Page 4 of Hello Goodbye Amore

Chase drew his lips into a line, tension washing over him.

Antonello motioned to the chair, and Chase slowly sat back down.

“If that’s true, then tell him that he needs to assign someone else.

He is the boss, apparently. He can do that.

” Anger and hurt warred behind the eyes Antonello remembered so well and had seen in his dreams when he was particularly tired and his defenses got low.

Chase crossed his arms in front of his chest, and for a second he seemed almost petulant.

Antonello suppressed a smile for fear he’d get either the water or the antipasti in his lap.

“I can’t do that,” Antonello said as a server brought menus and refilled their glasses from the bottle of water on the table before silently leaving then alone once again.

“Why not? Are you afraid he’ll be hurt or maybe heartbroken?

” Chase hissed just loud enough for him to hear.

“Maybe he’ll learn just the kind of man his son is.

” Damn—bald, cold hatred flashed in Chase’s eyes, and then it was gone.

But what Antonello had seen was chilling, given the fact that he would never have expected the Chase he had known back in college to be capable of such darkness.

“Things were different then,” Antonello tried to explain.

“There were things I had to do, commitments that I needed to fulfill.” Damn, how did he say that leaving had nearly ripped him apart?

Not that it mattered after these years. “I know I left quickly, but I had to.” The words left an ashen taste in his mouth, but the complex relationships that governed the way his family and the firm they owned ran were something outsiders just didn’t understand.

“And that was years ago,” he added as gently as he could.

“It doesn’t matter. You hurt me, and you crushed Elaine’s hopes.

We thought you were our friend—we’d even made plans to start a business together—and then poof, you’re gone.

” He shook his head. “It took months after you left us high and dry to unravel the business arrangements we’d already made.

You didn’t even bother to respond when she died. ”

Antonello gasped, his eyes widening, the world rocking a little around him. “Elaine is gone?” His throat tightened and he reached for his glass, but when he tried to take a drink, he nearly choked on it. “Believe me, I didn’t know.”

“I sent messages to the email address I had and texted you, but everything went unanswered,” Chase said. “I just assumed that you didn’t care any longer. After all, you just left with no word, nothing afterwards.”

Antonello heaved a huge breath and tried to process what he’d been told. “When did it happen? How? Were you there?”

“She died in November the year after you left. There was something in her brain that had been there since the day she and I were born. The doctors said it could have happened at any time, but it occurred when she was driving home from work.” His expression grew hard, and then he lowered his gaze.

“As for the accident, I was at work and couldn’t be there with her.

She died alone by the side of the road before help could reach her.

” Chase drank some more water, and when he lifted his head once again, the pain was still present in his eyes.

Antonello swallowed hard and tried to process that one of the dearest friends he had ever had was now gone.

His biggest regret had been leaving Elaine and Chase.

But he’d had little choice in it. To have stayed would have meant turning his back on his family and their future.

As much as it had hurt at the time, it had been the only decision he could make.

But that didn’t change the fact that Elaine was gone and he hadn’t been there for her.

Nor the fact that Chase seemed to hate him for all of it.

Not that what had happened was his fault.

But it seemed his leaving had had repercussions beyond what he had ever considered. “And you tried to contact me?”

“Yes, of course I did. But I never got a response. I texted and called, but eventually the number was out of service. The only email address I had was the one you used through the university, but that was closed after you left school. I also sent a letter to an address here in Florence. I knew it would take time to reach you. I never got a response of any type, and after the way you left, I figured you just didn’t care. ”

“Well, I did, and I never got any of it,” Antonello said.

Chase shook his head slowly. “Then you have a lousy way of showing it. You knew how to get in touch with us, but you never did. You left town, and presto….” He waved his hands through the air like he was performing an invisible magic trick.

“It was like you dropped off the face of the earth. No cards, calls, texts… nothing.” Chase straightened the napkin on his lap.

“But as you said, that was years ago.” He turned when the server approached and placed his order.

The food was very traditionally Florentine, and Antonello ordered without looking. He knew what was good.

Antonello needed something to talk about since it seemed Chase was at least going to stay to eat. “How long have you been with Smithson?” That seemed like a safe topic of conversation. Obviously the past was a minefield of epic proportions.

“I was hired three months out of college. They were a medium-sized firm then, and I knew I was taking a chance, but the job offers hadn’t rolled in.

I jumped at the job and have had the chance to work on some very interesting projects.

We’ve grown a lot in that time, and I’ve moved up in the ranks.

” Those eyes Antonello remembered so vividly seemed to take in everything.

So inquisitive, with a light shining behind them that Antonello had always found attractive.

Chase had grown into a handsome man. In school he had had puppy-dog looks, like he hadn’t quite grown into himself.

Now he had filled out and come into his own the way Antonello had always thought he might.

The eyes were the same, and so were his lips, but the rest of him…

the years had been more than kind—they had blessed him with a handsomeness that Antonello found stunning.

“What sort of work have you been doing here?”

“I work with the sales and production departments. It’s my job to make sure that we can deliver what we promise on time and at the correct quality.

Which is why I was asked to work with you.

” Among other things. He and Chase had talked about the dynamics of his family years ago, and Antonello didn’t want to go into those details now.

Chase didn’t need to be reminded, and while Italians of his father’s generation believed that business was about relationships, they also knew to hold things close and not to divulge too much. After all, business was business.

The food arrived, and Antonello was grateful for a lull in the conversation.

Anyway, if he was eating food, he couldn’t jam his foot any farther into his mouth.

He and Chase had spent many hours with each other, studying, eating, and laughing.

They had always been so easy together. That had been part of what drew him to Chase in the first place.

Not that he had a right to expect they would just fall back into the same ease, but this was almost painful.

And the thing was, he knew it was his fault.

He’d not only lied, he’d kept the truth to himself, and that had brought him to where he was now.

It was the age-old struggle: duty or his heart.

Antonello had chosen duty all those years ago, and now he had to live with it.

“There has to be a way for us to move forward,” he finally said once they had finished their salads, with silence hanging over them like a dark cloud.

He couldn’t go back to his father and tell him that he needed someone else to be the liaison.

It was his job. If he backed out, his father would want to know why, and he’d rather eat nails than have to explain.

His parents knew he had friends back in college, but they were not aware of his relationship with Elaine or his complicated feelings about Chase, and all those questions were best avoided like the plague.

“Like doing our jobs and putting the rest aside?” Chase set his fork down on his plate, his expression relaxing just enough that some of the Chase he once knew seemed to move to the front.

“Yes. Regardless of how you might feel toward me, we both have work and obligations—mine to my family and yours to your employer—and there’s a lot at stake for both of us.

” The success of this project meant a lot to the company and his father, and regardless of his mistakes in the past and the fact that his private life was pretty much nonexistent due to their expectations, he wanted to make his father happy and proud.

On top of that, if Antonello didn’t step up and prepare himself to run the business, his cousin Lorenzo certainly would, and hundreds of years of struggle, excellence, and business acumen would never survive his self-centered leadership.

Antonello assumed that Chase needed to please his supervisors at Smithson as well.

So on some level, they had a common purpose. Maybe they could start there.

Chase seemed to consider this, his expression one Antonello remembered from their late-night study sessions, except this time it was him under scrutiny.

Finally he sat back slightly and nodded.

“You’re right. This needs to be a success so I can have a chance at a promotion, and I’m not going to spend five months of my life fighting with you over things that happened years ago and that neither of us can change.

We need to get along at work and be professional.

I know I can do that.” But his cold look told Antonello that was all the quarter he was going to get.

When the server returned, Chase asked for a coffee and finally seemed to relax a bit.

“Good.” That was a step forward and one Antonello would have to learn to accept.

He had often imagined meeting Chase again and had wondered how each of them would react, and in his wildest musings, he had never pictured a dinner like this.

Instead, he’d always pictured them having the chance Antonello wished he’d allowed himself in college if he’d only had the courage to go after what he’d truly wanted.

But reality was far crueler than Antonello had ever imagined, and it had been drilled into him his entire life that duty to the family came first. Antonello was still adding up its cost and was starting to think the price would be his soul.