Free To Love Again by Danielle Steel

office. The cranks had arrived, as promised. Threats, arguments, confessions, harangues, sympathy and accusations, obsecenities and propositions. She no longer ever answered the phone. Three men covered it twenty-four hours a day at the villa, and another three covered the phone at the office. But still no clue had turned up to identify the kidnappers, and it was clear now that they would never be found. Isabella understood that. She had to. She also knew that eventually they would leave her alone. The cranks, the maniacs, the fools. All of them. One day. She could wait. But Bernardo disagreed.
    You're crazy. You can't go on living like this. You've already lost twenty pounds. You're practically scrawny. He didn't mean it of course; she was always beautiful to him but still she looked ill.
    That has nothing to do with the phone calls. It has to do with what I eat, or don't . She tried to smile at him from across her desk, but she was too tired to argue anymore. They'd been at it all morning.
    You're jeopardizing the child.
    For chrissake, Bernardo, I'm not! Her eyes raged at him now. We have seven guards on the house. One with Enzo in the car. Another at school. Don't be a horse's ass.
    Wait, just wait, you bloody fool. Did I tell you that day, did I, about the way you two lived? Was I wrong?
    It was a bitter blow.
    Get out of my office, Isabella shouted.
    Get out of my life!
    Va cagare! He slammed the door as he left. For a moment she was too stunned to go after him to apologize and she felt too tired even to try. She was so goddamn tired of fighting with Bernardo. She tried to remember if it had always been like that. Hadn't it been fun before too? Hadn't they laughed together at times? Or had they only laughed when Amadeo was there to coax them away from their battles? She couldn't remember anymore. She couldn't remember anything except the mountains of papers that lay on her desk except at night. Then she remembered. Too much. She remembered Amadeo's soft sleeping sounds in the bed at night and his hands on the warm flesh of her thighs. She remembered the way he yawned and stretched when he awoke, the look in his eyes as he smiled at her over the morning paper, the way he smelled just after he had shaved and bathed, the way his laughter rang out in the hall when he chased Alessandro, the way' . She lay with the memories every night. She took work home with her now, hoping to keep the visions at bay, hoping to lose herself in fabric orders and collection details, statistics and figures and investments. The nights were too long after Alessandro went to bed.
    She shut her eyes very tightly and sighed as she sat in her office, trying to will herself back to work, but there was a soft knock at her door. Unwillingly she jumped, startled. It was the side door to Amadeo's office, the door he had always used. For a moment she felt herself tremble. She still had that mad feeling that he was going to come back. That it was all a bad dream, a terrible lie, that one of these evenings the Ferrari would slide down the gravel driveway, the door would slam, and he would call out to her, Isabellezza! I'm home!
    Yes. She stared at the door as the knock came again.
    May I? It was only Bernardo, still looking strained.
    Of course. What are you doing in there? He had been in Amadeo's office. She didn't want him in there. She didn't want anyone there. She used it to find refuge sometimes, for a moment, at lunch, or at the end of a day. But even she knew that she couldn't keep Bernardo out. He had a right to access to Amadeo's papers, to the books he kept on the wall behind his desk.
    I was looking for some files. Why?
    Nothing. The look of pain in her eyes was unmistakable. For a moment Bernardo ached for her again. No matter how impossible she was at times, no matter how they differed in their aspirations for the business, he still understood the magnitude of her loss.
    Does it bother you so much when I go in there? His voice was different now