CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

S YDNEY HADN ’ T STAYED on the island.

Tiger shifted back in his chair and stared across his office, remembering that first time he’d seen her out of the corner of his eye, all light curves and red hair.

Because that was the problem: there was too much to forget and so much he wanted to remember.

About an hour after take-off, he’d swallowed his pride and made a call to Silvana. Even though he’d still been piqued by her outburst as he was leaving. It was the first, the only time, he could remember his housekeeper losing her temper with him, and in English.

‘Why are you leaving?’

‘Because I have a business to run,’ he’d countered.

Silvana had folded her arms across her body and stared at him. ‘And what about Ms Truitt?’

He’d frowned. ‘What about her?’

Her eyes had narrowed. ‘Why is she not with you?’

‘She’s not with me. She never was. This was only ever a short-term thing.’

Silvana had snorted. ‘Short term? I saw how you looked at her when she came downstairs before the ball. That is not how a man looks at a woman who is short term to him.’

He had been rooted to the spot. With fury and fear. Because he could still remember how he had felt. Felt. So many feelings roaring through him, and he hadn’t recognised half of them, and hadn’t known what to do with any of them. Or what it meant that he felt them for Sydney.

‘I know you are scared of loving.’ Silvana’s face had softened. ‘And it is scary because loving hurts but losing her will hurt worse. So don’t leave her here. Stay or take her with you. That is what you want. She wants it too.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Then you are a fool.’

No fool like an old fool. It was what people said about his father. That Silvana could say it to him made him see red, and he had stormed off without another word.

On the phone, he had made up some nonsense about papers on his desk. But really it had been an excuse to check that Sydney was okay.

His hands had tightened against the armrests.

‘Lei non è qui, Signor McIntyre,’ Silvana had said tersely . ‘Se n’è andata circa due ore fa.’

In other words, Sydney had left right after him.

Pushing away from the chair, he strode over to the windows, his pulse beating out of time. He had tried to call her, but her number was out of service and her website just offered a message of apology. In other words, she had gone dark.

He felt a flicker of frustration, and beneath that a nagging anxiety that Sydney was out there in the world without him. Not that he was worried about Harris. When the story finally went live, he would be too busy salvaging his reputation to go after Sydney.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d ended things. Or the look on her face. He had told himself countless times that it had to be that way. That she knew what she was signing up to. All the things he’d told himself in the past, and it had never been a problem before.

Only it was now. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he couldn’t unhear her telling him she loved him. Couldn’t unsee the moment when he’d told her it was a pretence. The look on her face as she’d looked up at him had sliced him open.

Because he cared about Sydney. How could he not after everything she had told him? But this feeling he had, this tightness in his chest that made it hard to catch his breath, and the waking in the night and the inability to focus on anything, it was probably just a virus, something he’d picked up crossing six time zones.

He gazed out across New York, a memory stirring inside him like a flickering flame: of him taking Sydney’s arm and leading her to the window to show her the view. It cost a lot of money to own that view. As he looked at it now, it held no value.

Nothing seemed to have any value any more, not even the contract that would take his empire into space.

Because Sydney wasn’t here with him.

He let his head fall against the glass, trying to cool his feverish brain, but it wasn’t a fever making him feel like this. It wasn’t down to something he’d picked up. It was something he’d lost. No, pushed away.

His eyes were burning. The irony was that he had spent his whole life not wanting to be like his father. Not wanting to be tricked by ‘love’ because he had seen only the falseness of love and how it diminished everything it touched.

But Sydney did love him. He knew that because he knew her. He had fought with her and comforted her and held her while they made love and she had held and comforted him. They had talked and listened and laughed and she had cried.

She loved him. It wasn’t a pretence.

And that was why he couldn’t be with her. Because he loved her too. He pressed his hands against the glass, framing that truth, accepting it, acknowledging it. Letting it push back all the layers of fear and the assumptions he’d made and clung to for so many years.

He had loved her from that very first day in his office. He just hadn’t seen it because he hadn’t known what it was. Not even at the masked ball when he had been so hopelessly in love with her that his housekeeper and the maids had known. Give a man a mask, and he will tell the truth. He had told the truth that night, but had been too blinded by fear of falling into the same bad pattern of behaviour as his father.

He saw it now. He felt it now, inside him, burning bright and pure like a votive flame.

Only he was so untested in love, so unpractised, and he wanted the best for her. Wanted to protect her. That was why he’d wanted her to stay on the island. That was what he’d told himself. Maybe, though, keeping her on the island was more about prolonging the fantasy, because the reality of love still scared him. Silvana knew that, Sydney too. But it had taken losing her for him to see it, and his housekeeper was right, losing her hurt more. And it was a self-inflicted pain. By attempting to avoid the pain of love, he had pushed Sydney away and hurt himself. Hurt her too, just as his father had hurt him. Because it was people who hurt each other and sometimes they used love as an excuse.

And he needed to tell her that he’d been wrong, and stupid. A fool, in fact.

Breathing out unsteadily, he lifted his head.

Was it too late?

No, it couldn’t be, was the only answer to that question that he could contemplate. But if he was going to be the man Sydney needed by her side, then, for the first time in his life, he was going to have to take a leaf out of his father’s book and take a risk on love.

‘It should only take a couple of hours but if you need us, all you have to do is call.’

‘Why would I need you?’

Glancing up from the magazine she had been pretending to read, Sydney frowned at her brother. She had been helping out at the auto repair shop for the last few days, partly to have something to take her mind off Tiger and partly because she wanted the judge to know that this was a genuine family business.

‘It’s lunchtime. Nobody has come in at lunchtime for the last three days.’

Connor reached past her to grab the keys to the pick-up. ‘Yeah, but if they did and you didn’t know something, you can call us is what I’m saying.’

Her middle brother, Jimmy, nodded. ‘We’re only talking to her. It’s not like we’re in court.’

‘She’s your lawyer. You need to pay attention to what she’s saying. Don’t take any calls. In fact, switch off your phones.’ She put down the magazine, frowning. ‘Maybe I should come too.’

This was the penultimate meeting with the lawyer before they went to the courthouse on Tuesday. Kim Shaw had been a good pick. She was smart, no-nonsense but she had also agreed to being paid in instalments. Which was surprising but also a great relief. Sydney hadn’t asked Tiger to make good on his promise. She had thought about it. Not seeing him in person—just thinking about that had made her want to curl into a ball and howl. But she had considered calling him—and almost immediately decided against it.

What they’d shared might never have been real to Tiger, but she had loved him, utterly and unconditionally and, despite how it had ended, she didn’t regret it. But asking him to get a lawyer for her brothers would take that love and turn it into something ugly and transactional.

‘It’s fine. We’re just signing some paperwork. We’re seeing her again on Monday to go through everything.’ Her youngest brother, Tate, leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Besides, we need you here otherwise we’ll have to shut up shop.’

‘Don’t forget to switch off your phones,’ she called after them. ‘And stop looking so shifty.’ They were looking shifty, she thought as she watched them leave, her heart thudding against her ribs. But she loved them all the same, and it looked as if they were going to avoid jail time, so having her heart broken by a beautiful stranger had been worth it.

Except Tiger wasn’t a stranger to her. Leaving Italy, she had felt bereft, as if she had left her shadow behind.

The journey back to the States was a blur, but somehow she had got to Los Angeles and gone like a homing pigeon to her parents’ house.

This was the second time she had moved back home after her life had imploded. The difference was that then the hurt had had relief in it. Now, though, she felt alone and desperately, desperately sad.

She missed Tiger. All the time that she was awake, she missed him constantly and so intensely that sometimes she would have to press her hand against her chest to push back against the ache there. And at night, she dreamed about him. Hot, frantic dreams where he felt so real that she would wake with a start, expecting to hear his voice, talking to her in that same soft, soothing way that he had after the ball. His arms holding her tightly, his heart beating through her and steadying her.

But it was just her, alone, in the bed she had slept in as a child. And it was there in that bed, alone in the darkness, that she allowed herself to cry.

She hadn’t told her family anything of what had happened with Tiger. She just didn’t have the words. How could she describe that astonishing, life-changing coup de foudre of meeting a man like him and of finding herself in his golden gaze?

How could she describe the intensity of their dizzying chemistry? Or the rightness of his body against hers? It would sound ridiculous when in fact it was miraculous, transformative, a benediction, an awakening.

Thinking about him hurt so much. Loving him was like having a splinter of ice in her heart. But then she should have known. Tiger’s heart was off-limits. Hopefully, one day, someone would find the key to set him free and let him love as she knew he could and should love. With fire and fervour.

As for her, she had to rebuild her life. Try to live an hour, then a day, then a week and so on.

And she would do it.

Right now, she had shut down Orb Weaver, but it was only temporary. She needed to focus on keeping her brothers out of prison. And as soon as she knew they were safe and free, she was going to go travelling to Europe. To London and Paris and Copenhagen and Barcelona, and then maybe she could think about going back to Italy.

After that? Who knew? Maybe run the business out of some London town house? Or perhaps she would just come back to LA. Right now, she was taking one day at a time.

Speaking of which, she needed to change the battery in the clock. The time had been stuck at half past ten for about three years now.

But where did Connor keep the batteries? She found them in the end, and she took the clock down off the wall and began pushing them into the slot. No, that was wrong. She had put the positives and the negatives back to front.

The door buzzer made her jump, but she didn’t look up. At this time of day, it was probably just the guy from office supplies. She was trying to make the auto repair shop look more professional and less like a hang-out for wannabe gangsters.

‘Be right with you.’

‘In your own time.’

That voice. The air around her froze. Her whole body stilled, even her heart stopped beating. For days now, it had been as if she were wearing an old-fashioned diver’s suit, the kind with the fishbowl helmet, and she’d had to focus hard to work out what the people on the other side of the glass were saying. But his voice had cut through the glass instantly.

She felt a jolt against her ribs as her heart started again and the roar of her own blood spun her round to face him.

No name needed, because ‘ him ’ could mean only one man.

Tiger was standing in the doorway, his fingers loose around the handle. And the world snapped into focus, so real and sharp it hurt, his beauty blinding her like a searchlight. She stared at him in shock, stunned, devastated.

She must be imagining him. Except she wasn’t.

‘We’re closed.’

He shut the door, and flipped the sign. ‘Yes, you are.’

Still arrogant, she thought, arrogant and wanting to run things his way.

For an endless, shuddering moment, nothing happened and then he walked slowly towards her with that beautiful feline grace as if he owned this shabby little shop. As if he owned the whole world. But he didn’t own her.

She slammed her way round the desk. ‘You need to leave.’

‘We need to talk.’

‘No, we don’t,’ she snapped, trying to manage the vaulting somersaults her heart was performing beneath her ribs at the same time as stifling the shoot of hope she could feel trying to push its way to the surface. Because seeing him was already too much for her to handle.

‘Your phone number doesn’t work. Your website is inactive. And you closed your bank account.’ His voice was quiet but she could hear his anger and frustration.

‘I already know all of that.’ Her voice cracked and she stared at him, shaking, not with fear, but with need and longing, and love. But Tiger didn’t love her.

Tilting her chin, she forced herself to look into his eyes. ‘So, if that’s all you came to tell me, I think we’re done here.’ She didn’t want to believe it, but now that she had said it out loud, she meant it.

‘Why did you do that? I was going to help you. You need the money.’

She folded her arms in front of her aching chest. ‘Not your money. And what I do with my bank account is none of your business.’

Tiger felt his heartbeat accelerate.

Walking into the auto repair shop and seeing Sydney there, whole, not weeping or bleeding or crushed, he had felt a bone-deep relief and such an immensity of love that he could hardly speak. Because he knew what love was now. He knew because it no longer felt like a risk but an adventure, a poem and a blessing all rolled into one.

But it was as if she were still behind the glass counter. There was a barrier between them, thin but unwavering, which was good. He wanted her to be safe and careful. But also bad, because he wanted to take her in his arms more than he had wanted anything, even the moon.

Only he needed to find the right words.

‘It is my business. You are my business.’ Which were the wrong words, he realised, cursing silently, panic swelling in his throat as he watched her stiffen. He tried again. ‘What I’m trying to say is that you’re my world.’

‘And you’re heading to the moon, so you’ll be orbiting me at a distance, which suits me fine.’

‘Not without you. If I go, you go.’

‘You can’t do this, Tiger. You can’t just turn up and say things like that. I was getting better. So say whatever it is you came here to say, and then go.’

His heart felt as if it were tearing in two. All his life he had seen love as a weakness but now that it filled him from head to toe, it felt like a superpower. Only one that he hadn’t learned how to use properly.

Please let me find the words , he prayed.

‘It’s very simple really. I love you and I need you. And I don’t know how to live my life without you. Without you, nothing matters. Nothing makes sense.’

‘You’re the one not making sense. You told me you didn’t love me. You chose the moon, remember?’

‘I don’t care about the moon. I care about you. And I love you. I love you like I never thought it would be possible to love anyone. And I know you probably won’t believe me, but I think I loved you right from when you walked into my office and gave me the cold shoulder. I just didn’t know what I was feeling. But I was lucky. I had a couple of people on hand to help me and I took their advice.’

Her eyes, her beautiful brown eyes, were wide and stunned. ‘Your lawyers told you to come and find me?’

He shook his head, then he took a step forward. Just a small one, not big enough to scare her.

‘When I was leaving the island, Silvana gave me a ticking-off. Made me see that I was sabotaging the only future that’s ever made sense to me. The only future I want, and need.’

She held his gaze. ‘What did she say?’

He laughed. ‘She told me a few home truths.’ Another step forward. ‘Basically, that I was a fool.’

‘You’re not a fool.’

His eyes on hers were bright with tears, and as he shook his head, she took a step this time. ‘I walked away. I let you slip through my fingers.’ He hesitated, then reached out and touched her cheek gently, his heart contracting with relief, and a hope that hurt, when she didn’t pull away. ‘That would make me a fool in anyone’s book.’

‘Never to me.’ She let herself lean close because he was so familiar, so beautiful and she couldn’t not. ‘You said a couple of people. Who was the second?’

‘My father.’ His mouth twisted. ‘I remembered you saying that he thought it was worth risking everything for love. And I realised that I was risking everything that mattered to me because I was scared of loving you, of losing you. And then I lost you anyway.’

‘You haven’t lost me.’

Tears filled her eyes as he made a hard, scratchy noise as if his throat were too tight. ‘I know that I have no right to ask for a second chance but, back in Italy, you said you loved me and I was hoping you might still feel that way.’

‘You know I do,’ she said softly, and he pulled her against him now, grateful that he had been given this second chance.

‘And I love you. You believe me, don’t you?’

Sydney looked up at him, seeing a man with a beautiful face and a loving heart. Strong still, but with the hard edges rubbed off. He had shone a light into her darkness and she loved him utterly, and unconditionally. ‘I know you’re good for it.’

He laughed again, and they moved closer, then apart, then closer again, like waves tumbling onto the shoreline, amazed by each other, stunned by the miracle of it.

‘When did you get here?’

‘Yesterday. I’ve been going out of my mind waiting. But I knew you’d need persuading, so I had to wait until you were on your own.’

‘But how did you know I was going to be on my own?’ She frowned, remembering Connor’s shifty expression. In fact, they had all looked shifty. ‘Did my brothers know you were coming here? They did, didn’t they? I knew they were being weird.’

‘Not weird. Worried. They care about you. A lot.’ Remembering the triple-tractor-beam intensity of their gaze, he smiled at her. ‘They needed persuading too, believe me. I think one of them mentioned a shotgun and a shovel at one point. But I explained why I needed to talk to you, and I asked for their help.’

‘I can’t believe you talked to my brothers.’

‘Of course, I did.’

‘Why of course?’

He shrugged. ‘If we’re going to be related, I need to get to know them, don’t you think?’

Related?

She stared at him mutely. Her head was spinning. She felt as though she were floating. ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean by “related”?’ Her voice trailed off and she covered her mouth with her hand. Tiger was kneeling down on the dusty floor, holding out a diamond ring.

‘Marry me, Sydney,’ he said softly.

Her legs folded beneath her and she slid down beside him. ‘You can’t do this. We can’t do this,’ she said hoarsely.

‘Is that a yes?’ he managed.

‘Of course it’s a yes.’ Her hands tightened on his arms and for a moment he couldn’t breathe past her words. ‘But you’re here and I don’t want to lose you again.’

‘You can’t lose me. When I got on that plane to fly back to New York, I was fighting you, fighting myself, fighting Silvana because everything I thought was true and necessary for me was slipping away or disintegrating and that scared me because there was nothing left to hold onto. But then I realised that the only thing I wanted to hold was you.’

‘But we’ve only known each other for a few days.’

‘Ten.’ He smiled at her, and just like that she was lost or maybe found. ‘But who’s counting?’

‘Everyone will. They’ll say we don’t know each other. They’ll say that we need more time.’

‘We do know each other, and we’re going to have for ever.’ He pulled her close, his heart beating like a drum, pressing her close to him, breathing in her scent and her strength.

‘And as you already know, although it seems I might have to remind you again, the only opinion that matters on that subject is mine. And it’s not just an opinion.’ He lifted his chin and there was a dark gleam in his eyes that made her breath catch. ‘It’s more of a directive.’

‘Is that right?’

‘It is,’ he said softly, and, dipping his head, he found her mouth with his and set about proving that to her.