deserve more. Are you really so sure that he doesn’t love you? I mean, whenever I’ve seen him he can’t take his eyes off you.’
‘It’s a part he’s playing, a part we both were, but for me it became real.’ She stopped and gave a wild little laugh. ‘No, I’m still lying. That’s not true—it was love at first sight for me... I know, how crazy is that?’
Her twin didn’t join in her laughter. ‘I don’t think it’s crazy at all.’
‘But then you always were the romantic...not me.’ She ran her tongue across her dry lips and shook her head, her voice dropping to a grief-laden whisper as she admitted, ‘If I hadn’t been pregnant when his grandfather died the marriage would have ended then—that was the plan.’
‘Well, if a baby was never part of the plan you both seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to make it happen,’ Lily observed.
‘I was devastated. I hadn’t known how much I wanted it.’ She swallowed down hard. ‘He just felt sorry for me and there was the heir thing, carrying on his name.’
‘I wish you’d told me.’
Lara gave a watery smile. ‘How could I? You were pregnant and—I wanted to be happy for you, I was happy for you, but I was also jealous,’ she admitted with a shamed sniff.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, Lara, your husband has never struck me as the sort of man who makes life-changing decisions because of pity.’
Lara blinked. ‘No,’ she conceded. ‘But...he has a strong sense of duty, family. He can be very protective. You know, I used to believe that whoever I fell in love with would naturally love me back, because...because that’s just the way it’s supposed to be. But perhaps this is some of sort of punishment for being so conceited, because I’ve tried and I’ve tried and—’ She squeezed her eyes closed as the anguished words emerged from her aching throat. ‘But I can’t make him love me.’ Head bent, she closed her eyes. ‘And I can’t live without being loved.’
‘Neither can I, Lara.’
She hugged her twin and added huskily, ‘I’m glad that you have Ben, you sneaky old thing. If anyone deserves to be happy after all you’ve been through it’s you.’ She gave a sudden choking sob and wailed, ‘Raoul deserves to be happy too.’
‘You know you have to tell him about the baby.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’
* * *
He had let her walk away. As he turned and walked in the opposite direction he could still hear her saying it: I love you.
People took one look at his stony face and took hasty detours around the tall man as Raoul strode out blindly, feeding his anger as the emotions inside him built. She knew the rules, she was the one who had broken them, this could have worked...it was working.
Then his anger vanished and he clenched his jaw against the hit of guilt as he remembered the hope shining in her eyes, and how it had died and vanished as she’d waited for him to respond.
It had been a brave thing to do, a Lara thing. She’d had hope and he’d crushed it. Angry with her for saying it, but tortured by the thought of her hurting, he walked on, his black thoughts a swirl of self-loathing, anger and resentment.
He’d let her walk away.
Why?
He waited for the accusatory stream of responses to come—she wasn’t being fair, she was asking for something he couldn’t give, he was doing her a favour because she deserved—but they didn’t come.
He stopped dead.
They were lies.
The truth flayed him and he didn’t avoid the pain, he deserved it!
Lara was brave, and he was a coward, a gutless wonder who’d been too scared to admit his own feelings even to himself. And why? Because he’d stopped trusting his own feelings, and his solution was to pretend he didn’t have any.
And it hadn’t been that hard until Lara had appeared. She had challenged his accepted way of thinking from day one; she’d awoken dormant emotions inside him and made them blaze up like an out-of-control fire.
Once love had almost destroyed him, it had simply never even entered his consciousness that love, real love, could also be a salvation.
Lara was his salvation and he’d let her walk away.
He felt power surge through him as he embraced the truth: Lara was the love of his life. He was going to fix things, he was going to lay his heart at her feet and beg her to take him back.
It had been a massive anticlimax when he’d got back to the apartment and she wasn’t there...just that heartbreaking note.
Raoul hadn’t slept since. He’d traced her to London and then Lara seemed to have vanished. He felt as though he’d aged ten years in the last three days. He was crazy with worry; he’d tried everything...everyone.
If she wasn’t here, he thought as the taxi driver pulled up outside a house in a leafy road, he didn’t know what he’d do.
‘Is this it?’
‘I hope so,’ Raoul breathed, paying off the driver. ‘I really hope so.’ He’d finally tracked down her sister, who was at a new address, and if she didn’t know where Lara was then he wasn’t sure what his next move would be.
He rang the bell and the door opened immediately. Seeing another woman with his wife’s face, after so many days without her, was a jolt.
‘Is she here?’
She looked him up and down, her eyes narrowed and assessing before responding. ‘She is—she’s through that way. No!’ She laid a hand flat on his chest to stop his impulsive progress. ‘Listen, Lara is...she’s kind of fragile right now and if you hurt her, so help me, Mr Di Vittorio, you’ll be singing soprano. Message received?’
‘Received, and, for the record, though I am very attached to my singing voice I would sooner lose it than hurt Lara.’
Lily smiled and stepped back to let him pass, yelling after him, ‘Don’t mess it up!’
* * *
‘I have been looking for you.’
With a gasp Lara turned, jumping up off the stool she sat on. She pressed her hands against her chest, fighting down the urge to reach out and touch him.
Instead in a flat little voice she said, ‘It’s over.’
‘Let me finish! I have been looking for you all my life, though I didn’t realise it. I would not let myself believe it. Lucy...she left me feeling toxic, like I had nothing left to give another woman, and then when I found you I was too stupid and cowardly...yes!’ he said, reacting to her little whimper of protest with a shake of his head. ‘Too cowardly to face the truth. I loved you, Lara Gray, from the moment I saw you. You are my life and I am nothing without you. I am here to beg you to have me. We will live where you
