It’s not enough. It had never been enough.
But if he hadn’t understood that when she left, he wasn’t going to suddenly get it now. Especially when he had so much other stuff going on in his life. So she said simply, ‘Thank you.’
Sebastian turned his gaze to Frankie, whose eyes widened under the scrutiny. As Seb reached out to take him from her, Maria’s hands tightened instinctively, even though her arms were aching from holding him for so long.
Frankie turned to hide his face against her shoulder with a tiny squeak of a whimper. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. He’d only just turned one the last time they’d been here at Mont Coeur. His visits with his papà had been in Milan, close to the main offices of Cattaneo Jewels, or the villa the Cattaneos owned near her parents’ estate. For all that the place and its people stirred up constant memories for Maria, for Frankie this must all seem so new and strange—and a little scary.
Seb’s hand flinched away, the pain clear in his eyes.
‘It’s been a long day. We’re both a little tired,’ Maria said, trying to ease it for him, as she always had.
Seb’s sad smile told her he appreciated the lie. They both knew that Frankie’s real reluctance had far more to do with hardly having seen his father in a year, and then mostly on a computer screen, if Seb had managed to video chat when his son was still awake.
Maria forced the guilt to the back of her mind. It wasn’t her fault that Sebastian had never lived up to his promise as a father—or as a husband. Just like she refused to feel guilty about leaving and seeking her own happiness.
How could she have possibly stayed, when staying had meant accepting that the love of her life could never truly love her back?
Knowing that Sebastian had only married her because his father had told him to was one thing. Hearing him throw it in her face that awful night before she’d left was another.
‘Come on, Maria. You knew what you were signing up for when you agreed to our fathers’ plans. You married me to save your family business, just like I married you to get the merger between our companies. And now you’re complaining that I’m spending too much time working at that same business?’
Except she hadn’t, of course. Yes, she might never have gone along with her father’s insistence on the merger if the family hadn’t been in such dire straits. But she’d had other plans, other ways to save it—if only they’d let her.
Instead, she’d left her business degree, come home, and married Sebastian to give her family a physical stake in the newly merged business, taking the name Cattaneo as the name Rossi had disappeared from the company letterhead.
It hadn’t been how she’d wanted to do it. But she never would have done it if she hadn’t already been in love with Sebastian Cattaneo—and if she hadn’t believed that one day he might come to love her back.
Accepting that the love she had given him so freely and fully would never have been more than a convenience for him...that had been by far the bitterest pill to swallow. But swallow it she had—even if it had taken several years and a child to do so. She couldn’t go backwards now, not when she’d worked so hard to move on.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be keeping either of you on the doorstep in this cold.’ Sebastian stepped back, ingrained politeness obviously kicking in. He opened the door wider until the light from inside the chalet flooded out to encompass them all. ‘Come in, both of you. Everyone’s waiting to see you. And...welcome home.’
Maria’s chest tightened just a little more as she stepped over the threshold. Mont Coeur could never be home again, even if she wished it could be otherwise.
As soon as Christmas was over, she and Frankie would be on their own again. Sebastian could keep the company—she had something far more important. Their son. And together she and Frankie would concentrate on building their own lives, far away from the Cattaneos and Mont Coeur.
And that was the best thing for all of them.
However much it hurt.
* * *
She’d cut her hair.
Seb was sure there were other changes in his wife—and heaven knew he could see the incredible difference in his son, from the one-year-old baby he’d been when Maria had left to the two-year-old toddler in Maria’s arms now.
But the only one he could focus on right now was the fact that she’d cut her hair.
Those long, long ribbons of jet-black waves that had hung almost to her waist were gone. Now her hair sat neatly on her shoulders, curled under at the ends. Still thick and glossy and vibrant as always, just...shorter.
And he was staring. He had to be, because Maria was starting to actually look concerned about him, which she hadn’t been at any other point in the last year, not even when his parents had died and he’d acquired a new sibling out of nowhere and lost control of the business and—
Hell, now he was rambling. In his mind. Which he supposed was slightly better than doing it out loud.
What had happened to the calm, collected businessman he’d been a year ago? Oh, yes, his entire life had unravelled, that was what.
And it had all started the day he’d come home to find Maria packing sleepsuits and her favourite pyjamas into the suitcases he’d bought for their honeymoon years earlier.
‘Sebastian?’ Maria placed Frankie on his feet on the floor as Seb shut the door behind them. Across the large, open living space of the chalet stood his sister and surprise brother, along with their new partners. More new people in his life to replace all those he’d lost.
But he wasn’t ready to share Maria and Frankie with them just yet.
Maria began stripping off Frankie’s bulky snowsuit. But her questioning eyes stayed on Seb, and he felt the weight in them.
‘You cut your hair,’ he said, with an apologetic half-smile. ‘It suits you.’
‘My life now suits me,’ she said simply. The life in which she avoided him at all costs, managing to be elsewhere even when he arrived to collect Frankie from her parents’ house. That life.
He was so glad it suited one of them, at least.
Then, as Frankie—free from his confining winter wear at last—wriggled free of his mother’s grasp and took a couple of steps forward to investigate the antique nativity crib scene set up on a console table, Maria straightened and looked him in the eye.
‘I want to be clear about one thing,’ she said. ‘Before we join the others or unpack or settle in or anything.’
Sebastian ignored the growing feeling of dread in his stomach as she spoke. ‘Go on.’
‘This is a visit. Nothing more. Once Christmas is over, Frankie and I will be heading home again, back to my parents’ estate.’ The emphasis she’d placed on home cut deep. This had been one of her homes once.
He had been her home.
‘We’re not staying, Sebastian,’ she went on. ‘I want that understood from the start.’
Seb forced a smile. ‘Of course.’ Maria’s expression relaxed, and he knew he should leave it there, that to push it further would only ruin the fragile peace they seemed to have achieved.
But he couldn’t help himself. He always had to try a little harder, a little longer. That was who he was. Who his father had raised him to be.
Oh, Papà, I wish you were here now to tell me what to do.
‘But if you change your mind,’ Seb said, ignoring the look on Maria’s face, ‘I wasn’t just being polite