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He hadn’t wanted her. Or her love. And she just needed to get over it now. It had been two whole weeks, for Pete’s sake. She’d been without him almost as long as she’d known him. And she was never going to see him again.
Thank goodness.
And sure, maybe the pain and humiliation of their final parting would always be there in some hidden corner of her memory. But that just meant she would never be that naïve and gullible again. To assume, just because she had fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love with someone, the other person felt the same way. Or was even capable of feeling the same way.
Lesson learned.
Roman had been a complex, unknowable and extremely guarded man. Exciting and charismatic on the surface but carrying unseen scars from his childhood, which would probably never heal. It had been beyond reckless of her to think she could break through the protective wall he kept around his emotions in the space of a few weeks just because they shared an incendiary chemistry and the same impulsive personalities.
‘Signorina Devlin, the new gallery owner has arrived and wishes to meet you.’
Milly swung round to find Massimo standing behind her, looking anxious.
The gallery had a new owner? This was news to her. She’d met Signora Spinola just two days ago and the woman hadn’t said anything about selling.
‘Umm, okay. Do you know why?’ she asked, but Massimo simply shook his head.
‘He did not say. He waits for you in the curator’s office upstairs.’
She swallowed the lump of melancholy in her throat, and tried not to let her new-found pessimism derail her Best Day Ever again.
This didn’t have to be a bad thing. The guy was probably just here to say hello and find out about the new show.
Even so, the dead weight of anxiety slowed her steps as she took the stairs to the beautifully appointed office on the top floor of the building. But when she walked into the luxurious space, the room was empty.
‘Ciao? Signor?’she called, then noticed a man standing on the balcony outside, silhouetted against the early evening sunshine.
His tall, muscular frame was instantly familiar as he walked into the room. But she couldn’t process her reaction, couldn’t even catch her breath, all she could do was stare, the sting in her eyes and the twisting pain in her stomach becoming excruciating.
Was this some kind of cruel hallucination? Sent to punish her for being foolish enough to fall in love with the wrong man?
‘Roman?’ she murmured.
She had to wrap her arms around her midriff to hold herself together, to keep herself upright, when he stopped in front of her. The smell, of sandalwood and soap, the sound of his breathing, so loud, so real, in the empty room.
But surely she had to be dreaming?
‘Are you...? Are you really here?’ she asked, her voice a whisper of distress and yearning—which she would have been ashamed of, if she could make her brain work.
He nodded, and his lips twitched, but the seductive smile was comprehensively contradicted by the wary light in his eyes, and the intense concentration on his too-handsome face.
‘But... Why?’ she asked, still convinced she’d entered some weird alternative reality in which all her dreams and nightmares had combined to taunt and torment her.
He sucked in a hefty breath. The small smile disappeared as he let the breath out slowly.
‘I came to apologise to you, Milly. For everything. And to ask you to come back to me,’ he said.
The words simply wouldn’t compute.
She shook her head, trying to shake loose the unsettling dream, the potent mix of need and desperation in his gaze triggering the languid heat in her abdomen, right alongside the pain and yearning.
But then he tucked a knuckle under her chin, to lift her face to his and brush his lips across hers.
She jerked back, the shock of his kiss—potent, proprietorial, possessive—almost as devastating as the rush of longing that accompanied it.
‘Don’t...’ She slammed her palms against his chest, shoved him back.
This was not a dream.
