Her mother shook her head. “I thought he’d choose me. I was convinced he would choose me. There was no other alternative.”
And yet he hadn’t. Giovanni had walked out of her mother’s life without a backward glance and crushed her. Her mother had married her father and broken his heart, unrequited love at its most bittersweet.
It was why she’d walked away from Rocco. The fear that what she saw in his eyes might never translate into what she felt.
She stared at her mother. At the fragility she’d never seen in her eyes. And finally she understood why she was the way she was. To lose that kind of love did that to a person.
“If you could go back,” she asked, “would you do it differently?”
Her mother shook her head. “This isn’t me we’re talking about, Olivia. Giovanni and I made our decisions. It’s you and your inability to let yourself be vulnerable that is at issue here. And yes, I realize much of the blame for that stems from me. I wasn’t there for you and I abused your trust. But,” she said, “I can tell you one thing. I saw how you looked at Guillermo when you were with him and I see how you look at Rocco, and there is no comparison. You love him. And he is marrying you. So what’s the problem?”
It wasn’t a real marriage; that was the problem. But even as she said it she knew that wasn’t true on so many levels. Everything on the surface between her and Rocco had ostensibly been about their deal, but none of it ever had, really. The raw emotion and passion between them was real. The naked emotion on his face when she’d boarded that jet for Paris had been real. The walls that had come down in New York that night had been real.
It is the most perfect thing I have ever encountered. You and me, Olivia. How we taste together. How we fit together.
Her stomach contracted in a long, insistent pull. He loved her. She knew he did. He just didn’t know how to say it. He was too busy slaying her dragons, slaying everyone else’s dragons, to figure it out.
Maybe he just needed an adult version of his yellow-eyed sea creature to come and rescue him. Maybe the unanswered calls on her cell phone from him weren’t about him tracking down an asset, but him needing her as much as she needed him.
Hot liquid burned the backs of her eyes, blurring her vision. She needed to talk to him. To see him. But there was one more thing she needed to do first.
She looked at her mother. “Will you take a drive with me?”
Her mother blinked. “You’re getting married in two days, Olivia.”
“I know.”
* * *
Rocco stood on the runway in the blazing Milanese sunshine, a bouquet of calla lilies in his hand. He knew they were Olivia’s favorite from what little input she’d given on her wedding bouquet. What he didn’t know exactly was what he was doing here with them in his hands.
His eyes picked up the blue-and-white Mondelli jet banking its way through the clouds, his heartbeat increasing in anticipation along with it. Why he’d ever let Olivia go to Paris alone he didn’t know. He’d watched that Fashion Report piece sitting in the den at the villa while Olivia prepared to walk in Paris and he’d physically hated himself in that moment. He had glossed over her anxiety, told her to be tougher when he could have shut her down completely in his zealousness to see Mondelli fly.
What did that say about him? That Olivia was right? That he put business above everything else in his life? That he was a machine programmed to do only one thing?
He rubbed a hand over his face as the jet turned and made its final approach, a fatigue it seemed he’d had his whole life making his limbs feel heavy and sluggish. The past few weeks had been hell. He had buried himself in work, told himself it was better this way with distance between him and Olivia, when all he’d really wanted to do was bury himself in her. And not just in a sexual way. She brightened everything about his life every minute she was in it, and he’d been numb without her. Witness the morning he’d just spent in board meetings going over insanely good financials that should have left him pumped and victorious, but instead had made his eyes glaze over. What did any of it matter if he didn’t have anyone to share it with? And not just any woman, but the woman who had come to mean everything to him.
He had made work his entire life. It had been necessary to ensure his family business thrived. He’d sacrificed his own happiness willingly because, he could admit now, he had been too frightened to admit he had needs. That he had the ability to love like everyone else. Because doing so would have made him have to face his choices. Would have made him vulnerable. And it was the one emotion he could not tolerate.