She stared at the message. For a good two or three minutes she just stared at it. Then it hit her. He was dumping her. He was about to accomplish his goal of winning the Luxe contract, so why keep her around any longer? It was just like it had been with Julian. Once she’d outlived her usefulness to him, once he’d forged the contacts he’d needed to with the Davis elite, he’d left.
But why now? Why hadn’t he just waited until the pitch was over? Had the guilt gotten to him?
She turned off the lights and slipped into bed. Tears slid down her face—hot, silent. She didn’t understand any of it. Didn’t understand how her emotions, her instincts could be so wrong.
But she would not let another man break her. She was stronger than that. It’s just that she should have known. She really should have known.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LIGHT FILTERED THROUGH the floor-to-ceiling windows of Quinn’s bedroom, ushering in a new day. Head throbbing, she swiped at her alarm, rolled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom for a shower. The thought of walking into that pitch room made her feel ill. The coffee with Matteo more so. If he dumped her today, she wasn’t sure she was ever going to trust herself again. She had been so sure he was the one.
She pushed shampoo through her hair. Tried to jolt her brain out of the fog it was in. But all she could do was wonder why. What part of her was so deeply bruised, so inherently defective that everyone always left? Her birth parents. Julian. Now Matteo. What was it about her that made them change their minds?
She rinsed her hair, dried herself off and walked into the bedroom, stumbling over the clothes she’d kicked off last night. Her brain on automatic pilot, she stopped in front of the dresser and reached for underwear. Froze at the glint of metal on the top of the dresser.
Matteo’s watch. Her heart jumped. He would never leave something with such sentimental value anywhere unless he intended on coming back.
Her mind whirling, she turned to the closet and pulled out a blouse. Stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Matteo’s favorite suit hanging at the end of the row of her clothes. His lucky suit. The suit he’d been going to wear to the pitch.
Something like hope sprang to life inside her.
I am not going anywhere and neither are you. We are going to do this together. Capisce?
She’d believed him when he’d said it. She’d promised to believe in him. So what was she doing? What if she was wrong? What if he hadn’t left?
I need to talk to you before the pitch tomorrow... What did that mean?
What if her past was eating her alive?
Wasn’t it time she started believing in something?
Matteo entered the boardroom on the fifty-fifth floor of Davis Investments ten minutes late from a delayed landing, with the tense stance of a man ready to do battle. He was poised to annihilate the past. To right everything that had been wrong and secure his future with Quinn.
He had gone through the presentation with Gabe. It was perfect. He had spent the flight back imprinting every detail on his brain so he could focus on selling it. If this didn’t win it for De Campo, nothing would.
Adrenaline firing through him, determination tightening every muscle with purpose, he greeted Walter Driscoll, Luxe’s COO and the new head of the decision committee. Shook hands with the others, including Margarite and Warren Davis. It wasn’t until he stopped to press a kiss to Quinn’s cheek that he noticed she was all wrong. There were big dark bags under her eyes, they were puffy as if she’d been crying and her gaze was so packed full of emotion, he didn’t know which one to choose.
“What’s wrong?”
Her gaze fell away from his. “Daniel Williams is right after you. You should get started.”
He stepped closer. “Quinn, what’s wrong?”
She shook her head. Stepped back. “You should start.”
He walked to the front of the room, pushed a button on his laptop to project his presentation on to the screen and tried to ignore how the woman he was now convinced he loved beyond a shadow of a doubt looked as if she might cave in at any minute.
Walter Driscoll nodded for him to start. He began, training his gaze on the first slide. Channeling the mood he wanted to create. Focusing on the presentation he could not lose. Heads were nodding, eyes flashing with the recognition of what De Campo could bring to the table as he worked through it—the wines, the restaurant experience, the revolutionary work Gabe was doing in Napa. But the further he got into the presentation, the farther Quinn slid down into her chair, as if it were physically painful for her to be sitting there.
Something inside him snapped. He clicked to the next section of the PowerPoint and set the remote down. “Would you mind,” he asked Walter, “if I borrowed Quinn for a moment?”