didn’t answer, but she saw a flash of recognition in his eyes and she knew he thought she’d been talking about them. What little them there was. And had she? Perhaps. Perhaps she wasn’t above such a sly implication.
‘You still live in Caltarione,’ he said suddenly, a statement, and she raised her eyebrows.
‘Obviously you must know that, since you’ve looked at my employee file. What is this about, Angelo? Why have you brought me up here?’
She saw, to her surprise, a faint flush touch his cheekbones. He glanced down at some papers on his desk. ‘We were friends once, weren’t we?’
Once, not now. His meaning was clear. ‘As children, yes,’ she said flatly.
‘I want to know what has happened to you in these past years.’
‘Oh, really? Funny, then, that you never called or wrote. Not a postcard or email or anything. If you wanted to catch up on old times, Angelo, I’m sure you could have found a way other than summoning me to your office like some scolded schoolgirl.’ His blush deepened, and his eyes glittered. ‘I didn’t—’
‘Didn’t think of me once in the past seven years while you were away becoming a billionaire? How surprising. And yet you’re angry because I took a job working for the Correttis.’ She shook her head. ‘You may not have made any promises, but you’re still a hypocrite.’
‘You’re angry with me,’ he said, and she forced herself to laugh, the sound hard and humourless.
‘Angry? That takes too much effort. I was angry, yes, and I’m annoyed you think you can order me around now. But if you think I’m hurt because you stole from my bed—’ She stopped suddenly, her breath catching in her chest, and swallowed hard. She knew she couldn’t continue, couldn’t maintain the charade that what had happened seven years ago hadn’t utterly broken her.
So she simply stared, her chin tilted at a determinedly haughty angle, everything in her willing Angelo to believe that she didn’t care about him. That he hadn’t hurt her. Let him believe she was only angry; at least it hid the agony of grief she couldn’t bear to have exposed.
‘I’m sorry, Lucia,’ Angelo said abruptly, and Lucia could only stare. He didn’t sound sorry.
‘For what?’ she asked after a taut moment when neither of them spoke.
‘For…’ He paused, a muscle flickering in his jaw, his eyes shadowed with some dark emotion. ‘For leaving you like that.’ Lucia let out a shuddering breath. She’d never expected an apology, even one so grudgingly given. She didn’t speak. Angelo stared.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ he finally demanded.
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘You could accept my apology, to start.’
‘Why should I?’
Angelo’s jaw dropped, which would have made her laugh save for the leaden weight of her heart. ‘What?’
‘Just because you’ve finally deigned to say sorry doesn’t make me ready to accept it.’ Or act like all that was needed was a carelessly given, barely meant apology. She wanted more than that. She deserved more than that.
Except, of course, Angelo had nothing more to give. And whether or not he said sorry for the past made no real difference to either of their futures. Why had he brought her up here? Looking at him now, his face taut with annoyance or maybe even anger, Lucia thought she could hazard a guess.
She was no more than an item to be ticked off on his to-do list. Come back to Sicily, buy a hotel, deal with Lucia. Get any messy emotional business out of the way so he could move on to more important things. She supposed she should be grateful she’d warranted any consideration at all.
She took a deep breath. ‘So you’ve said it, Angelo, you’ve ticked me off your list, and you can go on happily now with your big business deals and fancy living. And I can get back to work.’
And stop acting out this charade that she didn’t care, that she’d only been angry or even annoyed. She couldn’t understand how Angelo could believe it, yet he obviously did, for he was annoyed too, by her stubbornness. He still had no idea how much he’d hurt her.
‘It’s been seven years, Lucia,’ he said, an edge to his voice, and she met his gaze as evenly as she could.
‘Exactly.’
‘I haven’t even been in Sicily since that night.’
‘Like I said before, there’s the phone. Email. We live in the twenty-first century, Angelo. If you’d wanted to be in touch, I think you just might have found a way.’ He bunched his jaw and she shook her head. ‘Don’t make excuses. I don’t need them. I know that one night was exactly that to you—one night. I’m not delusional.’ Not any more.
‘So you didn’t even expect me to call? Or write?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Even though part of her had stubbornly, stupidly hoped. ‘But expecting and wanting are two different things.’
He stared at her for a long, hard moment. ‘What did you want?’ he asked quietly, and Lucia didn’t answer. She would not articulate all the things she had wanted, had hoped for despite the odds, the obviousness of Angelo’s abandonment. She would not give Angelo the satisfaction of knowing, and so she lifted one shoulder in something like a shrug. ‘A goodbye would have been something.’
‘That’s all? A farewell?’
‘I said it would have been something.’ She tore her gaze from his, forced all that emotion down so it caught in her chest, a pressure so intense it felt like all her breath was being sucked from her body. ‘It’s irrelevant anyway,’ she continued, each word so very painful to say. ‘If you brought me up here to say sorry, then you’ve said it. Thank you for that much, at least.’
‘But you don’t accept my apology,’ Angelo observed. His gaze swept her from head to foot like a laser, searching her, revealing her.
She closed her eyes briefly, tried to summon strength. ‘Does it really matter?’
His gaze narrowed, his lips compressed. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because you’ve managed to go seven years without saying sorry or speaking to me at all, Angelo. How can I help but think my opinions—my feelings—matter very little to you?’ He frowned and she shook her head. ‘I’m not accusing you. I’m not angry about it any more.’
‘You still seem angry.’
Seem, Lucia thought, being the operative word. If only it was as simple as that; if only she felt angry that he’d been so thoughtless as to leave her bed without a word. If only she felt clean, strong anger instead of this endless ache of grief. ‘I suppose seeing you again has brought it back, a bit, that’s all,’ she finally said. She couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘Why do you care anyway?’
‘I suppose…the same.’ Angelo sounded guarded. ‘Seeing you again has made me…want to make amends.’
