“What notebook?”
“The one you stole six years ago, with all the ideas and words you used to build your so-called wellness empire. They were never yours and you know it.”
Annie sat forward. What was he talking about? What else had Ed been up to?
And more to the point, what did Kim have to do with it?
“I don’t know what you mean...” she began, but Annie noticed she’d gone white.
“Colette, tell her,” Ed implored once more, his face smug. “All of this, it could have, should have, been yours.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Colette looked drained as she turned to Kim. “When I came here that summer, I brought along a diary, silly little stuff I’d written to keep me going when Mum was sick, inspirational quotes to keep my spirits up. But I misplaced it in the house somehow, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I was too busy enjoying myself. Then when your book came out, I recognized some of the chapter headings, and figured you’d come across the diary but never said anything.” She shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
“No big deal?” Ed raged. “She used your words to get rich, never crediting you.”
“Because she obviously didn’t know the diary was mine, you idiot,” Colette snapped. She looked at Kim. “I mentioned to him in passing one day that I thought you must have found the diary. It’s no big deal, honestly. There was no way to tell who it belonged to, especially as I’d written any personal stuff in Italian in case my mother ever came across it at home. And really, it’s not as though any of the quotes were even mine anyway—I picked them up here and there over the years.”
Annie was floored, although it kind of made sense that this hippie-dippie stuff had come from Colette and not Kim. She was exactly the kind of person who believed in that woo-woo nonsense.
“I swear, I had no idea the book belonged to you—or the words. If I had I’d never...” The words spilled out as Kim explained how she’d tried to track down the journal’s origin, believing it to be a previous guest or the villa’s owner. “I tried everything, honestly! I stole nothing. Not on purpose anyway.”
“I know. And it’s not as if I could or would have done anything with it anyway. You’re the go-getter, Kim, the one who can turn your hand to anything and make it a success. And you have. I already pointed all of this out to Ed, but it seems he didn’t listen.”
Then Kim seemed to realize something, too.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” she said, turning to Ed. “Not only did you sabotage Colette and Luca’s romance six years ago, but you’ve also been trying to sabotage this entire event. Leaving hateful comments on my social media, accusing me of plagiarism, perhaps even going so far as to mess with my permits and caterers, and goodness knows what else! But why go to so much trouble? If you resent me for using your wife’s words, why didn’t you just come right out and confront me? Why wait until now?”
“I think I know why,” Luca put in then. “He did not want this event to happen because he did not want Colette to come back to Italy and discover the truth. And she would—once I got the chance to see her.” He put his hand over his heart. “I am sorry for this, Kim, but it is I who upset your catering arrangements, because I needed to be here at Villa Dolce Vita tonight. I needed to see Colette once more, to see if she was happy and if she had made the right decision all those years ago—in choosing him.” He shot another dagger look at Ed. “And now I know for sure that it was not.”
“He’s right. I didn’t want you coming back here,” Ed agreed, his voice plaintive. “I had to try and stop it. I knew if you came back there was a chance you would realize that you were happier with him than you ever were with me.”
Annie shook her head. The person she had once known and adored as Harry was no more. Now Edward Hargreaves was a weeping shell of a man, willing to go to any lengths to get what he wanted. Whatever honor and nobility she had seen in him six years ago was long gone.
Or perhaps never even existed.
“I don’t even know who you are...” Colette whispered through tears as she stared at her husband. “But I do know that you never loved me. You knew I wanted someone else back then, and that’s the only reason you set your sights on me. It was about winning, wasn’t it, Ed? You always have to win.”
One look at Ed’s face made Annie realize that Colette was right. He hadn’t truly cared about either of them back then. It had all been a competition to him.
Ed Hargreaves didn’t care about anyone but himself.
While she had come here expecting fireworks when she confronted Ed about his refusal to help her out of her recent financial bind, she had never in a million years intended to hurt Colette or Kim.
This was the kind of showdown she would never have asked for or imagined, and while she was still angry at Ed for so many reasons, what hurt most was the pain in Colette’s eyes when she looked at her now.
“I need to get out of here,” she said wearily, and Luca duly moved to usher her out of the room.
Ed tried to follow, but Kim stopped him with the threat of calling Gabriel and having him forcibly and publicly removed by a man almost twice his size.
A proper man.
Annie half wished she could see that happen, though she guessed it was the murderous look on the Italian man’s face that had truly given Ed pause.
Now she followed Colette, Luca, and Kim back outside to the courtyard, where down below on the terrace, all the party guests were smiling and laughing as the fireworks show began to kick off.
She noticed that not one of her old friends even glanced upward at the colorful explosions high in the sky off the beautiful Amalfi Coast.
Tonight, there’d been enough fireworks to last them all a lifetime.