The same wooden veranda surrounded the oversized but traditional-style chalet, with festive greenery and berries wrapped around its beams in celebration of the season. A large green-and-red wreath hung on the front door. Inside, Maria could see lights twinkling through the windows, and knew that an absurdly huge Christmas tree would be decked out in red and gold, somewhere out of her line of sight.
Everything was the same. Everything, except her.
‘Mamma?’ At her side, Frankie looked up, his little face almost hidden by the hood of his snowsuit. It was freezing out, and darkness was falling; she needed to get him inside.
Which meant knocking on the door.
‘Are you ready, piccolo?’ Maria asked, forcing a smile. If Frankie sensed her unease and discomfort, he would only become distressed himself. And that wasn’t going to make this enforced homecoming any easier on either of them.
‘To see Papà?’ Frankie nodded, his expression strangely set and serious for a two-year-old.
I’m glad one of us is ready, Maria thought, as she swept him up in her arms and climbed the steps. Then, with a deep breath, she knocked on the chalet door.
Maybe her sister-in-law Noemi would answer. Or even the mysterious new brother her husband and sister-in-law appeared to have acquired since Maria had left. Basically, anyone would be better than—
Sebastian.
The door swung open to reveal the familiar, muscular frame of her husband, and for a moment Maria was certain that nothing at all had changed. That she’d never left, that she was still in love with him, that they were happy...
She snapped out of it. She hadn’t been happy. That was why she’d left.
Happiness was hundreds of kilometres away, back at the small cottage on the edge of her parents’ estate, where she and Frankie had been living for the last year. It wasn’t here, in the Swiss Alps, at the Cattaneos’ luxury chalet. And it certainly wasn’t with Sebastian, whatever her younger self might have hoped and dreamed.
He couldn’t give her what she needed. If she’d thought for a moment that he could, there was no way Maria would have left at all. But the Sebastian she’d walked away from hadn’t been capable of the love she needed. She had to keep that thought at the front of her mind this whole visit, otherwise there was just no way she would make it through with her heart intact.
When Sebastian had called and asked her to come for Christmas, with Frankie, her first instinct had been to refuse. Every other visit Sebastian had spent with his son, she’d managed to avoid, sending Frankie with his grandmother, or with Seb arranging to collect him from her parents’ house when Maria was out. There’d only been two or three visits in the whole year, so it hadn’t been hard to arrange.
But as difficult as it might be to go back, Maria also knew it was the right thing. Her son needed his father in his life. And Sebastian had been through so much lately...a Christmas visit from Frankie was the least she could do.
And then there had been that cryptic voicemail from Noemi on her phone when she’d landed, saying she hoped that Maria would be there tonight as she had something to discuss with the whole family.
As if Maria still counted as family. Even now.
Sebastian took a small step forward, and the light from the veranda illuminated his face. Maria held back a gasp, but only just. It had been twelve short months since she’d seen her husband, but from the weariness in his deep green eyes, and the lines forming between his brows, it could have been a decade or more. Sebastian had never really been the carefree, light-hearted sort—not like his sister Noemi—but Maria had never seen him looking quite so beaten down by the world before.
Was this because of her? She bit her lip as she waited for him to say something, but for a long moment he seemed content to just stare at her, and at Frankie, drinking them in. And she couldn’t help but do the same, looking up into his once beloved face. His dark brown hair was cropped close to his head, shorter than she remembered it ever being before, and somehow it made him look even taller—although at six foot one he had always been almost a foot taller than her. She’d liked that, she remembered despite herself. Had liked resting her head against his chest and feeling his heart beat against her cheek. As if they had been connected in a way much deeper than the wedding vows their families had arranged for them to take.
This man had been such a huge part of her life for as long as she could remember. They’d grown up together, in all the ways that mattered. How could she have imagined she could cut him out completely, however far she ran?
‘You came,’ Sebastian said, at last, his deep voice reverberating through her body. Maria bit back a curse. She’d forgotten too how much just being near him, just hearing him speak, could affect her.
This was why she should have stayed away. But she had been unable to because...
‘You asked me to.’
He gave her a small, uneven smile. ‘That was by no means a guarantee that you would.’
Another sign of how little he’d really known her, Maria thought. If he’d understood how much she’d loved him once, he’d have known she could never have turned down that request. Not when he’d sounded so desperate.
‘Please, Maria. I need you and little Francesco here for Christmas. Everything is different now. Please come.’
So, of course, she had. And at the back of her mind she had to admit that partly it was to see if ‘different’ meant what she’d always hoped it would. That their marriage could be what she’d once dreamed it would be.
Also because she still felt guilty—for leaving in the first place, and for not coming back sooner, when Noemi had first called with the terrible news.
‘I almost came before,’ Maria said, ‘when I heard about your parents.’ Salvo and Nicole Cattaneo had been second parents to her, too, and when she’d heard of their deaths in a helicopter accident in New York, Maria had thought she’d never stop crying. But, just like when she’d left Sebastian, she’d eventually straightened her spine and started over. The world didn’t stop for grief, however much she might wish it would.
It couldn’t have stopped for Sebastian either, she realised. He’d have been left dealing with not only the emotional fallout from his parents’ deaths but also the practical side. Keeping the business—the world-famous Cattaneo Jewels—running like he always had would probably have proved a happy distraction from his grief, knowing Sebastian the way she did. But the news that he had a secret brother he’d never known about—one who, according to Noemi, had been left a controlling share in the family business—that couldn’t have been easy for Sebastian to swallow.
She’d known how much he must be suffering, and her heart had ached for him. But still she hadn’t been able to make herself return to Mont Coeur until Sebastian himself had called and asked.
After all, it was the first real sign she’d had that he’d even registered that she’d left him, that she hadn’t just gone away for an extended holiday.
‘Why didn’t you come? For the funerals, at least?’ Sebastian asked. There was no accusation in his voice, no implication that she should have been there, as his wife. Just normal curiosity.
She supposed she had to give him points for that.
‘I wasn’t sure it was my place. Any more.’
I wasn’t