blame yourself,’ she said gently. ‘You loved her—’
‘Which makes me an even bigger fool,’ he growled.
‘Perhaps. But it’s easy to believe someone if your heart longs to trust them.’
He looked at her with sudden curiosity. ‘You talk as though you really know.’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve had my share of relationship traumas.’
‘Tell me,’ he said quietly.
Her disastrous emotional life wasn’t something she usually talked about, but with this man everything was different. The blow that had struck him down meant that he would understand her as nobody else understood. It was strange to realise that, but everything in the world was becoming different.
‘Romance hasn’t been a large part of my life,’ she said.
‘I guess your career comes first. Your car tells me that.’
It was true. The purchase of the glamorous vehicle had been one of her most delightful experiences.
‘But there has been something, hasn’t there?’ he said. ‘The path I’m treading is one you’ve travelled yourself.’
‘Yes. There was a time when I thought things were going to be different. I allowed myself to have feelings for him and I thought he—well, it just didn’t work out.’
‘Didn’t he love you?’
‘I thought so. We seemed good together, but then he met this other woman—she was a great beauty. Long blonde hair, voluptuous figure—I didn’t stand a chance.’
‘And that was all he cared about? Looks?’
‘So it seemed. Isn’t that what all men care about?’
‘Some. Not all.’ He gave a brief cynical laugh. ‘Some of us can see beyond looks to the person beneath: cold and self-centred or warm and kindly. Didn’t this man see your warmer side? I can see it.’
‘He didn’t think it mattered, unless he could make use of it.’
She made a wry face. ‘You said I’d travelled this road before you, and you were right. I don’t normally talk about it, but at least now you know that this isn’t just a lawyer “seeing sense”. I really do have some idea of what you’re going through. I know what it’s like to be lied to, and to wonder afterwards how I could have been so naïve as not to see through it. But if you don’t want to see through it—’ She sighed.
‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘If you don’t want to face the truth, there’s a great temptation to ignore it. You have to beware of that in business, and I suppose it’s true of life as well.’
It was the last thing she had expected him to admit, but something about him had changed. He was speaking with a self-awareness that made him seem more pleasant. It was almost like talking to a different man, a kindly one who felt for her own pain as well as his own.
‘I know this is all very hard for you,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I’ll get through it.’ But suddenly his voice changed, became weary. ‘Oh, hell, who am I kidding? Can I call this managing? What she’s done has destroyed the world. I wanted to be a father, to have someone who was really mine. My parents died when I was a child. I was adopted by an uncle and aunt who treated me properly but—well, we were never really close. I believed my wife and I were close, but that proved to be an illusion.
‘Now I realise she was already sleeping with another man, but I never thought of it. Then, suddenly she was gone, demanding a divorce on the grounds that we were incompatible. I found out afterwards that she’d set spies on me to see if I had other women. But I hadn’t. I’d been boringly faithful, which must really have disappointed her.’
‘It certainly weakened her case,’ Ellie agreed.
He gave a grunt of mirthless laughter.
‘And she dumps this news on me on Valentine’s Day. She could hardly have timed it more cynically.’
‘Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day in Italy?’
‘A little. Not as much as you do in England, but enough to make me see the irony. The great day for lovers, except that it’s smothered in snow, both physically and—well, there’s more than one kind of snow.’
‘Yes, it couldn’t have worked out worse, could it?’ she said sadly. ‘I don’t suppose she thought of that—’
‘Of course not. She never thinks of anything except what suits her. But her pregnancy made it all different. The world changed. For the first time ever there was somebody who would be mine, connected to me in a way that nothing and nobody could deny. I told her that I couldn’t let her go. She made a dash for it and came to England because she must have thought divorce would be easier, since we married over here.
‘I followed her, determined to keep her, and if not her then at least my child. But now I learn that the baby’s not even mine—’
‘And I’m afraid it isn’t,’ Ellie murmured.
A tremor went through him. ‘Then I have nothing.’
The way he said ‘nothing’ made her want to reach out to him.
‘You think that now,’ she said gently, ‘but you’ll come through it. There’s always something else in life.’
‘Only if you want something else. What I want is my child. Mine and only mine.’
He spoke like a man used to bending the world to his will. But there was a blank despair in his face, as though even he knew that he couldn’t control this situation.
She guessed that such helplessness was alien to him, and he was finding it frustrating. He was used to giving orders, demanding total subservience, which was why this left him at a loss. Ironically, the strength he was used to wielding had undermined him now. She felt a surge of pity for him.
‘There are other things to care about,’ she urged. ‘You’ll find them.’
But he shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said softly. ‘Nothing.’
She gingerly placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.
He sighed.
‘Accept reality in a way I’ve never had to before.’ He frowned. ‘I’m good at arranging things the way I want, or at least persuading myself that I’ve done so.’ He made a wry face. ‘Meet the biggest self-deceiver in the world.’
‘No, you’re strong. And you’ll be strong now.’
‘Why are you so sure? You don’t know me.’
‘Do you know yourself?’
‘I guess not,’ he sighed. ‘Oh, heavens!’
He dropped his head into his hands. Touched, Ellie drew him closer, enfolding him in both arms, her instinct to offer comfort to him overwhelming. He raised his head so that their eyes met, hers gentle and tender, his full of confusion and despair.
‘That must be how it seems now,’ she said gently. ‘But your life isn’t over. You’ll meet someone who’ll love you and give you a child. And the two of you will be united in that child for ever.’
‘You make it sound so easy,’ he whispered.
‘When the time comes it will be easy,’ she promised.
‘For other men perhaps. Not for me. I said I didn’t know myself, but I do know a few things. I know I can come across as overbearing, so that even if I like a woman she recoils from me.’
His words caused a pain in her heart. Driven by an impulse she barely understood, she took his face in her hands.
‘I’m