was a gasp and growl across the crowd. Cesare gave a low hiss of fury. He was going to come down and smash Alain’s face for doing this, she realized.
For stopping a wedding that Emma never should have agreed to in the first place.
“Don’t marry him.” Alain held out a trembling hand to her. “Come with me now.”
She’d wanted a sign?
With tortured eyes, she turned back to Cesare.
“I can’t do this,” she choked out. “I’m sorry.”
Cradling her baby, she picked up the hem of her cream-colored silk gown with one hand, and followed Alain out of the chapel. She ran from Cesare as if the happiness of her whole life—and not just hers, but Sam’s and Cesare’s—depended on it.
Which she finally knew—it did.
* * *
As a thirteen-year-old, coming home in a strange big city, Cesare had once been mugged for the five dollars in his pocket. He’d been kicked in the gut with steel-toed boots.
This felt worse.
As if in a dream, Cesare had watched Emma walk up the aisle of the chapel, a bride more beautiful than he’d ever imagined, with their child in her arms. Then, like a sudden deadly storm, Alain Bouchard had appeared like an avenging angel. Emma had looked between the two men.
Cesare had been confident in her loyalty. He’d known she would spurn Bouchard, and marry him as she’d promised.
Instead she’d turned on him.
She’d abandoned him.
For a moment, as the chapel door banged closed behind her, Cesare couldn’t breathe. The pain was so intense he staggered from it.
The chapel was suddenly so quiet that he could hear the soft wind blow across the lake. The deepening shadows of the candlelit chapel seemed relentlessly dark as endless eyes focused on him, in varying degrees of shock, sympathy and worst of all—pity.
The priest, who’d met with them several times over the past weeks, spoke to him in Italian, in a low, shocked voice. He could barely hear.
Cesare’s tuxedo tie was suddenly too tight around his throat. He couldn’t let himself show his feelings. He couldn’t even let himself feel them.
Emma had left him.
At the altar.
With Bouchard.
And taken their child with her.
He looked at the faces of his friends and business acquaintances, including the white-robed, hard-eyed sheikh of Makhtar in the back row, who alone had no expression of sympathy on his face. Cesare parted his lips to speak, but his throat was too tight. After all, what was there to say?
Emma had betrayed him.
Ripping off his black tie, he tossed it on the stone floor and strode grimly out of the chapel in pursuit of her.
So much for mercy. So much for the high road.
He never should have listened to old Morty Ainsley. Cesare’s throat was burning, and so were his eyes. He should have sued Emma for full custody from the moment he learned of Sam’s existence. He should have gotten his revenge. Gotten his war.
Instead he’d offered her everything. His throat hurt. His name. His fortune. His fidelity. Hadn’t he made it clear that if she wished it, he would remain true to her? Hadn’t he proven it with more than words—with his absolute faithfulness over the past year? How much more clear could he be?
And Emma had spurned all of it. In the most humiliating way possible. He’d never thought she could be so cruel. Making love to him last night—today, leaving him for another man.
He pushed through a grove of lemon trees. He would make her pay. He would make her regret. He would make her...
His heart was breaking.
He loved her.
The realization struck him like a blow, and he stopped. He loved her? He’d tried not to. Told himself he wouldn’t. But all this time, he’d been lying to himself. To both of them. He’d been in love with her for a long time, possibly as long as she’d loved him.
He’d certainly been in love with her the night they’d conceived Sam. It wouldn’t have made sense for him to have taken such a risk otherwise.
His body had already known what his brain and heart refused to see: he loved her. For reasons that had nothing to do with her housekeeping skills, or even now her skills as a mother, or her skills in bed. He didn’t love her for any skills at all, but for the woman she was inside: loving, warm, with a heart of sunlight and fire.
And now, all that light and fire had abruptly been ripped out of his life, the moment he’d started to count on her. He wasn’t even surprised. He’d known this would happen. Known the moment he let himself love again, she would disappear.
He had only himself to blame....
“Thank God you saw sense.” Hearing the low rasp of Alain Bouchard’s voice, Cesare ducked behind a thicket of orange trees. Peering through the branches, he saw two figures standing on the shore, frosted silver by moonlight. “Here.” Bouchard’s accented voice was exultant. “Get in my boat. You’ve made the right choice. I won’t let him hurt you now.”
Clenching his fists, Cesare took a step toward them. Then he saw Emma wasn’t making a move to get in the boat. She had turned away, and was trying to calm the baby, who had started to whimper in her arms. Her long white veil trailed her like a ghost in moonlight.
“He didn’t hurt your sister, Alain,” she said in a low voice. “He would never hurt her. He loved her. In fact, he’s still in love with her. That’s why I...why I couldn’t go through with it.”
Cesare stopped, his eyes wide, and a branch broke loudly beneath his feet. Bouchard twisted his head blindly, then turned back to Emma. “Hurry. He might come at any moment.”
“I’m not getting in the boat.”
The Frenchman laughed. “Of course you are.”
“No.” Emma didn’t move. “You have to accept it. Cesare is always brutally honest, even when it causes pain. Her death was a tragic accident. He’s never gotten over it. Cesare is a good man. Honorable to his core.”
Bouchard took a step closer to her on the moonlit shore.
“If you really believe that,” he said, “what are you doing out here?”
Cesare strained to hear, not daring to breathe. He saw Emma tilt up her head.
“I love him. That’s why I couldn’t marry him.”
Cesare stifled a gasp. She loved him?
Bouchard stared at her, then shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense, chérie.”
