“Shall we head for home, Mrs. Harrington?” the driver inquired.

  “No.” The word was out of her mouth before she could stop it. Diana blinked in surprise; the driver waited patiently for his next directive. “No, I’m... I’d like to go and visit my mother. Please.”

  “Certainly. I already have her in the GPS.”

  As they pulled out of the hospital parking lot, Diana put another call in to Tony. This time, when it went to voicemail, she left a message.

  “Tony, I have some—well, some news...”

  “I don’t want to say it’s bad news. That’s not what the doctor implied.”

  Tony stood outside the conference room, one finger pressed to his ear to block out the sounds of baritone laugher in the other room. He was utterly absorbed in Diana’s message—and now that she had set it up in such a dire way, he couldn’t stop himself from worrying.

  “...not precisely, anyway.” He heard his wife swallow thickly before continuing. Had she been crying? Or was she holding her tears back from him, the same way she held back so much else? “My blood pressure’s high. Too high. So they’re having me come in again in a few days. Just to check on everything.”

  “Shit,” Tony uttered.

  “But that’s not the only news I wanted to update you on. I—I’m going to live with my mother for a bit. I’ve already arranged for the staff to deliver a suitcase of my stuff. Besides, I have a lot of my possessions left over at my mom’s from all my traveling. Oh, and they promised discretion—the staff, I mean.”

  There wasn’t a curse word strong enough to channel what he felt in that moment. He wanted to fling his phone across the room and stalk out the emergency exit to take in a head-clearing breath of cool air, but he couldn’t pull himself away from Diana. Diana. Was she at her mother’s now? He had seen her call light up his phone screen during the meeting, but he had been in the middle of putting out another fire due to his negligence the other day—

  “I can’t continue with this façade.” Diana’s voice broke at the same instant his heart seemed to stop beating. “Tony, I just can’t. I can’t continue to exist in a loveless marriage. I know that’s what I signed up for. But things have changed for me.”

  “What has changed?” Tony whispered. “Please, Diana. Please tell me.” Please tell me, because I can’t say it myself. I can’t tell you how much you mean to me, not when it threatens to bring it all crumbling down. But if you were the first to say it—

  “...so I’m going away for a while. It will be good for me. I’m going to stay away and decompress; get unstressed... you know.” A pause. “Tell your mother I’m sorry, but I have to start putting the baby first right now. Hopefully she’ll understand. Hopefully you understand, too, why I’m doing this. I know we’ve been a distraction to you, and your work life is suffering for it. I don’t know, Tony, but maybe that’s what this marriage of convenience meant all along: suffering.”

  Tony’s back hit the wall, and he pressed his shuttered eyelids so hard, he saw a red throb, like fireworks.

  “I don’t know if I’m saying all this the right way. I hope I am. I hope you understand. I can’t do this alone—but I’m not certain I can do it with you, either. So I’m saying goodbye for now. Don’t worry about responding to my messages. I know you’re busy.”

  Tony waited for more, but that was that; the little blip he heard wasn’t a mistyped key, but the end of Diana’s call. He let the hand that clutched the phone drop back down impotently to his side.

  He felt awful. No matter how he spun things, no matter how he tried to salvage their deal... maybe Diana was right. All day he had been thinking about her and the baby, and what he was missing at the appointment—thinking about family when he should have been focusing on work. That was how a man truly provided for his family.

  Wasn’t it?

  He had to look ahead, see the big picture. And didn’t the happiness and livelihood of innumerable other families rely on his success at Harrington Enterprises? Didn’t his employees count on him even more than the board of trustees to save this deal?

  Yes, maybe Diana was right. Maybe this separation was a good thing, a necessary thing. His mother-in-law could care for her better than his own mother had proved capable of doing. Than he had proved capable of doing.

  “Fuck.” There was the expletive he had been hunting for earlier. It didn’t feel like enough. Nothing he did seemed up to the task of saving them. Tony pressed the bridge of his nose as he slipped his phone back into his pocket.

  “Mr. Harrington? They’re ready for you.” His personal assistant poked her head out of the conference room and looked him over expectantly. He was fully aware he must look like hell. Diana’s call had put him through the wringer, and he wasn’t sure he had come out of their one-sided conversation still upright and swinging.

  “All right, I’m coming.”

  His presentation might as well have been on his wife, for all he could stop himself from thinking about her.

  14

  "Darling, you know you're always welcome here," Diana's mother said as they sat down for tea together three days after the doctor's appointment that had shaken Diana from her growing complacency with her marriage arrangement. Running home to her mother was turning out to be one of the better decisions she had made recently.

  At the moment, however, Diana averted her eyes from the older woman and blew on her tea, trying to lose herself in the cozy, herbal aroma. Relaxation wasn’t coming as easily as she had hoped. "Why am I sensing there's a 'but' at the end of that sentence?" she asked.

  Her mother tapped her teacup with her nails, then sighed. "But don't you think you should try and work things out with Tony? You love him, don't you?"

  Diana glanced evasively at the wall, even as she knew there was no denying her love for her husband; not here. Those green eyes across from her were the same pair she had inherited, and they saw right through her. "I do love him. That's the problem. I thought I explained the finer workings of our marriage to you..."

  Diana's mother shook her head. "Didn't sound like much of a marriage to me at all."

  This rankled, and Diana set her tea aside. "And what would you know about it?" She knew she should be more delicate, that she was treading on eggshells now, but her heart ached, yearning for what it couldn't have. Admittedly, she wanted to transfer some of that pain away from herself and the baby. "You gave up your dream of being a pilot to marry Dad! And when he cheated on you and left us, where was your dream then? Mom, I'm just..." Her shaking fingers constricted around her cup until she thought the porcelain would shatter. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't say these things."

  To her surprise, her mother didn't rise to her outburst. Instead, the older woman reached across the table to lay a gentling hand on Diana's. "I know, dear. You're trying not to repeat my mistakes, but it's killing you to outmaneuver your own feelings at every turn. Can't you see you're breaking your own heart?"

  Diana had nothing to say to this. She shut her lips tightly and quelled a sob. She swore to herself that the teacup would break before she ever did.

  "But you’re wrong." Her mother squeezed her hand, and Diana reluctantly relinquished her hold on her tea. "My dream was never just to be a pilot. The moment I found out I was pregnant with you, the entire world shifted. I realized that you were my dream, Diana. Being your mother, living with you, laughing with you, watching you grow... I look at my life sometimes, and I can't believe how full it is."

  Diana's head snapped up. She had never heard her mother speak this way, but it didn't sound like a lie. Could it really be the honest-to-God truth? After all these years trying her best to live a life that made her happy, had she been only been running from a specter of her mother's life—and one that didn’t even represent actual reality?

  "I don't regret a second of those years I spent in love," her mother said. "The love I felt for your father, fallible though he was... and the love I feel for you still, Diana... Who would trade such a powerful experience for anything?"

  Later that afternoon, after her mother had gone to town for groceries (and an extra pint of strawberry ice cream to satisfy Diana's most recent cravings), Diana found herself on her knees in her childhood bedroom. She probably looked crazy, dragging her fingernails across the floorboards, hooking them in every available crevice. Then again, no one else was around to witness. She had made sure to bide her time until she had the house completely to herself.

  A piece of floorboard came up, and Diana exhaled in relief. For a moment there, she’d thought she had lost track of her hiding place. She pulled the plank back to remove the old photo album she had secreted in that dark, soil-scented place. She blew a layer of dust off the worn pink cover and scrubbed the rest away with the sleeve of her sweater.

  She hadn't kept a diary as a girl, but she had put together this album illustrating her dreams. As she flipped it open, she was treated to the sight of all the old drawings and newspaper clippings she’d gathered, and the memories spilled forth.

  She had been such a romantic as a little girl! Here were couples, local and famous; extravagant dresses; romantic getaways designed for two. But it wasn't the opulence of these couples she had envied. No, what she had wanted was what they had, something that seemed innate to them, something demonstrated in their eyes, in the exchange of rings, in the way they held hands and leaned into each other.

  Love. True love. That had always been her dream: to find something lasting, something her parents' failed marriage had only hinted at. Somewhere along the way, she had grown embarrassed of these girlish, doltish fantasies and hidden them away. But hadn't that been the stupidest move of all? She had warped her own dream completely. She had taken everyone else out of the equation, leaving her—and only her. At least that way, she alone could be responsible for her own happiness—or rather, her own discontent. There was no one else to let her down, and unending travel had provided exactly the sort of distraction she needed from her loneliness.

  Diana flopped back against her bed frame and allowed the album to slip from her hands. In the face of every movie star crush she had ever entertained and pasted to her secret pages, she now saw only one man:

  Tony.

  He had slept badly for three nights. Thankfully, his insomnia didn't show in his performance at work.

  He had managed to salvage the factory deal, even going so far as to improve on its original terms. He was high-fived and dined and celebrated... but no one asked him where his wife was.

  It all felt empty. Hopelessly empty. Every champagne toast, Tony thought he had heard the words before. The champagne itself tasted like vinegar on his tongue.

  And at night, when he couldn't sleep, he lost himself in A Room with a View. He had already finished the book two nights ago and was now starting over again.

  Tony's heart swelled as he flipped through the chapters. A fire roared in the private hearth of his bedroom. Not so long ago, this space hadn't been private at all, but shared.

  Diana. Every moment he spent on the page with Lucy, Tony could think only of his wife. He was more distracted without her than he had ever been before. Sure, he had salvaged the deal in the end—but what was that worth if he had no one to celebrate it with?

  What was life worth with no one to love?

  Tony rested the open book on his face and sighed heavily into the binding. He couldn't go on like this. He had to see her... his wife. The mother of his child. He had no hope of soothing his restless heart anymore, not without her.

  Max and Gavin had gotten it right. It had taken Tony longer to realize—or more accurately, admit to what he felt—but he had come around in the end. He loved Diana Harrington as ardently as George loved his Lucy. And it was time to show her just how sweeping a real marriage—and a real romance, shared by two people in love—could be.

  He only hoped he wasn't too late.

  15

  Tony had never been more nervous in his life than he was walking up the driveway of Diana's mother’s house.

  It was a modest abode, painted a pristine white, with an equally pristine fence. The lawn was well-manicured, and the house boasted a dark red roof that offset the paler colors beneath, which somehow made the whole of it stand out. It was picturesque. Beautiful.

  And he was about to ask the love of his life to walk away from it.

  Tony jogged up the front steps and paused before the door, fist suspended in the air. He felt foolish. A paparazzo could spring out from the garden bushes at any moment and immortalize his cowardly indecision, and it would be the least he deserved.

  He knocked once, loudly, and drew back as someone on the other side pulled the door open.

  He realized, too late, that he hadn't expected the person opening the door to be his wife.

  He had been prepared to be confronted by his mother-in-law, to have to charm and explain his way past her to get to Diana. But it was Diana who stood on the threshold of the door now, looking at him. She appeared to be startled, which Tony was all too happy to count in his favor. At least, a first reaction of surprise at his appearing on her doorstep might push any anger she felt at seeing him aside. And he was determined to get ahead of that particular emotion.

  "Tony!" She uttered his name in a quick exhalation of breath. "What are you doing here?"

  "I had to see you." He had almost forgotten the roses. He revealed the bouquet he had been hiding behind his back, thus managing to postpone any potential anger a moment more. Diana took the flowers apparently without thinking, filling her arms with the ruby-red blooms that Gavin’s horticulturist wife, Sarah Burrows, upon hearing his plight, had advised him to bring along. "Diana, I messed up. I had every priority wrong, and I acted like a fool."

  "Go on." She wasn't smiling, but Tony thought he detected a hint of faint amusement in her invitation. Damn it, but he could accept making an ass of himself if it meant being near her again.

  "I want to do this thing properly," he stated. He was glad when he sounded polished and in control of his declaration; on the inside, he was still on the first draft. “I would ask you to marry me, but...” The sentiment now struck him as madness, considering how far they were past that point. Doggedly, he plowed on, “...what I want is to be married to you, Diana. We never gave it a proper chance. We were always overthinking everything. Putting up walls, only to tear them down again—"

  "It was exhausting," Diana agreed. She set the roses aside on a windowsill and beheld him a moment, one hand on her hip. She was dressed casually in an old t-shirt and jeans; her russet locks didn't appear to have seen a brush yet that day. She had never looked more enticing, more perfect. His wife. Was she agreeing to remain so?

  He had to be sure.

  "What I'm offering you now, Diana, is my heart." He took the chance, stepped closer to her. Diana didn't draw away. She gazed up at him, her green eyes studying, the intelligence behind them racing to calculate the risks.

  He should know. He had spent almost the entirety of this past month worrying about everything that could possibly go wrong, never recognizing that he was already actively making every conceivable mistake.

  Tony sank to one knee before her. Now Diana's firm mouth did twitch in the ghost of a smile. She lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers, showcasing the wedding band she still wore. Relief washed over him at the sight of it. "Let me take you somewhere," he blurted in a rush.

  "Where?" she inquired.

  "I can't tell you," he said. "Not yet. But I want to take you there. Now."

  "You know the doctor said I shouldn't be traveling," she reminded him, but he heard a telltale tremor of reluctance in her voice.

  "We won't be hacking our way through any mosquito-infested jungles," he promised. "I promise to keep you off your feet, if that's what it takes."

  "I bet you're hoping that's what it takes." Diana's eyes sparked, and the challenge in her words conjured a welcome, delicious suspense. Tony rose and took her hand in his. He planted a kiss on her knuckles. An innocent, chaste kiss, all things considered.

  "I'll grab my things," Diana said.

  Over the years, Diana had gotten good at whisking herself away. She enjoyed traveling solo. Only her time in Fiji, with Tony, had ever challenged that preference.

  But maybe this latest adventure was about to put all past experiences to shame.

  "I can't believe your surprise was Italy!"

  "Believe it, love," Tony said indulgently.

  It was late in the evening, and the espresso she had begged to sample on their way to the hotel was at war with the mental fog from jet lag... not to mention the confusion inherent to this entire impulsive adventure.

  But Diana was determined to go with it. She was afraid that if she breathed too hard, she risked blowing this strange dream away. And she didn't want it to go away. She couldn't dare allow herself to hope this was reality—and as the front desk agent at the hotel directed their luggage and escorted them up the inner stairway, the dream seemed to reach its crescendo.

  "Oh, Tony, it isn't," she breathed.

  "It is." His words, and his wide, handsome grin at her astonishment, were enough to reassure her that she was awake.

  "I can't believe I didn't recognize it from the outside!" Diana bolted past the smiling hotel employees and ran straight for the room's window. She flung the shutters wide and gazed out at the velvet sky and stars. Far below was the River Arno. It seemed that all of night-kissed Florence lay at her feet.

  "The room with a view," she whispered in wonder. She was too swept up in the moment to notice anything else. Out of the corner of her eye, she registered a small nod of thanks from Tony. The hotel employees took the hint, and their tips, and deposited the luggage they carried. They filtered back out the door and closed it firmly.