‘Ashley Woodward is here to see you.’
‘What?’ Nico stared at his assistant in blank incomprehension even as a wild hope lurched inside him. Ashley washere?He’d thought she would never darken his door again.
The woman shrugged. ‘She said she had to talk to you. Should I send her away?’
‘No,’ Nico said quickly—too quickly. In that moment, he realised just how much he wanted to see her, to explain…if he could finally have the courage. Because she’d been right: hehadbeen afraid. He took a steadying breath as he rose from his desk. ‘Send her in.’
Less than a minute later, but after what felt like an eternity, Ashley stepped into the room. She looked pale, resolute and incredibly lovely, her blonde hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail. She also looked thin, Nico noticed, the silk blouse and pencil skirt highlighting a body he remembered so well, but which now looked a little gaunt. Was that because of him?
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Ashley told him stiffly, her gaze focused somewhere to the left of him, so she didn’t have to look him in the eye. ‘I just wanted to tell you that I spoke to Ruth Boxall, and you were right—my father’s money did provide the seed investment for Infinite Innovations. He had money squirreled away in offshore accounts, and Ruth accepted it for my company. She did it without telling me, because she thought I might object, but she felt it would be a good use of the money he’d hidden. I’ve made arrangements for it to be paid back, through the company’s profits. It will take some time, but I won’t have my father’s money sullying the reputation of a company I truly believed in.’
She paused. ‘I’ve also tendered my resignation as CEO. I know you’d once said I could keep the role in the restructuring, but I thought, all things considered, it was better if I didn’t.’
‘Ashley…’ Nico’s voice caught on her name. Seeing her like this was killing him, as was knowing he had to be the cause. Every hard word he’d hurled at her was coming back to haunt him now, yet he didn’t know how he could have done things differently.
Just as she’d said, he’d been too afraid. And he wasstillafraid to reveal his heart to himself, as well as to her. Yet she’d told him she’d been falling in love with him… Could he believe that she still might be?
‘I don’t think there’s anything more to say,’ she said quietly, and turned to leave the room. Nico watched her go, one step and then another. She was walking out of his life, just as he’d demanded she do two weeks ago, and could he blame her?
More to the point, could he finally dare to be different?
Her hand was on the doorknob.
‘Wait.’ He snapped the word out, and she stiffened, her head bent.
‘I really don’t think there’s anything more to say,’ she said again in a low voice.
‘I… I wanted to explain,’ Nico began stiltedly. ‘About before.’
Ashley slowly turned around. ‘I think you explained your position perfectly,’ she remarked, her tone decidedly cool.‘Trust me.’She echoed the words her father had once said to him, her eyes glittering with unshed tears, and Nico realised afresh how much he’d hurt her.
‘You were right,’ he blurted, and her eyes widened. ‘I was afraid. Afraid of what I was feeling for you. Afraid of being rejected…again.’ It cost him far too much to admit that, but he could tell Ashley still didn’t understand, and he would have to explain it to her. Lay himself bare in a way that felt like pure torture.
‘When did I ever reject you?’ she asked in a voice soft with remembered pain. Nico knew he’d been the one who had done the rejecting, at least in her mind.
‘After they’d arrested me,’ he explained quietly. ‘You were there, watching the whole thing. Ibeggedyou to do something: speak to your father,saysomething. Anything.’ His voice choked as he remembered just how much he’d pleaded with her. He’d wept like a child, on his knees, like a supplicant. ‘And you didn’t say a word. You wouldn’t even look at me. You just turned away.’
‘I…did?’ Ashley’s face was deathly pale, one slender hand pressed to her cheek. She shook her head slowly. ‘I… I don’t…’
‘Remember?’ he filled in. ‘I know you don’t. And I didn’t want to tell you, because…it felt humiliating.’ He glanced down, unable to look her in the eye as he confessed, ‘I wasn’t able to let go of that. And so, when I found an excuse to keep from feeling anything more for you, I took it. It felt like the safer option…just as you said it was. I’m… I’m sorry.’
She nodded slowly, her face still pale. ‘So am I.’
Was this how they would end it? Nico wondered, even as he acknowledged there was more for him to explain. ‘I know you saying something might not have made any difference,’ he admitted. ‘We barely knew each other at the time, and expecting you to speak up for someone who was practically a stranger, against your own father…it was too much. I understood that, Ashley, and accepted it. Even though…’ He drew a shaky breath and released it. ‘That prison sentence cost me my brother’s life.’
Her face went even paler as her hand fluttered by her throat. ‘What…’
‘Roberto had cerebral palsy,’ Nico explained heavily. ‘Some of the inventions your company has championed would have benefitted him greatly. When I went to prison, my mother, who had been his full-time carer, had to go out to work. She couldn’t afford more than a few hours a week of someone to look after him. There were neighbours too, and friends, but sometimes he was left alone.’
Nico fell silent as the memory of his mother visiting him in prison two years after his trial came back to him—the bleakness on her face, along with the hatred, as she’d told him what had happened. ‘When he was alone one afternoon, he choked and died.’ Ashley let out a soft gasp of shock. ‘Alone,’ Nico emphasised. ‘With no one to help him or comfort him. And my mother has always blamed me for it.’
‘But it wasn’t your fault.’
‘Does it matter?’ Nico asked bleakly. ‘Yes, she knew I was innocent, but she blamed me for accepting the job at Woodward Investments in the first place. Aiming too high, she said. Even now she won’t speak to me or accept so much as a penny from me, even though she could sorely use some help.’
‘And so you blamed me for all that?’ Ashley whispered.
‘No,’ Nico told her. ‘I didn’t. But all those memories kept me from wanting to feel for you what I did. Made me afraid to take a risk on—on loving someone, when love just feels like handing someone the power to hurt you. So, yes, discovering you’d used your father’s money for the investment felt like a lifeline to me, a way to escape what I was feeling, except of course it wasn’t.’
