“Let me help you,” Rosie responded, standing and grabbing Dante’s plate, with a big smile for the man who had clearly stolen her best friend’s heart.
“Come and join me for a Fino,” Maggie heard Dante offer as she and Rosie moved to the kitchen.
As soon as they were alone, Rosie put her hands on Maggie’s shoulders. “Oh, Mags, he’s lovely.”
Maggie sighed. “How did I know you’d think so? You have a thing for dark, European men, don’t you?”
“Why are you fighting it so hard?” She pushed, a smile on her face.
Maggie flicked the kettle to life and loaded a pod into the coffee machine. “There’s too much to explain now.”
“Come on, Mags. Tell me succinctly.”
“Fine.” She pulled the coffee cup out and replaced it with another. “He only wants to marry me because we’re good in bed and because it makes sense for May.” Her eyes showed her torture. “I can’t marry him for either of those reasons. Sex is just sex, no matter how great. And May has two parents who love her. It doesn’t matter if they’re married or not.”
Rosie stacked the plates in the dishwasher in silence. She wiped her hands on a tea towel. “Why are you so sure that’s all it is for him?”
Maggie loaded the four cups onto a tray. “Because he is still in love with his ex-wife.”
“What? What do you mean? How do you know?”
“I just know. She’s told me so.”
“She? The ex-wife?”
“It’s complicated.” She shook her head. “She’s married to his brother now. Very messy, I guess. But I can just tell there’s unfinished business there. She told me that… Oh, Rosie, it’s too much.”
“Tell me,” Rosie said, moving closer. “What did she say to you?”
“That he begged her not to leave him. Even after he and I, after we, well, you know. After we were together.”
Rosie shrugged. “So ask him about it.”
“Why? Do you think she was lying?” Hope bubbled inside her chest.
Rosie slapped her palm into her forehead. “Maggie, it’s his ex wife. Don’t you think she’d have a reason to topple the woman who is now in his life? Who fell pregnant to him?”
A noise at the doorway drew their attention. Dante, apparently unaware he’d just been the object of their conversation, sauntered in. “I came to help.”
Rosie winked at Maggie. “See? I told you he was a great guy.” Rosie leaned forward and lifted the tray. “Dante, Maggie has something she needs to talk to you about.”
Maggie sent her best friend eyes of daggers.
“Well, Maggie?” Dante stood before her, so close they could touch, but without actually doing so.
“Well, what?” She responded icily.
“What did Rosie mean?”
Maggie shook her head firmly. “It’s not the time.”
“Have it your way,” he responded, lowering his head and kissing her lips. “You will tell me eventually.”
It felt so easy. He was being so charming. It almost felt like four old friends spending an evening just hanging out. Long after the coffee cups were drained, Dante rose.
“I must be getting back,” he said. “Or rather, I should be letting you get to bed.”
“I look forward to touring your facilities tomorrow,” Luca said, standing and shaking Dante’s hand firmly.
“Good night.” He turned to Maggie. “Perhaps you’ll walk me out?”
Like a sulking school girl, she pushed back her chair and stood. “Fine.”
Rosie mouthed “Be nice,” to Maggie.
She set her lips in a firm line and fell into step beside Dante.
“Will you walk with me?” He asked, when they were on the front stoop, illuminated by the pale sliver of moonlight.
She looked at him slowly, trying to be objective in the face of all that he’d come to mean to her. Why was she refusing to marry him? Self-preservation had to be the answer. He had the power to hurt her in ways she could only imagine; with his power to control her life with May, and his ability to stomp on her heart without realising he was doing so.
A night bird flew overhead, calling a shrill cry and flapping its dark wings. She flinched and Dante instinctively put a hand out to wrap around her waist, by way of reassurance.
Maggie bristled and stepped away from him. “Dante.” It was a noise of torment. “Tell me what changed?”
His expression was frustrated. His voice, long-suffering. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that for the first two days I was here, you treated me like a bug on the sole of your shoe. You could hardly stand to look at me. And now you want to marry me.” She shook her head. “And I don’t understand why. I don’t know what changed.”
“Don’t you?” He murmured, his dark eyes scanning her face.
“No!” Her voice was too loud; there was a possibility they would be heard inside the villa. She grimaced and took a step forward, and then another, until they were moving in the direction of the main house.
He exhaled a long breath as though the demons of his soul were riding on it. “I was very angry with you, mi dolor. The whole month it took to get you to Vin Velasco, I convinced myself that I hated you. That you had been selfish to raise May without consulting me. That you had undoubtedly had a string of other men since me, and any one of them could also be the father. The accusations I hung about your beautiful neck became very real to me.”
She shook her head. “I’ve already told you that there was no one else.”
He held a finger up to her lips. “I know. I’m explaining how I felt. What I believed, with no evidence but my own dark thoughts.”
Maggie turned her head. She couldn’t look at him. “And so? What changed your mind?”
“I realised that it was as much my fault as yours. I am thirty eight, Maggie. I was thirty six when we met. You were significantly younger. Though you talked a good game, I sensed a sweetness in you that night in Paris. A vulnerability.” He dared to reach down and link his fingers through hers. “And then, the night my family descended on us, including Veronika, I saw that same sweetness in you. Worse, I felt a sharp protective instinct in myself. I knew that she could hurt you; I could see the venom in her eyes. I, more than anyone, knew what that woman is capable of when her anger is sparked. I realised I didn’t want you to be hurt. By her, or anyone. Especially not me. I realised that I wanted to protect you, not just from Veronika, but from everyone. Not just for one night, but for all time. That is what changed.”
A strangled sound of surprise got stuck in her throat. “But it is you who will hurt me.” She closed her eyes and forced herself to be brave. She stopped walking, removed her hand from his and linked them behind her back. “I think I’m in love with you, Dante.” Okay, so she was only being partly brave, for she knew damned well how she felt about him. “And if we got married, I would just be waiting for the axe to drop. You say you want to protect me, but how can you protect me from that? Don’t you see? Marrying a man that I love, who doesn’t love me back, would be a kind of hell.”
He was very, very quiet. As the silence stretched, Maggie realised that she was waiting, hoping, and desperately needing him to say that he loved her too. The longer he was quiet, the more her hope was dashed. “I would take great care not to hurt you,” he said finally. And just like that, he dug the knife into her heart and turned it around.
You just did, she thought. “I know. But you would.” Somehow, she arranged her face into what seemed to feel like a smile. “It’s better if we just focus on May. Like I said the other night. I don’t want to fight you. I know we can work out the right way to both be in her lives.”
He was staring at her, his expression showed that he was completely confounded. Another bird flew overhead. This time, Maggie did not flinch. She was already inuring herself, and strengthening her heart. “Good night,” she said, when he continued to stare at her without speaking.
She turned and began the walk back to th
e villa, digging her nails into her palms so that she wouldn’t cry. Since meeting Dante, she’d become a complete sook. No more. She’d said what she needed to say, and of that, at least, she could be proud.
“Maggie, wait.” It was a hoarse plea.
She stopped walking but didn’t turn around.
“Maggie,” he said again. “Don’t go. Just let me work something out.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t do this any more.”
“Please, listen to me.”
“Why?” She turned around slowly. In the moonlight, her hair shone like copper. Her skin glowed like silver. Her eyes were like perfect sapphires. And her expression was so forlorn that he felt something inside of him click into place.
“Do you know what it means, when I call you mi dolor?” He said throatily, closing the distance between them and putting his arms around her waist.
She shook her head gently.
“It means ‘my pain’, or ‘my ache’, in English.”
“Charming,” she muttered. Just when she thought she couldn’t feel any worse!
“No, you have to let me finish.” He shook his head. “My marriage to Veronika was a disaster. In every way, we were ill-suited.”
And though she felt like a part of her was dying inside, she stopped fighting and started listening.
“When I met her, she seemed perfect for me. It was only after we married that I realised she had researched me, and moulded herself to what she thought I wanted in a wife.” He lifted a hand and ran it through Maggie’s hair, mesmerised by its shining softness. “Have you heard of those orphanages in Eastern Europe where babies are left in cribs all day every day, not ever touched except when their diapers are changed? Veronika grew up in one of those places. I am not justifying her behaviour, but with the start in life she had, she had very little chance of developing a normal emotional self. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Begrudgingly, Maggie nodded.
“But Veronika could only see love as control. Once we were married, she was terrified of losing me.”
“As I would be,” Maggie pointed out moodily.
“Let me finish.” His frown was grim. “She drove herself almost completely mad with a fear that I would leave her. That I would cheat on her. She was incredibly suspicious, and fabricated affairs in her mind if I so much as spoke to another woman. She used our sex life as a weapon. I think she knew deep down that I would never cheat. That she was getting me to show my loyalty, in a way, by making me be abstinent.” He shook his head. “It was a disaster, as I said.”
“Then why…” She broke off, fidgeting with her fingers.
“Why what?” He prompted.
Maggie locked her bright blue eyes to his. “She told me that… that you went to her after we were together. After that night. That you begged her not to leave you. That you begged her to stay married to you.”
He shook his head. “That is… a distortion of the truth,” he conceded finally.
“How convenient,” she said coldly.
“For God’s sake, Maggie, I didn’t even know your name. I’d been married to her for years. How can you be upset by that?”
Just because she had been pining away for him didn’t mean he had the same duty, obviously. “I’m upset that I found out from her.”
“I didn’t realise she’d come to see you.” Dante could see that he was losing the battle, and losing Maggie in the process. He shook his head. “I asked her not to leave me in the way she was leaving me. With such bitterness and anger. She told me that she would find a way to hurt me, to make me pay for the rest of my life for what I’d done.”
Curious, despite her anger and hurt, she heard herself ask, “What did she do?”
“She married Enrique. A man she doesn’t love. In an attempt to continue hurting me.”
“That’s brutal,” Maggie said in surprise. “No wonder she was so upset the other night.”
“Yes. Your appearance is the ultimate death knell to whatever sick game she’s been playing.”
“But you comforted her. You hugged her. You told me to go.” You chose her.
“I wanted to protect you and May. I needed you both to get out of the villa, so that I could calm her down. Letting her think she’d won was the only way. She was drunk. I didn’t know what she was capable of, but I know her well enough to know that she has a violent temper. Don’t you see that, Maggie? I did not calm her because I care for her. I calmed her because I was terrified of what she might try to do to you.”
Maggie swallowed. It made sense. “She said you slept with her. After we’d been together.”
He frowned. “That is definitely not true.” He held his hands up in surrender. “But in the interest of honesty, I was not abstinent once my marriage ended.” He winced when he saw the look in her face. “I know, Maggie. When I think of how you have spent these two years, my heart breaks. I should have been with you. I should have found you. And instead, I spent my time with women who meant nothing to me, trying to get you out of my head.”
“Who were they?”
“That does not matter. And there were not many. I just don’t want any lies to come into our marriage.”
She gritted her teeth. “There will be no marriage.”
His smile was haunted. “Let me finish.” How many times had he said that? When would he be finished? When could she take herself to bed and indulge her silent heartbreak?
“Veronika never gave me anything without expecting something in return. And I became very good and giving nothing of myself. I ceased to love her. I ceased to want her. She was so cold, Maggie. It is impossible for you to comprehend, I know, for you are warm and giving by nature. All I need you to understand is how my marriage shaped the man I am today. It is not easy for me to give love, because I have conditioned myself not to. It is not easy for me to trust love, because I was burned by it in the past.” He lifted his hand and cupped her cheek. “I call you mi dolor because the way you make me feel has always threatened the very rules I live by. I have always understood that you could bring me more pain than I have ever known. And still, I want to marry you. I want to risk it all, because I know I have to.”
Her heart turned over in her chest.
“I didn’t realise what that meant at first,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “The desire to protect you. To be with you. To make you laugh. To watch you with May. I didn’t understand…Until you said that you love me. And then you walked away.” He ran the pad of his thumb over her cheek. “I love you too, Maggie.” He returned her slow smile of wonderment. “And now that I have told you so, you must marry me, because I don’t know how I will be able to live without you. Only be gentle; I think you wield a special power to weaken me, and I ask you to use it wisely.”
She sighed, a sigh of complete contentment. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.” Her grin widened.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her to the sky, then lowered her slowly, sliding her down his body so that he could kiss her as he’d been longing to all evening.
“There is only one problem,” he said with a small shrug, as her feet touched the ground.
“What is it?” She was still smiling. She knew they could overcome anything.
“I have left the ring in my bedroom. Perhaps you will come and get it with me now?”
“Oh.” She laughed. “Yes please.”
Epilogue
“Come, come,” he said impatiently, his dark eyes glowing with the secret he’d been boasting about for months.
Maggie slipped her feet into the wedge-heeled espadrilles, an indulgent smile on her face. “Darling, I am almost ready. You said I would not be needed for at least another hour.”
“I know, but everything is ready now. Everyone is here.”
She laughed, for he was so like an excited boy. It reminded her of the night he’d taken her to the underground tunnels, almost two years earlier. She wrapped the ribbon around he
r slender ankle and tied it in a bow. “Okay, I’m ready.”
He froze, his eyes slowly running the length of her body.
“I thought we were in a rush,” she said unsteadily, shooting a doubtful look at herself in the mirror. The dress was like nothing she usually wore. Life on the vineyard meant a lot of time in jeans and t-shirts. For this secret day that Dante had warned her about months earlier, she’d gone to Bilbao and chosen a frothy black dress, like a Spanish dancer might have worn for the Tarantella. A fitted, low cut bodice gave way at the waist to a frilly black skirt that fell to the knees at the front, and the ground at the black. The shoes added modern fun to the outfit.
“Never in such a rush that I cannot tell you, my beautiful wife, that you are the most perfect creature on Earth.”
A faint blush spread across her cheeks.
“You’re a charmer,” she said hopelessly, crossing the room and wrapping her arms around his waist.
“You are easy to charm.”
She pressed a fist lightly against his chest. “Dante,” she said impatiently. “What is all the fuss about?”
He nodded. “Yes. You are right. We should go. Everyone is waiting.”
“Who is everyone?” She murmured, as they descended the stairs.
He winked at her. “You’ll see.”
She reached for his hand, and felt calm, as she always did by his side.
Two of the villa staff stood on either side of the heavy oak doors that led to the private, tree shaded courtyard in the back of the property. They opened the doors as Dante and Maggie approached.
“Oh!” Maggie exclaimed. A single long table ran the length of the courtyard, and it had been set in the most formal of styles, with a crisp white tablecloth, crystal stemware, glistening silver cutlery, and vases and vases of gorgeous flowers. She recognised the florist’s work immediately, of course. “Rosie!” She squeaked, moving as swiftly as her dress and heels would allow.
Though she’d seen them only a month earlier, she missed her best friend like crazy. It was the one sadness in her otherwise perfect life. She hugged Rosie and reached down to ruffle Marianna’s hair. Beside her, propped in the high chair, was the chubby little baby Arlo, named for the man who had married Luca’s mother.