And he knew why his world had turned to ash.
She talked. She flipped her hair. Her smile was radiance itself.
Bile rose in his gut, threatened to choke him. Almost on automatic, he called again.
It went straight to voicemail.
Alejandro turned and walked out into the sunshine on numb legs.
He was sitting in the dark sitting room two hours later when he heard the click of the electronic lock. He’d given Sergio the night off to save the butler from the fallout of his impending devastation.
She sailed in and dropped her small suitcase on the floor.
‘Honey, I’m home!’ She giggled. She giggled. ‘I’ve always wanted to say that ridiculous line.’
Her handbag followed and she hurried across the room to where he sat, an empty whisky glass clutched in his hand.
‘Oh, Alejandro, I missed you so much!’ She launched herself into his arms, knocking the glass to the floor. Her arms slid around his neck and her head slanted towards his. His breath snagged painfully, his insides going from ice-cold to furnace-hot just from the scent of her. ‘Enough to change my flight to an earlier one. Enough to ignore why you’re sitting here, drinking in the dark. I don’t care why. I need to kiss you. Right now.’
Her mouth latched onto his. And in the second between killing himself to pull away and completing the act, he noted her confidence, her skill at kissing. The enticing way she moved her body over him. Just the way he’d taught her.
He wanted to latch on hard. He wanted to bind himself to her so she could never be free of him.
But he couldn’t.
He ripped his head away from her, his arms holding her back.
‘We need to talk, Elise.’
Her mouth went slack, her eyes widening into pools of shock before she composed herself and nodded. Climbing from his lap, she took a seat across from him. ‘No good thing ever came from those words, but okay. Shoot.’
Alejandro had had enough time to run through several thousand scenarios of how this would go. For a thousand different reasons he’d discarded all of them.
‘This isn’t working for me.’ False words. Freeing words.
Her breath audibly caught, and her hand rose to rest over her heart before she swallowed hard. ‘Right. I... Okay. I...wish you’d emailed or texted me or something. I wouldn’t have bothered you here...’ Her chin dropped down, her hair momentarily shielding her face as she toyed with her fingers.
‘Breaking up by text is uncouth.’
A sharp laugh barked from her. ‘Uncouth? Okay. Well, I wouldn’t know. This is my first break-up.’ She winced.
Alejandro grimaced, then got ahold of himself. He was doing this for her.
Then why did he feel as if he’d cut out his own heart?
Because he had.
She jumped up. ‘Well, I guess that’s it, then.’
He surged to his feet. ‘That’s it?’ His world was to end without so much as a thunderclap?
Eyes filled with hurt and the beginnings of anger finally met his. ‘Why, what do you expect? Funeral bagpipes? Sorry, you’ll have to be disappointed—’
‘I saw you today,’ he flung at her. ‘At the Woodbine Building.’
She frowned for a second, then her face cleared. ‘And?’
‘And? You expect an addendum to that?’