
She gathered up her things and her collapsible umbrella and prepared to get out of the car. Before she could, however, her driver’s door swung open and there he was. Alexis froze in her seat, halfway through the action of starting to put her umbrella up, torn between leaping from the car to demand an explanation for why he was there, and wanting to pull the car door closed and take a few extra minutes for herself.
“Let me take that,” Raoul said, not bothering with the niceties of “hello” or “how are you.”
He reached for her umbrella and held it above the driver’s door, then extended a hand to help her out. She really had to get something a little less low-slung, she told herself as she was forced to accept his help to get out from behind the wheel. It wasn’t as if her sedan was supersporty or anything but by the time she was full-term, getting out of here would require a crane.
“Thank you. How convenient that you were here. Just passing by, were you?” she asked as he shut the door behind her.
Her attempt at flippancy fell about as flat as her hair in this weather.
“No, I’ve been waiting for you,” he answered as they half walked, half ran to the veranda where Raoul shook out the umbrella.
Standing in the shelter, her eyes drank in the sight of him. He was just as beautiful to her as he’d ever been and her heart did a little flip-flop of recognition. She ruthlessly quashed it. She’d had plenty of time to think in the past month and while she was inwardly overjoyed to see Raoul here, she was determined to hold firm to her decision to move forward with her life, without him. She wouldn’t settle for half measures in anything anymore, especially now when there was not only herself to consider.
It didn’t stop her concern when she saw him shiver and realized that he was soaking wet.
“Come inside,” she said brusquely. “You need to get dr
ied off.”
“Thank you.”
There was a strange note to his voice and she looked at him sharply, noting his attention was now very firmly on the bulge of her tummy.
“Have you been here long?” she asked as she wrestled her things to find her front door key.
“About an hour,” he answered.
“Outside? You’re soaking wet and must be freezing cold. Is my father not home?”
“Oh, yeah, he’s home,” Raoul said with a rueful smile.
“Oh,” she said, suddenly flustered.
If he’d already talked to her father she had no doubt that there’d been more than a few terse words exchanged. Finally, thank goodness, she found her key and inserted it in the door.
“Hello? Dad? I’m home,” she called as she pushed the door open and gestured for Raoul to follow her inside.
“So, you’re letting him in?” her father asked as he came through from the kitchen into the sitting room of the compact cottage.
“He’s traveled a long way, Dad, and it’s pouring rain outside.”
“I will give you your privacy,” he said stiffly, his dark eyes fixed on Raoul as if in challenge. “But I will just be up the hill with Finn and Tamsyn. You will call me if you need me, yes?”
“Sure I will,” Alexis answered, and crossed the room to give her father a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Ti amo,” he said, holding her close before releasing her. Then, with another silent glare at Raoul, he shrugged on a coat and stomped out the front door.
Silence grew uncomfortably around them. Finally, realizing she had to say or do something, Alexis put her things down on the coffee table between them.
“I’ll get you something to dry off with.”
“Thanks.”
She was back in seconds, handing a towel to Raoul and stood there watching him as he toweled excess moisture off his hair. His shirt, however, was soaked through.
“You can’t stay in that,” she said. “Would you like a shirt of Dad’s?”
“No, I’ll be fine, I’ll dry out soon. Besides, I don’t think he’d—”
“Don’t be silly, you’ll catch your death that way. At least take your shirt off and let me put it through the dryer.”
Raoul stepped up closer to her and took her by the hands. “Alexis, stop trying to find reasons not to talk to me.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” she said, looking up into his hazel eyes and wondering exactly what it was that she read there.
Even now, after the way he’d summarily dismissed her, her pulse betrayed her by leaping at his touch. Some things, it seemed, would never change.
“Yes. Please, sit down. Let’s talk.”
“Sure, do you want a tea or coffee?”
“Sit,” he commanded gently, and guided her to the sofa and sat down beside her. “I owe you an explanation and an apology.”
Alexis fidgeted on the chair, unsure of what he expected of her. Did he think that just because he was about to say sorry that she’d forgive him everything? He was in for a sad surprise if that was the case.
“Go on,” she urged him. “I’m listening.”
She forced herself to calm down and pushed back into the seat, absently rubbing her belly. Raoul’s eyes tracked from her face down to where her hand moved in slow, gentle circles.
“You’re looking well,” he said.
“You came here to tell me that?” she asked, her tone bordering on acerbic.
“No, what I came here to say is I am deeply sorry for the way I treated you. You deserved more.”
“Raoul, I made my own choice when I accepted less,” she pointed out.
“I know, but you, of all people—with your loving heart and your giving nature—you should never have been asked to settle for so little. I knew that and I took what you were prepared to give without thinking about the damage it might do. All I was concerned about was me. I just wanted... Hell, I don’t even know what I really wanted. All I knew was that you offered me a light in the darkness, warmth in the cold. You made me feel again, but then I felt too much. I didn’t know what to do, so I ended up pushing you away.
“I didn’t want to be vulnerable again. When Bree died it hurt so much. It left me feeling so empty inside that every breath was agony. The idea of loving anyone again scared me into telling myself I couldn’t love again—that I didn’t deserve to.”
“Everyone deserves love,” Alexis said softly.
“I know that now.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “For so long I was angry—felt so helpless. I hated having choice taken from me the way Bree did when she didn’t tell me about her aneurysm. I’ll never know whether, knowing the risks, she believed she’d get through Ruby’s birth okay or whether she had some kind of premonition that she’d die and thought it would be worth it regardless, but either way she made choices that should have involved me and instead she shut me out. Doing that went against everything we’d promised one another, and if I couldn’t trust her anymore, how could I trust anyone?”
Raoul leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and lifted one hand to his face, rubbing at his eyes.
“When Ruby was born I was too afraid to let myself love her. At first she was so ill that the doctors said her survival was touch and go, especially in the first few days. Even after she battled past that, I wouldn’t let myself feel anything for her. She was so vulnerable, so dependent. I knew nothing about babies, nothing about being a father. We were supposed to have done all that together, Bree and me. The very idea of taking Ruby home and caring for her, alone, made me sick with fear.”
“You would have had Catherine, your friends, your extended family,” Alexis reminded him.
“I know that now, but I couldn’t think rationally then. And there was something else, too.” He made a sound of disgust. “I resented her. Can you believe it? I resented my tiny newborn daughter because her mother had chosen Ruby’s life over her own. Rather than see her birth as a gift, I saw it only as a burden. So, instead of stepping up to my responsibilities I ignored them. I let Catherine take over Ruby’s care, telling myself it was okay because I was grieving. But then it became easier to simply let things keep on going the way they always had. The more distance I had from Ruby, the closer she grew to her grandmother, the less I needed to worry that I might have to assume my obligations toward her as her father, any opportunities to fail her, hurt her or lose her.”
“Ruby’s lucky to have Catherine in her life,” Alexis said, not minimizing in any way Raoul’s desertion of his daughter. “She could have done worse.”
“Yeah, she could have been forced to spend all of her first nine months with a father who saw her as a constant reminder of his failures as a husband and as a father. Every minute I spent with her, and Catherine would insist on bringing her around from time to time, she just forced me to remember that my big dreams for a family had taken her mother from us both. That, ultimately, I was responsible for everything that happened.”
Alexis shook her head. “You’re taking rather a lot on yourself. You weren’t the only one involved here.”
“It seemed like it at the time. Unreasonable, I know. Self-centered, definitely. I put myself in a loop where every day would be the same with work as my panacea, my catharsis. Even so, until you arrived, I was just going through the motions. Living only half a life.”
“Until I arrived?”
“You made me remember what happened the first time I saw you, the way you made me feel. For months I’d imprisoned anything remotely like sensation. I thought I’d finally purged that from my existence, and then, there you were. A golden light just pulsing with warmth. And you wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Alexis frowned, remembering their meeting when she arrived at the winery. “The first time you saw me...you mean back in April?”
“No, I mean the very first time. There were sparks between us the day that we met, when Bree introduced us. I know you felt them, too. It’s why you pulled awa
y from Bree, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Alexis closed her eyes in shame. He’d seen the way she’d felt about him even then? Did that mean Bree had seen it, too?
“I loved my wife, but for some reason I couldn’t help but be attracted to you, too. When you came back, that all came rushing back with you. It left me not only hating that you’d roused emotions from deep inside of me again but also hating myself for what I saw as a betrayal of Bree.”
His voice cracked on his words, making Alexis’s heart squeeze in empathy. She searched in vain for the right words to say. Raoul turned to her, his face a tortured mask of pain.
“But I betrayed you, too. I betrayed your trust, your faith in me that I could be a better man and I betrayed your love. I’m so sorry, Alexis. More sorry than you could ever understand. You offered me a gift, a lifeline, and I threw it back in your face. I can see why you hesitated to tell me about our baby, but at the time I only saw it as history repeating itself, with you keeping a secret from me that involved me at its basest level.”
“I would have told you, in my own time,” she hastened to assure him.
“And, I’m ashamed to admit, I probably wouldn’t have reacted any differently. I’ve been an absolute fool. I tried to ignore what you mean to me and I drove you away. Can you ever forgive me for that? Could you ever begin to want to give us another chance?”
Alexis drew in a deep breath. Could she?
“Raoul, you really hurt me. Making me leave you, leave Ruby—I...I don’t know if I could put myself through that again. I could barely function for days afterward. I couldn’t even drive any further than Christchurch the day you sent me away. I had to have help to get home. The first week I was back here I was like a zombie, barely functioning, barely speaking. It frightened the people who love me and it terrified me.
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