from a couple of boxes of cereal and some canned soup, the lower cupboards were bare. The glass-fronted upper cabinets stood completely empty, the panes staring back at her like sightless eyes. Neither cup nor plate graced their shelves.
The copper-bottomed pots and pans hanging from a stainless-steel rack above the work island were linked by a fine network of cobwebs, giving testament to how infrequently they’d been taken down. As for the built-in range and double-wall ovens imported from France, Gabriella doubted either had been used since the last time she’d cooked dinner there, over eighteen months ago.
In fact, the entire main floor of the penthouse had the look of a showpiece owned by a man who stopped by only occasionally to check on his investment, and she had no reason to suppose the upstairs rooms would be any different. There was none of the casual clutter, no sense of the warmth that speaks of a home shared by a couple in love. Her father might be fooled into believing otherwise but, as things presently stood, her mother wouldn’t be taken in for a minute.
Realizing she had a host of shopping still to do, she searched through the drawers for a notepad on which to list the items needed. She didn’t find one. Instead, she came across a flowered apron with a ruffle around its hem, and a half-empty tube of hand cream.
The sight caused her stomach to plummet and left her feeling slightly sick. Neither had ever belonged to her and she couldn’t imagine any circumstance which would have persuaded Max to make use of them—in which case, who had?
Don’t do this to yourself, Gabriella, the voice of reason scolded. It’s going to be difficult enough to preserve your parents’ peace of mind by letting them think your marriage is on solid ground so get on with the job at hand, because it’s going to take you the rest of today to make the place look lived in.
By nine that evening, her manicure was ruined but the transformation she’d effected throughout most of the rooms was worth every chip in her nail enamel.
The pantry and refrigerator fairly bulged at the seams with delicacies. In the storage room under the stairs, she found boxes containing the missing heirlooms; also the Herend china she’d brought with her as a bride stowed alongside crates of wedding gift crystal and other reminders of her brief sojourn as lady of the penthouse.
Now, the china and elegant stemware and goblets were again on display in the glass-fronted upper cabinets. A pretty blue bowl filled with oranges, lemons and limes sat on the granite counter beside the brass trivets polished to a blinding shine. A braid of garlic hung next to the freshly washed copper-bottomed cookware, and pots of basil and oregano nestled in a wicker planter on the windowsill.
On a shelf at the very back of the storage room, she discovered the large, silver-framed formal portrait of her and Max on their wedding day. Surprised and grateful that he hadn’t tossed it in the garbage, she’d dusted it off and set it on a side table in the living room, next to two small framed photographs she’d thought to bring with her, of her parents and the brother who’d died six years before she was born.
A fringed shawl she’d found in a bazaar in Indonesia lay draped across the back of one of the couches, its bronze and gold threadwork glowing like fire against the oyster-white upholstery. Flower arrangements blazed with color on the writing desk and sofa table, and filled the empty hearth.
She’d placed slender ivory tapers in the heavy Swarovski candlesticks on the dining room table. The antique sterling coffee service bequeathed to her by her great-aunt Zsuzsanna shone splendidly on the sideboard in whose top drawers lay the freshly ironed hand-worked linens.
Upstairs, the guest room and adjoining bathroom were prepared, with lavender sachets hanging in the closet, a vase of roses on the dresser, soaps and lotions arranged on the marble deck of the soaker tub. Monogrammed towels hung ready for use, the mirrors sparkled. Crisp percale linens covered the bed—that same bed where she’d found Max on their first night as husband and wife in North America.
She’d have thought the enormous emotional toll entailed in facing that room would have inured her to entering the other; the one in which she’d slept—and wept—for nearly six months before she’d found the courage to walk away from her loveless marriage. Yet, with the cool mauve light of dusk pooling around her, she found herself hesitating outside the door of the master suite, a clammy dew of apprehension pebbling her skin.
She was disgusted with herself. In view of everything she’d achieved since her marriage had fallen apart, how foolish of her now to fear four walls! Things could not hurt her. Only people had the power to do that—and even then, only if she let them.
Surely she’d laid those old ghosts to rest? And surely…surely…safeguarding her heart was a lesson she’d learned well since the last time Max had trampled all over it?
Still, she quaked inwardly as she pushed at the heavy door. It swung open in smooth, expensive silence, just as it used to do when, a lifetime ago, he’d paid those brief, late-night visits to her bed.
Inside the room, filmy floor-length curtains billowed in the evening breeze at the tall open windows. Avoiding the hulking mass of the bed itself, her gaze flitted instead from the bench at its foot where one of Max’s ties and a paperback mystery lay, to a pair of his shoes sprawled crookedly next to a chair, and from there to a navy golf shirt and three wooden golf tees tossed carelessly on top of a chest of drawers.
It was a man’s room; a room so devoid of a feminine presence that it might never have accommodated a bride. And yet the ghosts of yesterday sprang out at her from every corner, clamoring to be acknowledged.
Her first night there, she’d bathed in scented water, put on the gauzy peignoir trimmed with French lace that was part of her trousseau, sprayed a little perfume at her wrists and throat, and brushed her pale blond hair to satin smoothness against her shoulders. And waited for Max.
The sky had grown pearly with a new dawn before she’d finally accepted that he was not going to join her. And so, silly creature that she’d been then, she’d gone looking for him. And found him spread-eagled on the bed in the room across the hall, sleeping soundly with a sheet half covering him from the waist down.
For the longest time, she’d simply looked at him, bewitched all over again by his masculine beauty. Such skin, polished to bronze, such perfect symmetry of form, such sleek, honed strength!
Oh, how she’d ached to be enfolded in his arms, to be possessed by him! How she’d longed to feel his mouth on hers, claiming her soul; to hear his voice at her ear, hoarse with passion!
Driven by hunger and need and hope, she’d traced her fingertip along the curve of his eyebrow, smoothed her hand lightly over his dark hair. Made bold by the fact that he didn’t stir, she’d bent down to lay her mouth on his when, suddenly, his eyes had shot open.
Instantly awake, suspicious, annoyed, he’d growled, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she’d whispered, hoping the warmth of her lips against his would ignite an answering fire in him.
Instead, he’d turned his face away so that her kiss missed its mark and landed on his cheek.
“Don’t,” she’d begged. “Please don’t turn away from me. I need you, Max.”
She might as well have appealed to a slab of stone for all the response she evoked. Ignoring her completely, he’d continued staring at the wall, and even all these months later, she grew hot with embarrassment at what had followed.
She’d
