A Touch of Temptation(22)

“Did you give a moment’s thought to me? Or have you, in your usual selfish fashion, neglected to think of anyone else but you?”

“How would I know how you felt about this? Until a couple of hours ago I didn’t know how cruelly your father had treated you, or how your mother died. You never told me anything. Once we were off that ship you kept me in a bubble, as if...” She met his gaze, the disbelief spiking there halting her words.

But would she have behaved differently even if she had known?

He frowned, and she had a feeling he was thinking the same.

“The truth is that it scrapes at you that you’re not able to reduce this pregnancy and my involvement in it into something tangible.” Frustration glimmered in his gaze. “Anything that makes an average woman happy breaks you out in hives.”

“Your fault if you thought me average.”

“No, I didn’t think you average—or this warped either. You cover it all up with your perfection.”

She mocked a pout, her heart crawling into her throat. Only Diego could reach the horrific truth with a few careless words. The muscles in her face hurt with the effort to keep the smile intact, even though inside everything had crumbled under his attack.

But she couldn’t let him or their marriage mean anything to her. He had already proved her worst fear true once. If she let her guard down, if she let herself care, she would just break this time. “Does that mean you don’t want a perfect wife anymore?”

His fingers tightened over her hipbones, a fierce scowl bunching his forehead. “You’re the one obsessed with perfection. Not me. And I never wanted a perfect wife either.”

“You mean now?”

“What?”

“Now that you’ve achieved all this status, this wealth, now that you’ve proved yourself to your father and the whole world, you don’t need a trophy wife for an accessory now. Not like you did six years ago.”

His hand stole up her back, his fingers curling possessively around her nape. Her skin seared as though branded. The entire world around them fell away in that moment. As did the veneer of his sophistication. A curse fell from his lips and she colored. Even her little grasp of Portuguese was enough for her to understand.

“You don’t want to wear my ring. You didn’t want to acknowledge the baby as mine. However much I want to give this marriage a try, you’re determined to make this warfare. Maybe working sixteen-hour days with no social life is beginning to fry your brain and corrupt your memories.”

He whispered in her ear. It was a low growl, every word pulsing with the slow burn of his anger.

“Because I was not the one that walked away. You knew when you married me what I came from. When we got off the cruise, when the dirty reality of my roots, my life, began to creep in, you didn’t want me anymore. So don’t you dare blame me for the past.”

* * *

Diego set Kim away from him, his muscles pumping with furious energy. He needed to walk away right that moment, before he did something stupid.

Like kissing her senseless or driving his fist into the nearest wall.

This was the woman who had looked back at him calmly after he’d slept with her and then discarded her as if she was garbage. This was the woman who had then quietly slunk back to her life, to her waiting fiancé, calmly dismissed any thought of him and gone on with her life.

Nothing touched her—not the fact that he was back, not the fact that she was carrying his child. How many times did he need to learn the same lesson?

How dared she place the blame for their failed marriage at his feet?

And yet he could swear he had seen sadness lurking in her eyes as she had called herself a trophy wife, felt her shiver as if her words were leaching out the warmth.

He was about to walk out of the hall, away from the crowd, when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around, his control razor-thin.

Beautiful brown eyes—open, smiling, similar to Kim’s and yet so different—greeted him. Olivia King.

She wore a red knee-length dress. A ruby pendant hung at her neck. Where Kim’s hair was cut into a sophisticated blunt style, Olivia’s hair was long and curly and wild. There was nothing drastically different from the way Kim was dressed, especially tonight in a dress uncharacteristic of her. And there was the same sensuous vitality to Olivia that was muted but so much more appealing in Kim.

“Hello, Diego,” she said, with very little hesitation in her expression.

He raised a brow at her familiarity. She waved a hand at him and moved closer. The gesture, her very movement, lacked the grace and the innate poise he expected from that face. It stunned him into a moment’s silence.