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It would take no time at all to get there.
Luca didn’t even fill one notebook on the flight. Granted, it was a short flight, but the behavior was out of character. When he had attempted to write, he had only managed one word: Polly.
It was unbearable.
Unendurable.
She had taken his brain and she had done something to it. Hijacked it.
And then she had left him.
He was a mass of teeming energy by the time he disembarked from the plane. By the time he got into the waiting car to wing his way down to the fashion house.
It was across a large, crowded square, a massive historic building that stood proud and tall, and inconsequential as far as he was concerned. It was nothing compared to the work that he did. And nothing compared to the work that she could do with him. If she needed to feel more appreciated, if she needed him to learn a new way of speaking with her, then he could do so. He could learn.
He had made efforts to do so before, and he could do it with her.
He was determined in this.
He walked across the square, and he saw a door open at the top of the massive stone steps. His gaze was drawn there, to the flurry of movement, a red scarf, blond hair.
It was her.
His body recognized her on a cellular level. It was not visual. It was visceral. He felt her. To the depths of himself.
It had always been so. It wasn’t just her movements that fascinated him, he realized now. It was the movement that she created within him, different than any other human being.
Different than anything.
His.
It was so clear then.
She belonged with him. Together, they would make massive advancements in medicine, and if she needed a new title, promotion, if she needed to be second-in-command of the company then she could be so.
Because she was what made him work.
He strode up the steps, without pausing, without thought.
She saw him.
She felt him. He knew it. Because he could see it there in her eyes. That recognition. The shifting of the tides within her soul, he knew it, because he felt it.
He felt what another person felt. He was confident of it.
It was a novelty.
Something he had been told he was incapable of. Something many people had said he did not possess the ability to do, and he had done it. Without even trying. Hell, he didn’t even want it. But there he was, standing there, making eye contact with Polly, absolutely certain that what was happening inside of him was the same reckoning inside of her.
She shook her head. And he nodded as he approached her.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve come for you.”
“No,” she said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“There is nowhere else that I ought to be. I think you know that.”
“I don’t know that.” There was something fearful in her expression now, though in the past he knew that she had said she was afraid of him only because of the degree to which she wanted him. Maybe it was the same now, and yet he didn’t think so.