Was this about Flora?
‘Is this about Flora?’ was the first thing she asked when they were in the sitting room and she had sunk into one of the chairs while he remained by the window, perched against the sill, looking every inch the elegant billionaire.
‘What do you mean?’ He frowned and sighed. ‘Georgie, stop theorising and hear me out.’
Georgie barely heard him because she was busy wondering how on earth a marriage proposal could be about his daughter and alsowhat were those pictures in the newspaper all about?
Her head wanted to explode.
She glanced up to find that he had strolled towards her and she watched as he dragged one of the chairs across so that he was sitting opposite her, his knees very nearly touching hers.
‘When we parted company, I… I thought that my life would return to where it had been before we met. Deep down, I knew that wasn’t going to happen but I refused to allow my mind to go off in that direction. Didn’t matter. It was stupid to think anything was going to be the same without you around and I knew it, knew it the second I watched you walk away from me. It was like having my heart cut out. Instinct made me want to rush behind you but years of self-control stopped me, made me retreat to think things through…to come to terms with a love that was bigger than me, a love that was never going to go away.’ He paused and lowered his head. When he looked up at her, he steepled his fingers under his chin and remained silent for a couple of seconds.
‘I spent my life making sure to protect myself against women who wanted too much from me because I accepted that I just couldn’t promise the sort of commitment they seemed to want. Sophia and I…? Like I told you,’ he said heavily, ‘as I’ve told you so many things about myself in the time we spent together…Sophia and I only married because she fell pregnant. If that hadn’t happened, I would never have married her, but I married her and, for a very brief while, I’d hoped that I might find reservoirs of love I didn’t know I possessed.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘But I didn’t,’ Alessandro admitted on a sigh. ‘The opposite. I very quickly realised that I’d never loved Sophia and never would. I accepted that I didn’t have it in me to love any woman because I’d grown up far too disillusioned with my own experiences of a childhood blighted by my father’s careless abandonment of me and my mother.’
‘Yet you were loved, Alessandro. Your mother loved you, set you in the right direction, did everything within her power to make sure you didn’t end up destitute or worse. You told me so.’
‘I told you a lot of things, didn’t I?’ He smiled wryly. ‘That should have been a signpost to what was happening inside me, if I hadn’t been too damn stubborn to realise it. Yes, my mother did a lot for me. Everything, truth be told. But over the years I saw the damage caused by my father walking out on her. She never recovered, never got involved with anyone else. And more than that, I felt the hole my father’s vanishing act left in me. Love, in all its complications, left pain in its wake and I decided from a very young age that I wasn’t prepared to put myself in the firing line. Maybe if it had been a normal divorce, when I was old enough to understand that sometimes good people make bad life partners…but I was very, very young and the hurt was crystallised in the notion of a man who’d walked out of my life, never looked back, never tried to get in touch, was never curious about the mess he’d left behind.’
‘Alessandro, I still don’t understand what—’
‘When you left to head back to Vancouver, I got in touch with Sophia, told her that I wanted to meet her. I said that I’d explain everything when we met but there were things I wanted to tell her and I wanted to tell her face to face.’
‘You did…’
‘She suggested the restaurant and I complied. I felt it was going to be tough enough on her when she heard what I had to say.’
‘Alessandro…’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I don’t know what to believe.’
‘Do youwantto believe me? That’s the question I suppose I should be asking.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I came here to tell you that I love you, Georgie. I came here with a ring to ask for your hand in marriage. You weren’t interested in the ring and I’m guessing you don’t feel the same towards me even though I know that we could work together, that I could be the man you’re looking for and I’m willing to prove that to you.’
‘I’m in a daze.’
‘I’m trying to be as ordered in telling you all this as I can but—’
‘You still haven’t said what happened with your ex-wife.’
‘Let me show you something.’
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his mobile phone and after a couple of seconds he handed it to her.
Georgie glanced down and blinked as she read a thread of messages, brief and to the point.
A single message from Alessandro and it said just what he had told her. That he wanted to meet up, that he had something to tell her and that he wanted to tell her face to face.
Then a flurry of messages from Sophia…wanting more information, more details…some clue as to what she might expect.
