by Annie O'Neil
She tried to shove the thought down. The pre-Buenos Aires Harriet would’ve thought that. Would have let insecurity overwhelm her. She couldn’t let herself drown in doubt again. Not with two babies to care for.
Matteo held her face between his hands, looking into her eyes as if he were trying to see her soul.
“Te quiero, Harriet. I hope knowing that is enough.”
“I love you, too.” Harriet choked back the tears stinging at her nose, not even sure she’d spoken aloud. She forced herself to withdraw from Matteo’s sweet embrace and ran towards the secure confines of her little room.
There was no point in torturing herself. Or him. She could see in his eyes he spoke the truth. He loved her, but she wasn’t enough. Not enough to help him battle his demons. Not enough to see the good in what he did. Not enough to want to share the joy of raising a family together. It boiled down to what she had feared all along—she wasn’t enough.
* * *
Harriet knew it was cowardly but frankly she was going to have to shore up whatever reserves of courage she had to face the next... Blimey, the rest of her life without him. Her dark-haired, green-eyed lover was going to have to be consigned to the past.
So!
She snapped her suitcase shut and took a final scan of the room to make sure she’d left no traces behind. No evidence for Matteo to find, reminding him she had ever been there. No need to weigh him down with more memories he didn’t want to have.
She tipped her head back and sucked in a deep breath, trying her best to get her nose to wiggle away a new rush of tears.
What a palaver.
She gave herself a sharp shake. There wasn’t time to feel sorry for herself right now. Thank heavens for time-zone differences and early-morning flights. She hadn’t even bothered trying to sleep once she’d reached her room in those pre-dawn hours. Sleep wouldn’t have come. There would be plenty of time for that in—oh, maybe about... When was it children headed off to university? She gave herself a now, now, don’t be like that look at her reflection in the mirror. There’d plenty of time for a nap when she got home. Early. And hid out from everyone for a few days before she put on her brave face and went back to her old life. Her old ways. Routine. Just the way she’d always like things.
Her heart clenched at the thought.
Her little house and regimented life in the UK had all but disappeared from her thoughts in the few magical weeks she’d spent here. She stepped out of her room, giving the courtyard a quick scan, ensuring wouldn’t be any awkward Matteo run-Ins. She’d already spoken with the shift nurse. Explained she had to get home. That it was very important. The nurse knew of her sister and the twins so she had let her come to her own conclusions and had accepted the assurances that “Of course you must go” and “Come and see us again soon”. She’d nodded, her heart aching with sadness.
She wouldn’t be back. This was it. Farewell forever to the place and the people who had changed her for the better. She was different now and would force herself to remember it. She sniffled. Okay, fine. Maybe a bit of pity party could be indulged in first, but by the time she landed back in the UK she was going to be one hundred percent strong. An independent woman. One who may not be enough for Matteo, but one who was going to be more than enough for their babies. So take that, Mr. Latin Perfection on a Stick! You want to see a mama take responsibility? Love and care for her babies?
This mama is going to love and care for her twins like a wildcat! A really wild wildcat. With English manners! So there. Her internal speech ended with a bit of a whimper, but she had to believe it was true—because she was going to have to test that theory again and again and again over the coming months and years.
Babies of her own!
She’d barely given herself time to think about what it would mean for her. Harriet Monticello...a mother!
She was almost surprised to discover a huge smile was peeling her lips apart before she froze at the sound of Matteo’s voice. Her head whipped round. He hadn’t seen her, had he? Her shoulders sagged with relief as she pinpointed his voice coming from the clinic. It was still early. From the staccato cadence of his speech and the pauses, he must be on the phone.
She lifted up her suitcase, trying to make as little noise as possible, and in a matter of seconds was out on the street where the people of Buenos Aires were preparing to start a brand-new day.
A brand-new day.
In her case? A brand-life was more like it.
She scanned the busy street, separating the commuters from the taxis on the trawl for customers. Ready to help someone start their life afresh.
The chances of filling the Matteo-sized hole in her heart? Zero to nil. Was there a less than nil?
She raised her arm to the swarm of oncoming traffic, willing a taxi to pull up to the curb sooner rather than later.
If she was going to get on with the rest of her life, she was better off doing so without a backward glance at what never could have been.
* * *
He had watched her leave.
He’d seen her crossing the courtyard through the louvered shades on the office door and had actually watched her leave.
A bit of self-flagellation wouldn’t have gone amiss, Matteo thought, yanking the cord to the shades up but only succeeding in ripping the ruddy thing from the door entirely. At least a bit of physical pain would take the edge off all the thoughts burning through his mind like corrosive acid.
As the woman he loved had walked out of his life, he’d been on the phone. One of the other homes checking on whether they could send a girl over. She was showing signs of pre-eclampsia and if the symptoms worsened, delivery would be the only option. Another crisis. Another uncertain outcome.
He raked a hand through his hair, enjoying the scrape of his nails against his scalp. It felt raw. Just like he did. More raw than he could ever remember feeling.
“Of course, send her over,” he’d said, hardly able to bear the sound of his own voice. It was the well-practiced tone of calm, amicability. The one he’d learned from his parents.
He laughed. Not a happy laugh by any stretch of the imagination—more like one of those bottom-of-the-well numbers. Mirthless. What else could he do? He’d made his own damn bed and it was time to lie in it. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
To be left alone to stew in the misery of his sister’s death for evermore?
He’d let her walk away.
He picked up the phone handset, tossing it from one palm to the other as he made up his mind. If he was going to stew here forever, he may as well make it worth it. He’d efficiently ruined the chances of St. Nick’s going into a co-operative with Casita Verde. They’d want to protect Harriet and they’d be right.
Harriet. His heart all but punched him in the solar plexus from within. He deserved it. Class-A idiot didn’t even begin to cover it. He’d just let the kindest, most beautifully loving woman he’d ever come across—pregnant with his children no less—walk straight out of his life so he could mourn something he could never fix. Never in a million years put right.
And there it was. The decision he’d made. Not to fall in love. Not to have children. A wife. A family. This was what it looked like. This was how it felt.
He inhaled deeply, easing the breath out over a long, slow count to ten.
Nope.
Time hadn’t changed anything. Ten seconds anyway. Still miserable and only one way to fix it.
He punched the numbers into the telephone handset, his jaw setting tightly as he did. This was one telephone call he had never expected to make.
* * *
It was nigh on impossible for Harriet to believe how much had changed in just over a month.
Just four short weeks ago she had taken this exact same taxi journey in the opposite direction. Well, exactly the same plus
a few add-ons. The tango music was the same. The really, really bad traffic that would make the journey cost a fortune and probably make her miss the plane was new. Add to that the heartache and the two minuscule babies growing in her belly.
Those things? Those were all brand spanking new. As fresh as a baby’s...
Oh... A smile crept onto her lips.
As fresh as a baby’s bottom. Times two.
She rolled down the window, getting a much-needed blast of late-morning air.
It hadn’t occurred to her for a second not to have them. The babies. It almost made her dizzy to think how microscopically small they would be right now, and she felt, in a way that surely must be crazy, as though she already knew them. These teeny babies created with a man she absolutely adored.
Well.
Right now she didn’t like him all that much.
No! Even that wasn’t true. She loved him. She loved him heart and soul but he’d made it more than clear her love wasn’t enough—it would never be enough. Breaking Matteo’s protective veneer of grief seemed all but impossible. He’d made up his mind. No children. No Harriet.
Her hand flew to her tummy and gave it a reassuring little rub.
“Don’t worry, little ones. I don’t know how we’re going to do it but I’m going to make sure you know how loved you are. My little good-luck tokens!” She gave her tummy a satisfied pat as the thought of a pot of Argentina’s good luck New Year’s beans popped into her mind.
“Mi pequeño haba.”
“Usted va a tener un bebé? Felicidades!”
Harriet started at the taxi driver’s good wishes. Had she been speaking in Spanish? She gave a little laugh. She’d have to remember everything she could so she could speak to her little ones in Spanish as well.
The smile slipped from her face. For what? So her children could be reminded of the father they would very likely never meet?
The gravity of what was happening suddenly hit her. She sank against the pleather seat of the taxi, willing herself to be strong. All she had to do was get on the plane, go back home and...have twins. Easy. Right?
* * *
Matteo looked up from his paperwork with a start. Was that his father crossing the courtyard? Franco Torres III in Casita Verde?
This was a day of firsts.
He pushed himself away from the desk and in a few long-legged strides was reaching out a hand to his father, pressing cheeks in the customary greeting—something he did by rote. Only this time it felt different. It felt meaningful.
It struck him how much he missed having his father in his life. He was an incredible businessman, a powerful personality and had been his childhood idol. If he had pushed him, really pressed his parents to talk about Ramona’s death, would it have made them any closer?
“Shall we?” His father released his hand, indicating they go back into Matteo’s office.
Typical. Taking charge of a situation.
“I don’t even know why you’re here, Papa.”
“Come—come inside.”
“What? Into my own office?” He felt himself bridling. “You’ve never even been here before and you’re already behaving as if you run the place.”
“Now, son—”
“Now, son, nothing!” He reeled round, strangely startled to find they were eye to eye. He was a man facing his father. A grown man. He bit back the insults he could have so easily slung. He was a man now.
It was time to behave like one.
“Please.” He gestured to a chair opposite his at the desk. “Have a seat. Mate? Coffee?”
“Coffee, of course.” His father had always preferred a rich, dark roast to the traditional tea Argentinians couldn’t seem to get enough of.
“Con leche?”
It had been a long time since he’d made his father a cup of coffee.
“Sí. Some milk would be nice.
Matteo crossed to the far side of his office to a corner reserved for boiling water, making hot drinks for the girls who came to them—needing the length of time it took to drink a cup of tea to begin to process how much their lives would be changing.
It struck him how easily he could deliver news to his father about how each of their lives could be changing if only things were different. Twins—his twins—would be coming into the world. His father would be a grandfather, his mother an abuela. He wondered how they’d fall into the roles...grandparenting. Making up for mistakes they’d made the first time round? Or more denial?
He picked up the mugs of steaming coffee and placed them on the desk—one in front of his father and the other where he’d cleared away the pile of paperwork he’d have to finish if work on the sorely needed clinic were ever to begin.
“So?” Matteo put on his best idly curious voice. “What brings you to this part of town?”
Just a few minutes later found Matteo staring slack-jawed at his father.
“You want to pay for the entire building?”
“Sí.”
“With no strings?” That was deeply unlike his father. Something was up.
“It’s better than taking out a loan, no?”
Ah. That’s what this was about. The phone call he’d made to the bank.
“Papa... Father. I am a grown man. I can handle the loan.”
“What are you going to pay it back with?” The question wasn’t accusatory. It was just sensible.
Matteo stopped his shoulders from going into automatic pilot and shrug. He didn’t know. He didn’t have a clue. All he knew was that if he was going to survive life without Harriet he was going to have to work his fingers to the bone to forget—forget everything. The love, the laughter, the tears, the light. His children he would never know.
“Would it hurt? To take the money from your father?”
“It’s not that, Papa. It’s— What has brought this on? How did you even know?”
“Son.” His father looked him square in the eye. “Most of our family’s money is in that bank. They are not going to take a call from my son without me hearing about it.”
Matteo shifted in his chair. This was exactly why he had been hoping to get the funding from England. No family. No strings. No feelings to contend with.
“Your mother and I—”
“Mother is part of this, too?” He was sitting up straight now.
“Sí. Of course she is.” His father looked amazed that it was even up for questioning. “We make all our decisions together.”
“So it was both of you who decided to behave as if Ramona had never lived?”
His father blanched. Matteo instantly regretted the harshness of his words, seeing for the first time how much his father had aged in the past ten years. He had been so handsome, so vital when she had died.
Did he really want to relive the hell that had all but rent his family apart? Something in Matteo told him to keep going. He was feeling the need to bring it out in the open now. Feeling it deeply.
“Is that what you think happened? That we just erased her from our minds? Our hearts? Is that what you think of us?”
He didn’t need to say yes. He knew his face told his father everything.
His father’s shoulders sagged as he accepted the information and the pair of them sat in silence, registering what had just transpired.
“Do you know what your sister said when she came to us?”
Matteo pushed his chair back from the desk. What?
“Que? She told you?”
“Yes, what did you think? She wouldn’t involve us in something so huge? So life changing?”
“I just presumed...” Matteo felt the thunderous weight of a new understanding strike him solidly in the chest.
“What? That she couldn’t come to her parents and tell them she was in trou
ble? That we wouldn’t be there for her when she needed us most? Is that what you thought?”
“What else could I think? No one told me anything.”
His father’s hands scrubbed at his face while he eyed his son. How could people so close have so much hidden away from each other?
“We thought we were doing the right thing.”
“By letting me think she died out there because you rejected her?”
“By letting you think it was her choice.”
“To die?”
“No, of course not, son. To leave. It was her choice to leave us.”
“And that’s why you didn’t tell me—because you’d been rejected?” Matteo felt his rage dissipating.
“We didn’t tell you in part because we didn’t have the words. We’d failed. We’d failed as parents. She didn’t want us. Or want our help. And you were so angry. At the world, at us. It wasn’t like telling you then would’ve changed anything.”
“So why are you telling me now? Offering this money?”
“The money?” He waved it off as if it were nothing. “We have too much. How could we give it to causes other than the one our son works on, eh?”
“You didn’t really seem to think so when I started Casita Verde.”
“You didn’t want the help. Would’ve thrown it back in our faces and we were too fragile then. We thought—we thought if we kept our distance then perhaps...” He trailed off, unable to continue for a moment. “We thought if we gave you your space there might come a day when you would be more receptive to us, be able to hear our side of the story.”
“What made you think that it was now?”
“Seeing you—the other night—with her.”
Matteo didn’t have to ask who. He felt the twitch in his jaw as his teeth ground together. If it had taken his father ten years to talk to him about it his sister, he damn well needed more than a couple of minutes to talk about Harriet. About the children he would never know.
“How long have you been in love with her?” His father uncrossed his legs and shifted in his chair, dark eyes gently trained on Matteo.
