She was three steps from the bottom when the door opened, and a tall, lean figure holding a document folder stepped into the villa.
Her foot stopped mid-air. A moment later, Diego went charging over to him.
Beth used the moment he spent petting the dog to put her foot back on the step. It took a conscious effort to do it.
Their eyes met.
She thought she was going to be sick.
Lifting her chin, she wrapped her cardigan—she couldn’t seem to get warm despite the heat—across her chest and said in a voice that hinted at normality, ‘Hello, Xavi. To what do I owe the honour?’
He stared at her for a long moment, and in that stare she took him in. The unkempt hair. The unkempt beard. The shirt and trousers that looked like they’d been slept in. The bags under his red eyes and the lines that had deepened into grooves on his face.
And he took her in, too, and she knew he was seeing the lankness of her ineffectually brushed hair and the bruises beneath her red eyes.
Terrified she was going to burst into tears, she reached the floor and turned towards the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’
‘Please.’
With the excuse of fixing him a coffee and making herself a decaffeinated tea from the supply of English teabags Salma had bought her, Beth kept her back to him and filled the kettle. ‘So, why are you here? Is it to do with the business?’
‘In a way.’ His voice sounded as rough as he looked. ‘The shares you gave me… I’ve transferred them back into your name. I know it’s unnecessary, but I’ve printed them off for—’
‘No!’ Her refutation came out as a wail, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut to better control herself. ‘Xavi, I don’t want them. I don’t even want the shares I’ve got.’
‘Then sell them. Sell them all. Do whatever you want with them, they’re yours, but before you make a decision, know I’ve tendered my resignation from the Rosbel Group. An official press announcement will be released at six p.m.’
She jolted and came within a whisker of spinning around to look at him. Her stare flicked to her watch. It would be 6 p.m. in two minutes.
Her legs trembling as badly as her arms, she leaned her stomach into the counter and added a scoop of fresh coffee beans into the machine, except she missed and the beans went scattering over the surface and floor. Charging over to the cleaning cupboard on the other side of the kitchen for the dustpan, she was on her hands and knees clearing her mess before she was able to clear her constricted throat and ask, ‘Why have you done that?’
‘Beth, please stop doing that.’
‘It needs to be done. Why have you resigned?’
He crouched down in front of her and put his hand on her wrist. ‘Please, Beth, stop.’
She snatched her hand away, coffee beans spilling out of the dustpan in the process, and shook her head, terrified to look at him, terrified the tears blinding her were going to fall. ‘Please go,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not ready to pretend to be normal around you.’
‘I resigned because I love my wife.’
Her whimper at this was so faint Xavi could have believed he’d imagined it, but the way his heart ripped at the sound… Oh, he deserved to be strung up for what he’d done to her.
‘Beth, those shares are yours. I could have bought them when your grandfather died, but the reason I didn’t had nothing to do with keeping the de la Rosa and Belmonte partnership going like I said—it was so I had a legitimate reason to bring you back into my life. It wasn’t the shares I wanted, it wasyou.’
A truth he’d finally acknowledged on his sister’s shoulder when the truth had refused to be hidden away any longer under the flood of decades of suppressed emotion that had poured out of him.
She rocked back onto her bottom and drew her knees to her chin.
‘I’m sorry,mi vida,’ he said starkly. ‘I’m sorry for everything. All the pain I’ve caused you. All the pain I’ve put us both through. All the wasted years. My feelings for you… I have loved you since the day I met you, and I will love you to the day I die. I’ve buried myself in work all these years, telling myself I’m continuing my father’s legacy when all I was doing was selfishly burying myself from the pain of missing you.’
With a deep sigh, he sank to his backside and looked at her, wishing he could touch her, wishing she would open her eyes.
‘Losing my father and seeing my mother lose herself in grief broke something in me,’ he said quietly. ‘You fixed it without me even noticing. You came into my life, this impulsive, vibrant, affectionate redhead, and you healed me, but when I spent that time away from you in Milan and realised the mistakes I’d been making because of my need to justbewith you, I pulled away from you and then pushed you away from me because I couldn’t handle just how deeply in love with you I’d fallen. I had no control over it, and Ineededcontrol, Beth. You were right about that, as you were right about so much else. I needed to control everything, and with you, I had none. I never have, and I was a fool to think I could bring you back into my life and not lose my head all over again.
‘I don’t want a meek, compliant wife,’ he continued. ‘I want you exactly as you are, because exactly as you are is all I need, and I will never forgive myself for the way I ended it with you all those years ago. I should have guessed you were pregnant.’ The burn of tears stabbed the backs of his eyes, and he blinked hard to control it. ‘I remember those calls we had and the excitement in your voice… I knew you were keeping something from me, but in my arrogance, I thought you had something special planned for when I got back. That’s why I broke things off as soon as I walked in and didn’t give you the chance to tell me. My analogy of ripping a plaster off was crude and cruel, but there is no better way to describe it, and because of my cruelty, you were alone when you lost our baby when I should have been with you, and thinking of that kills me.’ Throat close to choking, Xavi wiped a tear away. He needed to get through this. Beth deserved everything, not half measures. It was the least he owed her.
‘I’d promised you forever and I threw you away, and I want you to know that whatever happens between us now,mi vida, know you will never be alone again and I will never, ever, discard you again. I will be there for you, in whatever capacity you need. The business is yours to do as you wish. Appoint whoever you want to run it, run it yourself, whatever you want. You’re the majority stakeholder. It’s yours. I want nothing to do with it. You and the baby are my only priorities now. I’m yours, however you need me and I will be forever.’
