“You were Marco d’Angelo. You could have married anyone, and you’d intended to marry a princess. Instead you got stuck with me.”

“So you went home.”

She felt her cheeks burn. “Home to hide.”

Marco looked at her for a long moment before moving away, walking to the far end of the courtyard toward the house. “Pride,” he repeated slowly, softly, as if experimenting with the word. His scrutiny was hard. There was nothing gentle in his expression.

“If there’s any irony,” she said to fill the strained silence. “It’s that I’m at the end of my rope. I’ve no pride left. Nothing holding me back anymore. I am desperate. I need you. I need your help.”

He stared at her but didn’t speak. Yet he didn’t need words to communicate. She felt his anger, and his frustration. It was happening all over again. They were back to the awful sense of being trapped…cornered. It was what forced them to marry in the first place and now they were confronted by a reality bigger than either of them once again.

“Please, Marco, please help me make this transition work for them,” she continued softly, urgently, her hands knotted as if in prayer. “Help me feel like I’ve done something right in my life.”

“Of course you’ve done something right in life,” he answered sharply, unable to bear all the words, so much sound, when he felt so utterly confused by it all.

How could she have cancer? She was so young! And she didn’t look the least bit sick. In fact, he’d never seen her so radiant.

Today at the photo shoot she’d taken his breath away and he’d found himself enchanted with the curve of her cheekbone, line of her jaw, high arching eyebrow. She was like a work of art herself and even if they didn’t always agree, and even if they’d had problems between them, he’d never wish her ill. Never, ever.

“I’m sorry, Marco.” She was looking at him, dark blue eyes worried. They were Livia’s eyes, and she was looking to him for reassurance. Forgiveness. It wounded him. Did she think she needed forgiveness—and from him of all people?

They’d had problems, a lot of problems, but there had also been moments of good—not to mention moments of lightness and sweetness that he’d never known with anyone else before. Payton might not be regal and controlled like Marilena but she was warm and funny and passionate about life and that passion was addictive.

She was addictive. He’d responded to her from the beginning and it had happened again tonight—the attraction, the desire, the hunger for someone and something utterly different from himself.

“You have to know I never wanted this to happen,” she added huskily. “Never wanted to hurt the girls, or inconvenience you.”

The words were endless, he thought, sound and more sound and he’d heard enough. There were words and there was action.