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‘After the accident I couldn’t work for a while, so I wasn’t able to keep up with the mortgage payments.’
It had been terrible. Days, weeks, months lost to a kind of emotional detachment that had mirrored the physical one. Adjusting to the alteration in her eyesight had been so much more emotional than physical. While there had been no pain, there was a kind of grief to navigate—grief over a loss that was a might-have-been: a life she could have had. And while she had been so damn thankful that this was all that the accident had cost her, the true devastation had been the near constant battle with the fear that had consumed her life.
Fear that she could lose the sight in her other eye, fear that she would never not know fear, fear that this misery was all that she would feel for the rest of her life. And that was before you got to the basics of everyday life. Fear of getting on the wrong bus, of getting lost and having no one there to help. Fear of not being able to work. Fear of the loss of her self-reliance.
And then some of those fears had come true.
‘I had to sell the flat,’ she admitted, the pain of losing her home a dim echo of the deep wound it had once been. ‘The housing market wasn’t the same as when I’d bought it, but there was enough left over to help me until I was able to get back to work,’ she finished, not wanting him to think that she was completely terrible with money. Yes, there was still a sense of shame attached to the fact she hadn’t donebetter, but she had done what she needed, when she’d needed to. And she wanted Antonio to know that it hadn’t been a complete loss.
‘And now things are much better. I have a lovely little flat-share, and I love my job, and…’
Was she trying too hard? Could he tell?
Dessert appeared in front of them. Rich, chocolate, extravagant, and she suddenly wanted to cry.
‘Cara,’ he said, his voice low, gravel thick, as he reached across the table for her hand.
She let him take her hand but couldn’t meet his gaze. She didn’t want to see what was in his eyes. Didn’t want to see what he thought or felt. But she would let him offer the silent comfort she needed, just for now. It was part of his apology, she knew. It wasn’t something she could rely on in the future, but just for now, God, she wanted it so badly.
‘If you need more money—’
‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head.
‘I know the money you’ve asked for is for the library and not for yourself.’
She nearly laughed. It sounded like an admonishment.
‘I don’t need your money, Antonio,’ she said with more determination.
If her flat-out refusal surprised him, it didn’t show. But no, she couldn’t take money for herself again. Not like that. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to own a house again. The pressure of meeting the mortgage payments had weighed on her so heavily, the bills she’d not been able to keep up with because she’d not been able to work…the responsibility… What if something happened again? She wasn’t sure she could survive losing her home twice. It had nearly destroyed her last time.
She took a bite of the rich chocolate dessert, not tasting a single bit of it.
‘I’m glad that you’re okay,’ he said, the words stilted, and she smiled sadly.
Yes. Shewasokay.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, before taking another mouthful she didn’t really notice.
Antonio left his untouched, but waited patiently until she’d forced herself to finish the dessert because it would have been rude not to. He paid for the meal and escorted her to where the car waited to take them back to the villa in a pensive kind of silence that Ivy didn’t feel the need to break. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just an awareness.
But that awareness became something more as he opened the car door for her. As they made the journey back and he didn’t reach for his phone to check emails. She tried not to let her glance slide to the way that the moonlight outside the car landed on the angles and planes of his face—that he was sitting on her right side made it easier. Subtle hints of his aftershave reached her from across the car and she was struck, viscerally, by the way he’d kissed her cheek at the wedding ceremony. A timely reminder that she shouldn’t build sandcastle dreams about this man.
No, she hadn’t really expected him to come for her when she’d been in hospital. He’d never said that he would, or intimated that he even could. That wasn’t really the problem, she realised now. The problem was that she’dwantedhim to.
Antonio glared, bleary-eyed, at the espresso Agata had just put in front of him. Last night, he’d watched Ivy head up the stairs towards the room he’d given her down the hall from his own, and returned to his office. But for the first time in years, it wasn’t to check emails or business reports.
Instead, it was to research everything he could on retinal detachment. He’d even found a reference to Ivy’s case in some paywall protected journal, but it was enough to get the name of the ‘specialist’ she’d mentioned. From there it had been a simple matter of sending a few ‘urgent’ emails so that he could discover as much as possible about what had happened to her.
He had been inconceivably arrogant. Not in terms of ego, but in terms of believing that his needs—the needs of his loved ones—overrode all else. And while he still had his eye firmly on the goal of marrying Maria to meet the ridiculous terms of his grandfather’s will, it didn’t mean that he couldn’t find a way to make up for the fact that Ivy had been alone, in a very desperate state, and he’d chosen to ignore her.
There had only been one moment in his life when he’d felt that way—alone. Truly alone and utterly helpless. And the fact that he’d left Ivy feeling that way was a deeply bitter pill to swallow. Self-loathing was sharp, hard and swift.
In the kitchen, he noticed the makings of Ivy’s herbal tea by the sink and frowned.
‘Dov’èIvy?’ he asked Agata.
She nodded out into the garden, where he could just see her sitting by the pool’s edge, the early morning sun kissing her skin where she wasn’t covered by a cream and fuchsia kaftan. Her face was lifted to the sky and suddenly he had an image of her from six years ago, on a break from Affogato, that same peaceful smile as she’d turned page after page of an art book she’d been reading.