Page 42 of Back to Claim His Italian Heir

‘I do not know,signora. It is a long way to go, and the waters, they are very choppy.’ He smiled kindly. ‘What ingredients do you need? I am happy to get them for you.’

‘I want to go myself,’ Emma insisted as tears started in her eyes, knowing she sounded like a child. ‘Please,’ she whispered, and Stefano patted her hand.

‘If it is so important to you, okay. I will go. Just let me get my things.’

Relief coursed through her. ‘I’ll meet you down by the boat.’

He nodded, and she hurried down to the dock, her heart still thundering. Just a few more minutes and then she’d be away. Why did that prospect make her feel worse than ever?

For a second Emma hesitated. She could go back to Nico, ask, even demand, what he’d meant. After everything they’d shared, surely she deserved an honest answer? And yet even as she considered such an option, Emma knew she didn’t have the strength to go through with it. She couldn’t bear to hear from Nico’s lips how he didn’t love her, didn’t want her. It had been bad enough hearing it on the phone. Remembering how discarded she’d felt, how utterly rejected...

Again.

Emma glanced up at the path that wound from the dock to the villa, squinting in the hope of seeing Stefano coming back, ready to go. But as a distant figure came ever closer, she felt as if her once thundering heart was now suspended in her chest. For it wasn’t Stefano coming back with the keys, but Nico, walking towards her with long-legged, purposeful strides—and he looked furious.

When Stefano told him that Emma was asking to go to Naples, Nico was both surprised and alarmed. After spending the better part of three days in a state of high tension, with a migraine constantly threatening to swoop down on him, this was the last thing he needed.

He needed Emma to stay on the island, safe and protected, until the matter of Antonio was completely settled. He rose from his desk, trying to moderate his voice as Stefano gazed at him unhappily.

‘I thought it was okay,signor?’ he asked, twisting his hands together. ‘Thesignora, she can go where she pleases?’

‘Yes, of course she can. But not today. I’ll explain it to her, Stefano.’

‘She—she had a bag with her,’ Stefano ventured nervously, and Nico frowned at him.

‘A bag?’

‘With...with clothes.’ The groundskeeper hung his head, as if he wished he could take back the words.

It took Nico a few stunned seconds to realise what the man meant. Emma had been planning toleavehim.

The first thing he felt was hurt, a deep, deep abiding pain in his chest, in his heart, but his old instinct rose to the fore and he pushed it away. No, he wasn’t hurt. He was angry. Angry that after everything they’d had together, she was going to creep away like a thief in the night? How dared she? Had he been wrong about her after all, all this time?

‘I’ll take care of it,’ he snapped, and Stefano nodded before hurrying away. Nico made his way down to the dock, his anger building with every second. Why would Emma leave him like this? How could she treat him this way, sneaking off without so much as a word?

Why are you surprised? She was willing to marry the next man just months after your supposed death.

No, he told himself, he wasn’t going to think like that. Not any more. And yet it was hard not to, when the evidence was there right in front of him, Emma cowering with a duffel bag stuffed with her clothes, before she tilted her chin and glared at him.

‘I’m going, and you can’t stop me.’

Nico came to a halt on the dock and folded his arms. ‘You didn’t think you could at least inform me that you were leaving?’ he asked in a silky voice that belied his anger, his hurt.

‘Why should I?’ she threw at him in challenge, with all of her old spirit and courage. ‘I’m just saving you the time, Nico.’

Nico stared at her—noticing how tightly she clutched her bag, her wide, frightened eyes, the way she bit her lips. No, she hadn’t said that with her old, feisty spirit, only the fading façade of it. He took a step towards her and then stopped, because she seemed so wild, so desperate. Why?

‘Saving me time?’ he enquired. ‘How so?’

‘You...you know how.’

He shook his head. ‘I really don’t.’

‘Why are you making me say it?’ she cried. ‘It was bad enough to hear it on the phone—’

‘On the phone?’ He frowned as he realised she must have heard him talking—did she realise what Antonio had done? Was she blaming him somehow? ‘Emma, whatever you heard—’

‘What I heard is you wanting to divorce me as soon as possible. With nodelays.’