“She wasn’t right for you, Vanni.”
“Who the hell are you to decide that? Isn’t that for Emma to decide? And me?”
“I was just trying to be realistic. I thought—”
Vanni turned toward the window, trying to block the rage that blasted through him like an inferno from the other customers in the restaurant.
“I don’t care what the hell
you
thought. Emma told me you didn’t like her, but I never actually thought you’d do something this outrageous. You had no
right
. Stay away from her,” Vanni grated out, barely containing his wrath. “And stay away from me, too. It’s going to be a while before I can take looking at your face again.”
He hung up, immune to the muted sounds of Vera’s pleas and protests.
* * *
“Emma?” Amanda called, halting Emma’s exit from the apartment. Her sister caught up with her in the front entryway. Emma looked over her shoulder, her hand on the knob. Amanda’s hair was tousled and she looked sleepy and alarmed at once. “I thought I heard you out here. You’re not leaving already? It’s not even seven yet, and I heard you up last night. You can’t have slept much. Again,” Amanda added pointedly.
“I’m sorry if I kept you up,” Emma apologized woodenly.
“Don’t worry about it. But why are you leaving so early?”
“I have some paperwork I can get a jump on at the office,” Emma said. She reluctantly met Amanda’s stare. “It’s better than just lying in bed . . . thinking.”
Amanda’s mouth tightened. Amanda knew what her sister was thinking about, but Emma doubted Amanda knew how she was feeling. At times, she just felt numb, but at other times when she wondered if she’d ever see Vanni again, a great wave of pain would surge into the empty hole inside her.
And what if that witch told him about Cristina and Laurel, despite it all? The thought made her physically ill.
“It’s just better for me to keep busy,” Emma said, feeling that wave of misery rising even now. She turned and twisted the doorknob.
“But you look so tired,” Amanda protested.
“This is better,” Emma assured before she plunged out the door.
Much better than just lying there, stewing in my misery.
Ten minutes later, she paused at a stoplight in a right-hand-turn lane, preparing to turn onto the road where her hospice was located. She’d driven briefly on this very same road on the day she’d been with Vanni going to Cristina’s funeral. It must have been a hell on earth for Cristina to spend those final weeks in Vanni’s home, knowing her son was there in the house, living off his charity, knowing he refused to see her because of their tragic history. It’d literally been a hell, and yet she’d chosen her fate. Did she think she deserved to be punished? Is that why she’d done it? She needn’t have gone to the Breakers if she didn’t want to. She could have spent her last days alone in her condominium with someone like Emma or one of her coworkers dropping in on her for an hour or two every day.
No, Cristina definitely had chosen to spend her last days near Vanni, knowing it would be bittersweet and painful. She hadn’t been weak, in the end. She embraced the pain.
Was embracing the pain what Vanni did every day of his life? He certainly hadn’t run from it. If anything, part of him had thought he’d deserved that pain.
Because when he was struggling, and I was trying so hard to keep him above the water . . . he was very afraid.
The memory of Vanni saying those words made her flinch in agony. He’d blamed Cristina all these years for the loss of his other half, but he blamed himself perhaps even more elementally. His unrelenting anger at Cristina had been the surface, obvious emotion, a shadowy reflection of the deep fury he had for himself for not being able to save Adrian.
Tears filled her eyes. She couldn’t seem to control them for the past few days and nights. They sprung up at the most inopportune moments.
The light turned green. She’d pull into the parking lot just past the intersection and wait until her tears had passed.
She didn’t know what hit her. One second, she’d been turning right, and the next she was jarred forcefully. She heard a loud bang, and everything went black.
Vanni jogged up the stairs to Emma’s apartment and looked over the ledge on the second floor of the stairwell, getting a bird’s eye view of the parking lot. He grimaced, not seeing her car. Had she already left for work? He rethought his strategy for finding her. He’d talk to Amanda first. This time, he was better prepared to talk to her than he had been several days ago, when he’d still been be sideswiped by Emma’s refusal to see him again.
This time, he knew what Amanda needed to hear in order to become his ally in getting Emma to talk to him, and Vanni was ready to say it.
He approached Emma’s apartment and drew back his fist in order to knock. The door flew back before he’d ever made contact. Amanda stared at him, shock plastered all over her pale face.
“Oh my God,
Vanni
. How did you know?”
Alarm roared into his awareness, making his flesh tingle. He edited himself at the last second from saying
How did I know
what
?
“Where?” he demanded tautly instead, his buzzing, shocked brain tightening its focus on Amanda’s leggings and T-shirt, haphazard bun, and clutched purse. She was clearly running out the door in crisis mode.
“North Shore Hospital. She’s in the emergency room.” He stepped back when she walked out and slammed the door. “Colin is coming to get me—”
“
Emma
?”
Vanni realized he’d yelled and that he was clutching Amanda’s arm. He loosened his grip with effort.
“Emma?” he repeated tautly, a cascade of chills going through him. Oh no.
Please don’t let this be happening.
“Yes. The hospital just called. She was in a car accident. They’ve brought her there.” Vanni’s grip loosened when Amanda gave a desperate lurch. She started to jog toward the stairs.
Oh, Jesus. He’d dared to care about her. He’d fallen in love with her. Was this the inevitable result?
“
Amanda
,” he shouted sharply. “What did the hospital say?”
She turned, still jogging “I don’t know anything, Vanni. I have to go!”
* * *
The examining doctor said good-bye to Emma and pulled the curtain closed. She was in some kind of makeshift examining room in the emergency room, a square ten-by-ten-foot space set off by curtains, not walls. She could hear the doctor talking to Colin and Emma on the other side of the curtain, telling them what she’d already told Emma.
“She’s fine, but we’d like to keep her overnight for observation . . . just to make sure there’s no concussion. There isn’t any observable wound to the head. The airbag deployed, but she lost consciousness for nearly ten minutes following the accident. Her vitals are all good, but we’d like to watch her for the next twenty-four hours for any signs that there might have been a blunt head trauma.”
“Do you suspect there’s a brain injury?” Amanda asked anxiously.
“No, the stay over night is just a precaution, I assure you. Your sister is going to be fine.”
“Can I see her?” Amanda asked.
“Of course. We’re running a little short-staffed today. She might not be moved to a room for an hour or so.”
Ever since Emma had regained consciousness, she’d experienced a strange sort of desire for action, an inexplicable restlessness. In fact, when she’d first come to in the ambulance, the first thing she did was swing her legs off the stretcher and start to get up.
“Whoa, whoa, where are you going?” the stunned EMT had asked her, urging her to lie down again.
Emma hadn’t been able to reply logically. She only experienced a deep, profound need to be
somewhere.
That sense of an inner push—or an outer pull—continued. She’d almost screamed in frustration when the doctor told her a few minutes ago they’d be keeping her overnight for observation. Her silent reminders to herself that she was being ridiculous, that she had nowhere to
go
with such a sense of urgency, were only minimally calming to her.
Was she disoriented? Had she hit her head harder than she thought?
She heard a murmuring as Colin and Amanda conferred, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.
A second later, Amanda was coming around the curtain. She and Colin had been there earlier, but had vacated the space when the doctor came to examine her. She gave Emma a bright smile.
“Where’d Colin go?” Emma asked when she absorbed that Amanda was alone.
“He uh . . . went out to the waiting room,” Amanda said, setting her purse down on a chair and coming up next to the triage bed where Emma stiffly reclined. Energy surged through her. The last thing she felt like doing was lying around. Suspicion flickered through her at Amanda’s forced neutral tone and the way she avoided Emma’s eyes.
“Why’d he go out there?” Emma asked. “Amanda?” Her sister met her stare hesitantly. “What’s up? Why are you acting so weird?”
Amanda sighed and glanced reluctantly at the closed curtain and then back at Emma.
“He went out to the waiting room because Vanni is out there.”
“What?” Emma said incredulously, sitting up straighter on the bed, her skin tingling, her muscles shouting at her to
move
.
“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t want to bother you with it, but—”
“That’s all right, just tell me why he’s here,” Emma interrupted hastily.
Amanda explained about running into him as she left the apartment earlier. “I assumed he knew about you somehow, because of the timing and well . . . I was in shock myself. I told him what hospital you were at before I realized he wasn’t there because he knew about your accident,” Amanda admitted ruefully. “He arrived here just after Colin and me, but of course, they wouldn’t let him back. A couple security guards actually had to restrain him, and they threatened to call the police before Colin and I intervened,” Amanda said worriedly, her blue eyes huge. “Emma . . . he’s a wreck.”
“A
wreck
?” Emma asked in alarm. She swung off the sheet that covered her lower body and looked around the tiny space frantically. “What did they do with my clothes?” she demanded.
“Emma, lie back down! I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“What are you talking about? Of
course
you should have told me. Is Colin—”
“
Yes
,” Amanda said, her hand on Emma’s medical-gown-covered shoulder, urging her back onto the bed. “He went out to tell him you’d be fine!” Amanda insisted.
Emma grabbed her sister’s wrist, forcing her to meet her stare.
“Amanda, listen to me. Go and get him,” she directed. “Go and get him and bring him back here.”
“But—”
“There’s no ‘but’ about it. You don’t know everything about Vanni. He’s lost a lot of people in his life. This must be hell for him. He
needs
to see for himself that I’m fine.”
“But
you’re
the one I’m concerned about,” Amanda argued.
“If you
are
, then you’ll go get him,” Emma said firmly. “Because
I
need to see that he’s all right, too.”
“But what about—”
“Damn,” Emma said, flipping back the sheet again in preparation to go herself.
“All right, I’ll get him!”
“Hurry,” Emma directed succinctly.
Amanda blanched. She looked highly uncertain as she grabbed her purse and left the curtained-off space, and Emma knew why. She was concerned because Emma had said she would never see Vanni again. Emma and she had both agreed it was for the best, given the situation. But Emma didn’t care about that at the moment. She didn’t care about caution, or Vera Shaw’s threats, or her vulnerable heart.
She only wanted one thing with every fiber of her being: to see Vanni’s face again.
* * *
It felt like an eternity, waiting, but Emma knew it was probably only a matter of seconds. She held her breath at the sound of rapid, firm footsteps approaching on the tile floor. She jumped slightly when the curtain whipped back.
He looked far too tall and large for the cramped little space when the curtain fell back into place behind him. She recognized the soft gray T-shirt he wore with faded jeans; she’d seen him wear it during their golden, heaven-sent days at La Mer. He looked both wonderfully familiar to her and fantastically new, like she was witnessing a miracle firsthand. Her gaze traveled over his tense, bold features with a frantic hunger. Something wild leapt into his sea-colored eyes.
“It’s okay. I’m fine—” she sputtered, but she was cut off, because suddenly he was stalking toward the bed, a blazing look in his eyes, and he was bending down and squeezing her against him.
“Don’t leave me, Emma,” he said roughly, his face pressed against her neck. Her face scrunched tight with swelling emotion. She dug her fingers into his thick hair and fisted it.
“No. I
won’t
,” she vowed shakily. She’d seen the truth there, bold and harsh and big as day on his anguished face just now.
This
was hurting him even more than she’d imagined the truth about Cristina would. She’d have to find a way to break the news to him. Better her than Vera Shaw. At least when he knew, she’d be there with him to help shield him from the pain.
* * *
She wasn’t sure how long they clung together like that in their desperate embrace. He did pull back after a stretched moment, however, his gaze searching her face. He palmed the back of her head gently, a tear spilling onto her cheek at the familiar, prizing gesture.
“They said you’re going to be okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “They’re keeping me overnight, but it’s just for routine observation. I wish I could go now . . .” she swallowed thickly as she stared into his rigid, handsome face. She hadn’t understood until now that he’d been the target of her restless anguish since awakening from the wreck. She touched his whiskered jaw, and then smoothed back his longish, finger-strewn bangs from where they’d fallen on his forehead.
“I’m
so
glad to see you,” she whispered.
He shook his head, his gaze narrowing on her face. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you.” He leaned down and covered her mouth with his. Her heart seemed to seize and then renew its beating, stronger and faster than before. His taste and the sensation of him filled her like an elixir, sublime and wonderful because she’d thought she’d never experience it again. Warmth suffused her. When he broke their kiss, she held him against her, forehead to forehead.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a pressured whisper.
“No. I am. I know Vera said something to you to upset you. I’m sorry I was so dense when you talked about how much she hated you. I know she can be difficult at times, but I usually just disregard her fussiness and territoriality. I’ve grown used to it, even if I don’t love it. I’ve built up a layer of protection against her, I guess. I had no idea she’d purposefully try to hurt you or sabotage something because I cared. If something worse had happened to you this morning,” he said, his voice cracking slightly, his gaze glacial, “I would have held her personally responsible.”
“No, Vanni,” Emma said. “The accident was just that: an accident. A stranger ran a red light. I know because the police officer investigating the crash told me the man who hit me had been treated at another hospital’s ER He’s not seriously hurt, and is admitting he ran the light.”
He leaned back and peered at her closely. “So you didn’t wreck because you were upset or unfocused driving?”
“No,” she said, sidestepping the truth a little and not feeling too guilty about it because she didn’t want to burden him further with rage. The fact of the matter was, she might have been hit whether she’d been distracted by thoughts of Vera, Cristina, and him or not. There wasn’t much you could do when someone barreled through a red light. Besides, she was going to have to tell him the truth about Cristina and how it related to Vera’s threats, she realized with a sinking sensation. He didn’t need any extra fury and helplessness in addition to that. “It was rotten luck and timing, that’s all.”
He nodded after a moment.
“Sit down,” she whispered, scooting over slightly on the cot. He perched his hip on the edge of the mattress. Emma curled around him, still holding his hands fast in hers, but wanting to feel him with as much of her body as she could.
“You’re sure you feel all right?” he asked quietly.
“I’m fine, Vanni. Please believe me,” she assured.
“And you meant what you said earlier?” he asked cautiously.
“About not leaving you?” she asked, squeezing his hand. “Yes. I meant it. That’s all past. I’ll stay with you, for as long as you want me.”
Her heart started to thrum in her ears as he looked down at her with a lancing stare.
“Forever,” he said.
She blinked in shock at his steadfast demand.
“Forever is a long time,” she whispered.
“It won’t be long enough,” he stated grimly before he was leaning down, and she was lost again in his kiss.
* * *
The golden-pink light of sunset was peaking around the closed curtains in her hospital room when Amanda and Colin stood to say it was time for them to go. Emma had studied the couple closely during the last few hours, seen the way they communicated with only a glance, the warmth in their eyes when they looked at each other. Maybe it was just her new, profound happiness because of what had happened with Vanni earlier, but Colin and Amanda really did seem
right
together. It made her feel both glad and heartsore. She’d assumed
she
was the wronged party when they’d gotten together despite her realization that she didn’t want to be with Colin herself. Maybe, in fact, she’d been the one in the wrong for keeping them apart for all these years, all because she needed the security of Colin.
But all of that was over now, and in the past. When it came time for them to leave, Emma hugged Amanda extrahard.
“I love you,” she said earnestly in her sister’s ear when their heads were close.
Amanda pulled back and studied her face. Tears filled her blue eyes.
“I love you, too,” Amanda said.
Emma put out her arms to Colin, who looked shocked by the gesture. She noticed Vanni’s eyebrows go up in doubtful wariness across the room, but he didn’t say anything. As she watched him over Colin’s shoulder, his guardedness and skepticism slowly faded and was replaced with a small smile.