The Last Time I Saw Venice

He had to stop her turning away from him again, running off again without even making an effort to resolve what had gone wrong between them. If it meant avoiding any rash confrontations or sore points for the time being and just enjoying each other again, the way they’d managed to do four years ago, he’d damned well do his best to curb his impatience. Gaining her trust again, her confidence, was top priority and he mustn’t rush things and risk wrecking everything.

And regaining her love? Would that be possible as well? Or was it too late for that?

He recalled the shocked concern in her eyes when he’d announced that he’d injured his hand and given up neurosurgery. It gave him a flare of hope. Maybe she still felt something for him. She’d always encouraged him in his career, as he’d supported hers. The thought that she could feel some concern for him now, after what his so-called surgical skills had done to their lives, to their precious daughter, was like a glimmer of sunlight through dark clouds.

And what about her brilliant legal career? He hoped her recent illness hadn’t jeopardized her chances of a partnership, after she’d worked so hard to reach her cherished goal, assuming she hadn’t achieved it already. She’d given away nothing about her current status at work over dinner, and he hadn’t wanted to ask in front of Tom and Tessa. He needed to be alone with her, to find out everything she’d been doing in the past two years.

When she was ready… He’d be mad to put any pressure on her. She’d already run away from him once…he didn’t want to lose her again.

At a thin cry from the baby in the capsule, Tessa pushed back her chair. “I think Gracie’s ready for a change of nappy…and maybe another feed. Would you mind if I called it a night? Tom, you stay and have coffee…”

But Tom was already on his feet. “I’ll come with you. I’ve some notes to look at before tomorrow…”

“Time I went, too,” Annabel said at once, rising swiftly to her feet as a rush of nervous tension gripped her. Despite all the questions she longed to ask Simon, particularly about his injured hand and his disrupted career, she wasn’t sure she could handle being alone with him just yet. Especially not late in the evening, in romantic, moonlit Venice…

Tomorrow, perhaps…in more calming daylight…if he wanted to see more of her.

She saw a dark eyebrow rise ever so slightly as Simon stood up, too, but other than that he showed no reaction, no trace of the disappointment she’d expected—or perhaps had hoped—to see. It threw her a bit, making her conscious of a contrary sense of pique. If he pressed her to stay, or even invited her to join him for an evening stroll along the Riva, she wasn’t sure she would have the willpower to resist.

“Have you been back to the Basilica yet?” he asked her, and she paused, her heart picking up a beat. Was he remembering the vow they’d made four years ago?

“I’ve only seen it from the outside. I was thinking of going there in the morning before the queue grows too long.” She spoke carelessly, glancing away to hide any hint of an invitation in her eyes. He’d hurt her badly in the last weeks of their marriage and she wasn’t going to easily fall back into his arms, if that was what he was hoping. Her heart couldn’t bear any more hurt.

“I had the same idea,” he said in a similar offhand tone, with no sign of a suggestive glint in his eye as she flicked her gaze back to his. At one time, there would have been a distinct roguish twinkle evident. She wondered pensively if he’d lost it forever.

“If you’ve no objection to some company,” he was quick to add. “I’ll get there well before the doors open at nine-thirty and hold a spot for you at the front of the queue. That’ll give you a chance to sleep in a bit and not rush your breakfast.”

He’d always been considerate that way, she remembered with a bittersweet pang. At least, until the tragedy of Lily’s death had changed him, turning him into a closed, distant stranger.

“Let’s just play it by ear,” she said, keeping her tone light. “Is your hotel far from here?” she asked, expecting him to head for the lobby, while she took the lift up to her room.

The firm, well-shaped lips she’d always found so irresistible—and still did, she realized with a tremor— eased into the familiar curved smile she’d thought lost forever, at least to her. Seeing it again gave her spirits a lift. “Actually, I’m staying here,” he said. “Fourth floor. We can ride up in the lift together.”

She almost missed her step. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear. Staying here? On the floor above hers? Maybe his room, his bed, were directly over hers. How would she ever be able to sleep, knowing he was so close to her, just a few floorboards separating them?

“After you,” he said, his voice sounding dangerously seductive all of a sudden.

As she stepped into the empty lift ahead of him, she realized that his room on the fourth floor was the least of her worries. The walls of the tiny lift seemed to close in on her as he followed her in, standing far too close, filling the small space with his tall, potent presence, surrounding her with his familiar male scent, the heady warmth of his breath.

Inwardly, she felt herself gasping for air, clutching for normality and reason. They were only sharing a lift, for heaven’s sake.

Maybe it was her heightened imagination, but it seemed to take an age to reach the first floor, another age to reach the second, and finally, with her heart thumping so loudly by then she was sure he must hear it, the lift doors swung open.

“Good night, Simon!” Her voice was a ragged gasp as she lurched out without looking back.

So much for acting cool! She’d failed dismally, and now he’d know she wasn’t indifferent to him. He’d been indifferent to her for so long, withholding the love and warmth he’d once shown for her, that she should be guarding her heart a whole lot better than this.

Chapter Three

Despite barely sleeping a wink all night, Annabel didn’t sleep in. Instead, she rose early and dived straight into the shower. She both dreaded and longed to see Simon again, fearing how things might turn out, yet hoping desperately that some life still glimmered in the ashes of their marriage.

There was a basket of fresh fruit in her room and she ate a banana and an apple instead of going down to the dining room for breakfast, not wanting to face anyone before spending some time alone with Simon. She felt confused about so many things and wanted answers that only Simon could give her in private.

When she did finally leave her room she avoided the lift and slipped down the stairs to the lobby, pausing only to leave a note in Tessa’s mailbox before hurrying from the hotel.

The crisp air and the silvery early morning sunlight jolted her fully awake as she scurried along the Riva toward St. Mark’s Square. Hordes of tourists were already disembarking from boats and swarming along the promenade in the same direction. She hoped they weren’t all rushing to queue up at the Basilica.

Was Simon already there at the head of the queue, or had a boatload of tourists beaten him to it and already crowded in front of him? She felt a smile twitching her lips. He’d never had much tolerance for crowds. Or for waiting around doing nothing, for that matter.

As she passed the pink marble walls and lace-like arcades of the Doge’s Palace, she saw a long queue snaking from the Basilica, and groaned. That long already? It was barely eight-thirty—an hour before opening time!

And then she saw Simon, standing close to the decorative arched doorway at the very head of the queue. Heavens, he must have been here at dawn!

She felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t come even earlier to keep him company. An American tour group had gathered behind him, led by a flag-wielding female who was striding back and forth shouting facts about the Basilica to keep her flock amused. Annabel braved their stares as she strode up to Simon, her cheeks pink with embarrassment.

“I feel as if I’m pushing in,” she whispered, ready to slink away. But Simon’s smile—a real smile for the first time, even reaching his eyes, those incredibly blue eyes—stopped her in her tracks. He’d always been sexy as the devil, with the height and bearing to make him stand out in any crowd. But with that heart-stopping smile, his deeply bronzed skin enhancing the blue of his eyes, his longer hair and the casual denim jacket and jeans that he wore so easily, he was a sight to snatch a girl’s breath away.

“They’ll see we’re together, so don’t even think about running off,” he growled, reaching for her arm and pulling her closer.

She glanced down at the tanned hand circling her arm. It was his right hand…the skilled, sensitive, long-fingered hand that had once held delicate surgical instruments and tackled the most intricate operations… until he’d somehow damaged it.

Simon dropped his hand at once, mistaking her glance for a warning look—no touching—until she looked up and let him see the glistening compassion in her eyes.

“How did you injure your hand?” she asked softly. “Is it still…?”

“No, it’s fine now,” he assured her, and grimaced. “Self-inflicted, I’m afraid. A moment of pure cussedness. 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 him to pay more attention to the woman’s tireless spiel.

No more was said about spending a day at the Lido’s famous beach resort or about their time apart. Before too long, the great doors of the Basilica were opened and they and the rest of the queue began to surge forward.

It was worth the wait. Just like four years ago, they found their senses assailed by the magnificence all around them—the dazzling gold mosaics; the exquisite Pala d’Oro, the famous gold, enamel and jewel- encrusted altarpiece; and the Galleria and Museum upstairs, home of the original gilded bronze horses. From there, they had wonderful views of the Basilica’s cavernous interior and the awesome mosaics decorating the huge central dome.

An hour passed, stretching into another. It was only when he saw Annabel lean against a pillar that Simon realized how tired she must be, and remembered that she was still recuperating from an energy-sapping illness.

“Let’s find a quiet place to sit down and grab a bite to eat,” he said, half expecting her to knock back the offer and insist on going back to her hotel to rest. There was still a wariness about her that sounded a warning. Don’t push it. You’ve only just found her again and she’s plainly still upset that your so-called godlike surgical skills failed to save our baby daughter. His heart constricted at the agonizing memory.

It wasn’t going to be easy. Far from it. In her eyes, their marriage was dead, and it was going to take a miracle to change her mind. She’d never wanted to settle down and get married in the first place. Marriage had been forced on her. He’d forced it on her. And now their reason for getting married had tragically gone, leaving her free to concentrate on her soaring legal career, the career she’d worked so hard for and which had always meant more to her than anything else in her life.

“You know of a place?” she asked, and he felt some of the heaviness lift from the black place deep inside him. She hadn’t run away yet. Maybe she was just curious about what he intended to do now that he was back in circulation, or maybe—hopefully—she felt a bit more than that, wanted a bit more than that.

At least she was giving him the chance to find out. And a chance, with luck, to mend some bridges and begin to heal the rift between them. Could she forgive him? Would she ever stop secretly blaming him? He’d blamed her for a black moment when he’d first heard about the accident, but that had changed once he’d learned the true circumstances. Maybe she could change, too, and learn to forgive him.

He sought her lovely green eyes and nodded. “Well, yes, I do, but we’ll need to take a vaporetto ride along the Grand Canal to the Accademia Bridge. The concierge at the hotel recommended a place.”

“Okay.” She didn’t even hesitate. “Lead the way.”

The cooling breeze brushed Annabel’s face as she stood beside Simon on the crowded deck of the slow, grinding water bus, watching the passing boats and elegant mansions along the Grand Canal and the shimmering reflections in the dancing green water. As a gondola carrying a young starry-eyed couple holding hands passed below them, it was suddenly rocked in the wash of the vaporetto and she felt memories of four years ago flood back. She flicked a glance at Simon.

Her eyes clashed with his, and she knew he was thinking of that day, too, remembering how she’d tumbled out of her rocking gondola into the Grand Canal and how he’d jumped in to rescue her. Would they ever recapture the magic of that exciting first meeting in Venice, and the blissful days that had followed?

What better place than magical Venice to recapture it!

* * *

“Well? Reckon this will do?” “It’s perfect.” It was away from the crowds of tourists, in a spacious yet quiet square, with an old church, an imposing central statue, antique and fashion shops, and outdoor restaurants. Ristorante Masaniello was small and the staff friendly. A favorite of Venetians, the restaurant was famous for its fresh fish. The concierge had told them not to order off the tourist menu, and they didn’t regret leaving it up to the expert staff to select their meal. Over one of the best lunches they’d ever enjoyed—a special Sicilian fish dish that was steamed and served with mint—it was Simon who asked the first question of the many that still hovered between them.

“Tell me how your job’s going, Annabel.” She pursed her lips. The question he was really asking was: Are you a partner yet? “They made me an associate a year ago, but remember, this is an old, conservative law firm that still seems to prefer males as partners. Other top firms these days are more enlightened.”

“You’ve never thought of jumping ship to a rival firm?” Simon asked. “I’m sure you’d have no trouble finding one that’d be keen to snap you up.”

“You mean, give up and leave? No!” She was shocked. “It would be admitting defeat, and it wouldn’t be loyal to Mallaby’s. Besides, it’s a very prestigious law firm and being a partner there would mean a lot to me and to my career. I’m determined to persevere and be their first female partner. If only to prove to myself that it’s possible.”

“Is that the only reason?” There was a knowing glint in his eye. “Only to yourself?”

She looked at him and twitched her lip. “Well, okay, maybe also to prove to my father that I can succeed in a male-dominated career and compete with the top guys. To prove to him and my brothers that women have an equally important role in the workplace, and don’t just belong in the bedroom and kitchen.”

“Your father still hasn’t accepted it? Having a daughter who’s chosen a high-powered career rather than the traditional housewife-and-mother role?”

She didn’t answer for a second, wondering for the first time if he had some regrets himself that she hadn’t become a full-time mother to Lily and a stay-at-home wife to him. But she quickly dismissed the notion. Simon had always been totally supportive and encouraging, never criticizing her long hours and agreeing without demur when she’d engaged a nanny to help take care of Lily while she was at work.

They’d been two of a kind…both equally driven, equally determined to reach their grand, high-flying goals. And what a price they’d paid. She shivered, trying to brush off the shadows.

“No. My father will never change,” she said finally, hoping Simon would put her silence down to a daughter’s pain at her father’s inflexible, sexist attitude, not to regrets over their own lives. “Men like him never do. My brothers are just the same. They’re both looking for wives like our mother—women willing to devote their lives to their husbands and children, with no independence or financial control for themselves.”

The men in her family were the reason she’d left Queensland and fled south to Sydney to study law. To escape the stifling influence back home. Her father and two brothers ran a thriving family business, a forklift rental and sales business, Joe Hansen and Sons. And Sons, she reflected sourly. Only sons had any worth in the Hansen men’s eyes.

“Maybe your mother’s happy being a full-time wife and homemaker,” Simon murmured.