She blinked the painful memories away and forced her leaden legs forward.
She’d made a promise and she would keep it, however much it hurt.
The plane had four luxury window seats facing each other with the aisle between them. Massimo had raised his partition and when she took the seat diagonal to his, all she could see of him were his shoes. They were as buffed and polished as they always had been, a quirk she had thought adorable. Her husband was the least vain man she had ever met but he always took pride in his footwear.
She fastened her seat belt then laced her fingers tightly together to stop herself giving in to the need to bite her nails. She’d had an expensive gel treatment done on them the day before, masking that they were all bitten to the quick. She didn’t want Massimo to see them like that. She couldn’t bear for him to look at her and see the signs of her broken heart.
Livia had patched her heart back up. She’d licked her wounds and stitched herself back together. That was the only good thing about her childhood. It had taught her how to survive.
She would survive the next four days too. Four days and then she need never see him again.
The captain’s voice came over the tannoy system, informing them they were cleared to take off. His words brought Massimo to life. The partition acting as a barrier came down as he closed his laptop and stored it away, then fastened his seat belt. Not once did he look at her but Livia was aware of every movement he made. Her heart bloomed to see the muscles of his tall, lean body flex beneath the expensive navy shirt with the sleeves carelessly rolled up, the buttons around his strong neck undone. No doubt he’d ripped the tie he would have worn to the conference from his neck the moment he’d left the venue. A maverick even by usual standards, Massimo conformed to rules only when he judged it necessary. She supposed the engineering conference in London he’d been guest of honour at had been an occasion he’d decided was worthy of bothering with an actual suit.
Livia only knew he’d been in London because his PA had casually mentioned it in her email when they’d been making the arrangements for today.
It wasn’t until the plane taxied down the runway that the soulful caramel eyes she had once stared into with wonder finally met her gaze. It was the briefest of glances before he turned his attention to the window beside his head but it was enough for Livia’s stomach to flip over and her throat to tighten.
Massimo’s face was one she’d been familiar with long before they’d met. Employed as his grandfather’s private nurse, she’d stared at the large Briatore family portrait that had hung in his grandfather’s living room too many times to count. Her gaze had always been drawn to the only member whose smile appeared forced. It was a beautiful face. Slightly long with high cheekbones, a strong Roman nose and a wide firm mouth, it was a chameleon of a face, fitting for a construction worker, a banker or a poet. That it belonged to one of the richest self-made billionaires in the world was irrelevant. She would have been drawn to that face no matter who he was.
Seeing him in the flesh for the first time, in the church his sister was getting married in, had been like having all the oxygen sucked out of her.
The first time she’d seen him smile for real her insides had melted as if she’d been injected with liquid sunshine. She had brought that smile out in him. She couldn’t even remember what she’d said, only that after hours of sidelong glances at each other throughout the wedding ceremony and the official photographs, she’d gone to the bar of the hotel the reception was being held in and suddenly the air around her had become electrified. She’d known before even turning her head that he’d come to stand beside her. Her tongue, usually so razor sharp, had tied itself in knots. Whatever she’d said in those first awkward moments had evoked that smile and in that instant all the awkwardness disappeared and it was as if they had known each other for ever.
And now he couldn’t even bring himself to look at her.
She had no idea how they were going to get through a weekend with his family, celebrating his grandfather’s ninetieth birthday, pretending to still be together.
Massimo watched an illuminated Rome disappear beneath the clouds and tried to clear the hot cloud that was the mess in his head.
When he’d agreed to speak at the engineering conference in London, it had made sense to fly to Rome afterwards and collect Livia en route. It had been logical.
He’d assumed that after four months apart, being with her again would be no big deal. He hadn’t missed her in the slightest. Not that there had been time to miss her with all the hours he’d been putting in. Without the burden of a hot-tempered wife demanding his attention, he’d been able to devote himself to his multiple businesses just as he had before she’d collided into his life and torn it inside out. The day she’d left, he’d bought himself the bed for his office which the mere suggestion of had so angered her. He’d slept in it most nights since. It was far more comfortable than the blanket on the sofa he’d used the nights he’d worked late and decided it wasn’t worth driving home.
He hadn’t anticipated that his blood would become hot and sticky and his hands clammy just to land in his home city and be under the same sky as her again.
And now that she was here, in the cabin of his plane, every cell in his body, dormant all this time apart, had awoken.
He could curse his logical mind. Why hadn’t he insisted she fly to Los Angeles, where he was scheduled to refuel, and board his plane there? He couldn’t have her fly all the way to Fiji separately from him—that would defeat the whole purpose of her being there—but he could have engineered things so they only had to spend a minimal amount of time on his plane together, not the full twenty-six hours it would take to travel to the other side of the world.
For the return journey he would fly with her to Australia and charter a plane to fly her back to Italy.
He’d listed all the excuses he could have made to avoid bringing her with him but it had all boiled down to one thing. This was for his grandfather, Jimmy Seibua. His terminally ill grandfather, who’d taken a cruise from Rome to Fiji with his family and an army of medical personnel in attendance and had arrived on the island three days ago. This weekend was all that had been keeping his grandfather alive, this one last visit to the homeland he’d left as a twenty-two-year-old the spark giving him the fight needed to beat the odds. Jimmy would celebrate his ninetieth birthday on the Fijian island of his birth, now owned by Massimo, with the family he loved. His grandfather thought of Livia as part of his family. He loved her as a granddaughter. His only regret at Massimo marrying her was that it meant he lost the private nurse who had tended to him with such care during his first battle with cancer.
And, whatever his own feelings towards his estranged wife, Massimo knew Livia loved Jimmy too.
‘Are you going to spend the entire flight ignoring me?’
Massimo clenched his jaw as Livia’s direct husky tones penetrated his senses, speaking their native Italian.
That was the thing with his wife. She was always direct. If she wasn’t happy about something she made damned sure you knew about it. For a long time the object of her unhappiness had been Massimo. Her declaration that she was leaving him had come as no surprise, only relief. Marriage to Livia had gone from being passionate and invigorating to being like a war zone. And she wondered why he’d spent so much time at work? The nights they had spent together those last few months had been with her cold back firmly turned to him. She’d even started wearing nightshirts.
He swallowed back the lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat and finally allowed his gaze to fall on her properly.
The lump he’d tried to shift grew but he opened his mouth and dragged the words through it. ‘You’ve had your hair cut.’
Her beautiful thick, dark chestnut hair, which had fallen like a sheet down to her