“Cleaning up other people’s lives,” she’d said bitterly. “Being the perfect servant. Invisible like a ghost.”
He’d never heard her voice like that, angry and full of self-recrimination. “Emma...”
“I thought she’d forgive me in the end.” Her voice was muffled as she sagged in the kitchen stool, covering her face with a trembling hand. “But she left me no message in her will. Not her blessing. Not her forgiveness. Nothing.”
“Forgiveness—for what?”
She looked at him for a long moment, then she turned her face toward the shadows without answering. She took a deep breath. “Now I’m truly alone.”
Something had twisted in Cesare’s chest. An answering pain in his own scarred heart, long buried but never completely healed. Going to her, he’d taken the bottle from her hand. He’d set it on the kitchen counter. Reaching out, he’d cupped her cheek.
“You’re not alone.” His eyes had fallen to her trembling pink lips as he breathed, “Emma...”
And then...
He’d only meant to offer solace, but somehow, he still wasn’t sure how, things had spiraled out of control. He remembered the taste of her lips when he’d first kissed her. The look in her deep, warm green eyes as he covered her naked body with his own. The shock and reverence that had gone through him when he realized he was her very first lover.
She was totally different from any woman he’d taken to his bed before. It wasn’t just the alluring warmth of her makeup-free face, or her total lack of artifice, or the long, dark hair pulled back in an old-fashioned chignon. It wasn’t just her body’s soft plump curves, so different from the starvation regime demanded by starlets and models these days.
It was the fact that he actually respected her.
He actually—liked her.
Everything about Emma, and the way she served him without criticism or demand, was comfort. Magic. Home.
But if he’d known she was a virgin, he never would have—
Yes, you would, he snarled at himself, remembering the tremble of her soft, tender lips beneath his, the salt of tears on her skin that night. The way she’d felt to him that night...the way she’d made him feel...
Cesare shook his head savagely. Whatever the pleasure, the cost was too high. Waking up the next morning, he’d realized the scope of his mistake. Because there was only one way his love affairs ended. With an awkward kiss-off, a bouquet of roses and an expensive gold watch, handed over by his one indispensable person—Emma herself.
He clawed back his short dark hair, still damp from his shower. His jaw was tight as he remembered the stricken expression on her pale, lovely face when she’d seen Olga in lingerie, standing in front of a bed which had been mussed, not with lovemaking, but from his hopeless attempt at sleep after a night on the phone with the Asia office. Of course Emma wouldn’t know that, but why should he be obligated to explain?
What is wrong with you, Cesare?
Nothing was wrong with him, he thought grimly. It was the rest of the world that was screwed up, with stupid promises and rose-colored illusions. With people who pretended words like love and forever were more than sentiments on a Valentine’s Day card.
He’d told himself Emma had no feelings for him, that their night together had been just an escape from grief. It meant nothing. He’d told himself that again and again. Told himself that if Emma tried to call it love, he’d break in a new housekeeper—even if that meant replacing her with someone who’d have the audacity to expect tea breaks and four weeks off every August.
But he’d never expected that Emma herself would just walk away.
Cesare looked out into the deepening autumn night. She’d done him a favor, really. She couldn’t be his friend and his lover and know all his household secrets. It was too much. It left him too—vulnerable.
You are truly too good to me, Mr. Falconeri.
Cesare rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t deserve that. He had been a good employer to Emma. Hadn’t he done everything a boss could do—paying her well, respecting her opinion, giving her independence to run his home? For the past few years, as they’d grown closer, he’d resisted an inconvenient desire for her. He wasn’t used to ignoring temptation, but he’d done it, at least until three months ago. And as for what had happened that night...virgin or no—the way she’d licked her full pink lips and looked up at him with those heartbreaking eyes, how could he resist that? Christo santo, he was only a man.
But for that momentary weakness, she was now punishing him. Abandoning him without so much as a by-your-leave.
Fine. He growled under his breath. Let her quit. He didn’t give a damn. His hands tightened. He didn’t.
Except...
He did.
Cursing himself, he started for the door.
* * *
Emma wearily climbed out of the Tube station at Kensington High Street. Making her way through crowds of early evening commuters, she wiped rain from her cheek. It had to be rain. She couldn’t be crying over Cesare.
So he’d never given her a chance to tell him he was going to be a father. So she’d found him in a hotel room with his ex-girlfriend, the lingerie model. So Emma was now all alone, with a baby to raise and nothing to help her but the memory of broken dreams.
She was going to be fine.
She exhaled, shifting her aching shoulders. She’d phone Alain Bouchard and accept that job in Paris. He’d give her decent hours, along with a good paycheck. She needed to be more sensible, now that she’d soon be a single mother.
Passing a shop selling Cornish pasties, she breathed in the smell of beef and vegetables in a flaky crust, vividly reminding her of her father’s barbecues in Texas when she was a child. Going to the counter, she impulsively bought one. Taking the beef pasty out of the bag, she ate it as commuters rushed past her. Tears fell down her cheeks as she closed her eyes, savoring every bite. She could almost hear her father’s voice.
Let me tell you what I know, kiddo. You’re going to make it. You’re stronger than you think. You’re going to be fine.
It did make her feel a little better. Tossing the bag into the trash, she looked out at Kensington High Street. The lights of the shops glimmered as car lights streaked by in the rain.
She barely remembered her mother, who’d died when she was four, but her dad had always been there. Teaching her to fish, telling her stories, helping with homework. When Emma had gotten ill as a teenager, he’d been by her side every day, even as he pulled extra overnight shifts at the factory to fight the drowning tide of medical bills.
Her throat ached. That was the kind of father her unborn baby deserved. Not a man like Cesare, who’d loved once, and lost, in a terrible tragedy, and was now unable to love anyone but himself.
Maybe it was for the best he would never know he was a father. She could just imagine how Cesare’s careless lack of commitment would affect a child.
Why didn’t Daddy come for my birthday, Mommy? Why doesn’t he ever come see me? Doesn’t he love me?
Emma’s eyes narrowed. No more romantic illusions. No more false hopes. She’d never give Cesare the chance to break their child’s heart, as he’d already broken hers.
Pulling her raincoat tighter around her body, she gripped her handbag against her shoulder and went out into the drizzly night, walking down the street and past the town hall. Her footsteps echoed loudly past the expensive townhouses on Hornton Street, in counterpoint to the splatters of rain, until she finally reached Cesare’s grand three-story mansion.
It was a palace of white brick, which had cost, including renovations, twenty million