Page 59 of 2 Books in One Bundle

Dante heard her words. They hung in the air between them as she looked at him, so pale, propped up on the hospital pillows. There was a dressing on her head where she’d smashed into the lamppost. A drip in her arm. She was wired up to a monitor. An oxygen meter on her finger.

I could have lost her today.

The words rang in his head. Just as they had when he’d seen her fall, seen her lying on the payment. Unconscious. Bleeding.

Her blood is on my hands.

He felt emotions rise in him like a river, a tide, an ocean. Flowing together, coming together, surging in his veins.

Slowly, he began to speak. Feeling for each word, placing one after another so carefully. And all the while that great tide of emotion was sweeping around his body, forcing out those words that rose to his lips.

It was impossible not to speak. It was essential that he speak. As essential as air to breathe and water to drink and food to eat... Essential to his very existence.

Each word was distinct, coming, it seemed, from very far away—from a place that no longer existed nor ever could again.

‘You know that when I married you, Connie, I bitterly resented having to do so. Having to marry at all! Having my hand forced by my grandfather. Being controlled by him from beyond the grave the way he’d controlled me in life. I wanted only two things from my marriage to you—to get my inheritance and then to end that marriage.’

He frowned.

‘What I said to you, Connie, that last evening in Rome, was completely true. For all that I never wanted to marry, you had proved to be an absolute Trojan. I appreciated you so much. You’d accepted everything on the terms I wanted. Everything.’

He stopped, tried to look at her, but wasn’t seeing her.

‘Even after you came back from that health resort looking so incredible...even after that you still accepted everything on my terms. And I realised I could have it all. I could have you, so warm and lovely and irresistible. I could have you and I could still, when the time was right, have my freedom back. Courtesy of our divorce.’

His expression changed. Became troubled.

‘That was why I was so adamant that no one knew of our marriage. I didn’t want wedding rings, or you changing your name, or even for you to meet any of my friends—except Raf, who knew all about you anyway. I didn’t want you to be my wife in more than name only—because I didn’t want a wife at all.’

His frown deepened. Suddenly it felt as if a stiletto were being slipped into his ribs—intangible on impact, but deadly in effect...

‘But when you left me the day I flew to Geneva...when it wasyoufiling for divorce...it was then I realised how completely and totally meaningless it had been to want my life back.’

He felt emotion soar from some deep place inside himself he had never known existed. A place that was suddenly blazing with light. With clarity. With truth.

‘Because youweremy life, Connie. And I knew that without you I had no life. There would be no life worth living without you in it.’

He saw her face work...her beautiful deep blue eyes fill with diamond tears. But she did not speak or move.

So he did. Lowering himself to sit on her bed, he took her hand—the hand that had never had his ring upon its finger, nor put one on his, anticipating the day when he’d get his own life back and be free again.

But I shall never be free—for freedom would only be loss. The loss of all that is most precious to me.

He felt her fingers press into his, heard her try to speak, and then he was lifting her hand to his mouth, bringing it to his lips, holding it fast. He lowered it, closing his other hand around it so that both her hands were held tightly, so very tightly, between his.

It was as if his very life depended on it. The life he wanted—the only life would ever want now that he could see, could know, the truth of it...

‘No life worth living,’ he said again.

And he was seeing her now—who she was and what she was and what she wouldalwaysbe to him.

‘No life worth living without the woman I love.’

A cry came from her as if torn from deep inside her. The diamond tears in her eyes spilled over.

‘I’d begun to hope that you had started to feel for me what I was feeling for you,’ she said. ‘I wanted so badly to believe that you had come to think of me as a real wife—a wife for ever...’

Her tears were coursing down her cheeks. Tears he had caused. Tears he would never let her shed over him again. Emotion was pouring through him, rich and warm and golden. Filling every cell in his body.

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