The Last Time I Saw Venice. Vivienne Wallington
I lost it and punched a brick wall.”
Her eyes snapped wide in shock. “Lost it? How? Why? You mean…you were drunk? You didn’t know what you were doing?” Why else would he have done such a crazy, destructive thing? Simon, who’d never drunk heavily, who’d never done anything to jeopardize his finely honed surgical skills. It didn‘t make sense.
“Oh, I knew what I was doing all right.” There was no self-pity in his voice, only irony and self-mockery. “But I didn’t care at the time.”
“You didn’t care about your career?” She stared at him in disbelief.
“I didn’t care about anything. I’d lost my daughter, I’d lost the will to work—hard as I was driving myself at the time—and then I lost you.” He glanced round, as if remembering there were others within earshot who could understand English. She could see him retreating and sensed, with a dip in her spirits, that he was regretting the admissions he’d already made. “Now’s not the time to go into all that,” he muttered.
She nodded, swallowing. Was he intending to tell her more later, when they were alone? Or was he slipping back into his dark, unreadable shell, shutting her out again?
I didn’t care about anything, he’d said. Did that mean he was still too hurt and heartbroken about Lily to care what happened to him? Or had he “lost it” and punched that brick wall because he was hurt and angry that his wife had run out on him? Angry enough to lash out in a blind, self-destructive rage?
She’d thought at the time, with her husband so cold and distant, that he would have been relieved to see the back of her, that he wouldn’t even care. Knowing that he blamed her in his heart for Lily’s accident, she’d felt miserably sure that her presence must be a constant reminder of the baby daughter he’d lost, and that he wouldn’t miss her when she was gone.
And yet…here he was in Venice, seeking her out again. Why? Simply because they’d met again purely by chance and he was curious about her life since she’d left him? Or…was there still some spark left of the love, the bond they’d once shared, enough to make him want to find out if it could flare into life again? She felt a quiver, a yearning deep down in her bruised heart.
She had to keep the lines of communication open. She couldn’t bear it if he froze her out again.
“What’s this about you going sailing for a year?” she asked, assuming the lightest tone she could manage. “In a yacht, you mean? Not by yourself, surely?” She’d never known him to go sailing before, or even to be interested in boats.
It made her realize soberly how little she knew about the man she’d married. They’d both been such high-powered, single-minded workaholics, even after Lily had arrived, that they’d barely had time to talk about the things that had happened to them in the past, before they’d met. Simon’s past in particular—other than the little he’d told her about his mother and his ambitious career path, and the fact that his father had walked out on his family—had always been a closed book.
“Hell, no.” The shutters had lifted, she saw with relief. He seemed amused at the idea that he might have sailed solo around the world. Or maybe he was just relieved at the change of subject. “There were twenty of us—mostly crew, and a handful of passengers. It wasn’t a yacht exactly, it was a three-masted barque. A special round-the-world voyage, stopping off at various islands and foreign ports along the way. I applied for the job of medic.”
A brilliant brain surgeon, taking on the lowly job of medic for a year… She searched his face, amazed there was no bitterness in his voice. He seemed resigned, rather than angry or upset.
Aware of her scrutiny, he gave a rough jerk of his shoulder. “I needed to get away. I needed time to think. To heal, I guess.”
To heal? She gulped. Was he talking about his damaged hand? Or his heart, his soul? The heart she’d broken when she hadn’t been able to react quickly enough on that pedestrian crossing and had failed to save Lily’s pram from the erratic path of that speeding, out-of-control car.
“And…did it help?” she asked tentatively, half expecting to see him withdrawing again, his eyes turning bleak and remote again.
“By the end of the year’s voyage, I felt I was ready to rejoin the human race…yeah,” he said with his slow, crooked smile—the irresistible smile she’d fallen in love with on the first day they’d met, though she hadn’t recognized it as love back then. “And to come looking for you,” he added softly.
She stared at him, shakily aware of the sharp intensity of his blue eyes—no hint of remoteness there now. “You—you knew I was here in Venice?” Her head whirled. Their meeting in St. Mark’s Square yesterday had been no accident? If true, at least it would explain why they’d bumped into each other here in Venice, of all the places in the world they could have chosen to visit. It had seemed such an amazing coincidence that they should both be here at the same time, in the first week of June. “How did you know?” she whispered.
“I called your London office and your secretary told me. No other details,” he was quick to assure her, “except that you’d come here to recuperate after a bout of pneumonia.” He raked a tanned hand through his dark hair, drawing her gaze upward for a mesmerized second. “How the hell did you come down with pneumonia?” he demanded. “I never knew you to have a cold in your life.”
It was hard to tell if he cared or was being critical, blaming her again…for carelessness of a different sort. She gave a shrug. “I guess I was a bit run-down…with London’s cold winter and taking on extra work and…and everything.” He would know what everything meant.
“A lazy day on the beach at the Lido sounds like just the thing you need,” he said out of the blue, surprising her with a tantalizing image of two sunbathing bodies lying side by side on soft warm sand—or, failing soft warm sand, on comfy sun lounges—revelling in the sun’s healing warmth. Assuming he wanted to spend the day with her.
“If the weather stays like this, I might just do that,” she murmured, trying not to show too much enthusiasm for the idea in case he didn’t want to be a part of it.
Simon, noting that she’d said I, not we, decided not to push his luck. Let her get used to having him around again before trying to get too close and personal. He’d pushed too far yesterday and look at what had happened. He’d ended up brawling with her and jumping to all the wrong conclusions.
But damn it, she hadn’t denied…
“How could you let me think you’d had another baby?” The bitter question leapt out.
He saw color flare in her cheeks. When she answered, he had to strain to catch what she said, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper.
“It was the way you just assumed…” She trailed off, then gave an impatient shake of her head. “When you lashed out at me I—I thought it was pointless going on talking to you, even trying to find common ground. You—you didn’t seem to have changed…”
That hurt. She was still holding it against him? Still feeling he’d let her down?
“But you have changed,” she conceded in a softer tone. “We—we’ve both changed.”
“Yes.” He glanced round. Much as he wanted to ask her about her life over the past two years—and knowing she must be equally curious about his wrecked career and what he intended to do in the future—a pressing queue in the busiest piazza in Venice was no place for those kind of confidences. They needed to be alone.
If she would agree to have lunch with him…a quiet, intimate lunch for two, maybe in one of the quieter, less crowded squares or alleys…
“That tour guide’s actually quite informative,” he remarked as the strident voice grew closer again. “If we listen in, we might find out what we missed seeing last time.”
“Good idea,” Annabel agreed, turning away from