Page 242 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

No fool like an old fool. It was what people said about his father. That Silvana could say it to him made him see red, and he had stormed off without another word.

On the phone, he had made up some nonsense about papers on his desk. But really it had been an excuse to check that Sydney was okay.

His hands had tightened against the armrests.

‘Lei non è qui, Signor McIntyre,’Silvana had said tersely. ‘Se n’è andata circa due ore fa.’

In other words, Sydney had left right after him.

Pushing away from the chair, he strode over to the windows, his pulse beating out of time. He had tried to call her, but her number was out of service and her website just offered a message of apology. In other words, she had gone dark.

He felt a flicker of frustration, and beneath that a nagging anxiety that Sydney was out there in the world without him. Not that he was worried about Harris. When the story finally went live, he would be too busy salvaging his reputation to go after Sydney.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d ended things. Or the look on her face. He had told himself countless times that it had to be that way. That she knew what she was signing up to. All the things he’d told himself in the past, and it had never been a problem before.

Only it was now. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he couldn’t unhear her telling him she loved him. Couldn’t unsee the moment when he’d told her it was a pretence. The look on her face as she’d looked up at him had sliced him open.

Because he cared about Sydney. How could he not after everything she had told him? But this feeling he had, this tightness in his chest that made it hard to catch his breath, and the waking in the night and the inability to focus on anything, it was probably just a virus, something he’d picked up crossing six time zones.

He gazed out across New York, a memory stirring inside him like a flickering flame: of him taking Sydney’s arm and leading her to the window to show her the view. It cost a lot of money to own that view. As he looked at it now, it held no value.

Nothing seemed to have any value any more, not even the contract that would take his empire into space.

Because Sydney wasn’t here with him.

He let his head fall against the glass, trying to cool his feverish brain, but it wasn’t a fever making him feel like this. It wasn’t down to something he’d picked up. It was something he’d lost. No, pushed away.

His eyes were burning. The irony was that he had spent his whole life not wanting to be like his father. Not wanting to be tricked by ‘love’ because he had seen only the falseness of love and how it diminished everything it touched.

But Sydney did love him. He knew that because he knew her. He had fought with her and comforted her and held her while they made love and she had held and comforted him. They had talked and listened and laughed and she had cried.

She loved him. It wasn’t a pretence.

And that was why he couldn’t be with her. Because he loved her too. He pressed his hands against the glass, framing that truth, accepting it, acknowledging it. Letting it push back all the layers of fear and the assumptions he’d made and clung to for so many years.

He had loved her from that very first day in his office. He just hadn’t seen it because he hadn’t known what it was. Not even at the masked ball when he had been so hopelessly in love with her that his housekeeper and the maids had known. Give a man a mask, and he will tell the truth. He had told the truth that night, but had been too blinded by fear of falling into the same bad pattern of behaviour as his father.

He saw it now. He felt it now, inside him, burning bright and pure like a votive flame.

Only he was so untested in love, so unpractised, and he wanted the best for her. Wanted to protect her. That was why he’d wanted her to stay on the island. That was what he’d told himself. Maybe, though, keeping her on the island was more about prolonging the fantasy, because the reality of love still scared him. Silvana knew that, Sydney too. But it had taken losing her for him to see it, and his housekeeper was right, losing her hurt more. And it was a self-inflicted pain. By attempting to avoid the pain of love, he had pushed Sydney away and hurt himself. Hurt her too, just as his father had hurt him. Because it was people who hurt each other and sometimes they used love as an excuse.

And he needed to tell her that he’d been wrong, and stupid. A fool, in fact.

Breathing out unsteadily, he lifted his head.

Was it too late?

No, it couldn’t be, was the only answer to that question that he could contemplate. But if he was going to be the man Sydney needed by her side, then, for the first time in his life, he was going to have to take a leaf out of his father’s book and take a risk on love.

‘It should only take a couple of hours but if you need us, all you have to do is call.’

‘Why would I need you?’

Glancing up from the magazine she had been pretending to read, Sydney frowned at her brother. She had been helping out at the auto repair shop for the last few days, partly to have something to take her mind off Tiger and partly because she wanted the judge to know that this was a genuine family business.

‘It’s lunchtime. Nobody has come in at lunchtime for the last three days.’

Connor reached past her to grab the keys to the pick-up. ‘Yeah, but if they did and you didn’t know something, you can call us is what I’m saying.’

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