“I didn’t want money or a grand life. I didn’t want to go back to Harvard. I wanted to stay with you.”
Diego’s head swam with each word she uttered. “What?”
“I tried to tell you that last week. All I cared about was being with you. You didn’t spend a single minute with me. We spent every evening at some gala or charity event. During the day you disappeared to God knows where. You made all these plans for how we would live our lives in New York....I didn’t want that life. When I met you I was running away from that life. Liv was gone and I felt so utterly alone. I went on that cruise on an impulse and I met you. No one’s ever looked at me like you did that fortnight, like there was something to me beyond... But in the end, you were the same as anyone else.”
Diego forced himself to breathe past the heaviness in his throat. She clamped his wrist again, but her grip was slippery, her fingers shaking. She breathed in slowly, softly, as though it took a lot of effort.
“That picture...” Her words were low, heavy, desolate. “It represents the happiest time of my life, Diego. The only happy time. So, please, give it back.”
His heart crawling into his throat, Diego dropped the picture. She picked it up from the floor, and the others with it, and tucked them back into the envelope hurriedly, as though she didn’t trust his temper.
He had done everything she had blamed him for and more. He had come to his own conclusions about why she had left him, let it fester inside. He had let his own insecurities color her actions. He had destroyed his happiness with his own hands...
All in pursuit of the very wealth and status that had robbed him of the two people who had truly loved him, who had cared about him.
He lifted her chin, his hands shaking with impotent rage. That familiar guilt clawed through him. Another person he’d hurt, another black mark on the increasing roster of his sins.
He palmed her cheek, tracing the jutting angles of her cheekbones with his fingers. Words rushed out of him on a wave of powerlessness that pricked his muscles.
“I did love you. I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing you again once we were off that ship. That’s why I married you. I...I was obsessed with defeating my father, yes, but I never meant to hurt you. But of course neither of us had enough faith in the other, did we? You didn’t have enough to tell me the truth, and I didn’t have enough to drag you back to me.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Fury such as he had never heard, rattled in her words. But she didn’t wait for his answer.
He should have gone after her. But he had been able to see nothing past what he had termed as her rejection of him. He had driven himself to new, ruthless heights, manipulated and eventually driven Eduardo over the cliff.
All because she had made him realize the bitter truth that he had shoved beneath his fight for survival—that he would never be enough.
CHAPTER NINE
KIM STEPPED OUT of the shower stall in the luxurious rear cabin. She loved the circular space with its vanity lighting, but the hot water hadn’t helped.
Tugging on satin shorts and a matching silk top, she put her robe back on and tied the sash. She eyed the huge bed anxiously. She trailed her fingers over the soft Egyptian cotton.
Were they going to share a bed when they couldn’t even bear to look at each other?
She put a trembling hand to her forehead. Her racing thoughts were giving her a dull ache. The only time someone had put her first and she had run away from it. She wanted to go out and... What? Apologize for being a coward who had ruined their lives?
Her cell phone chirped an alarm. It was time for her multi-vitamin. She pushed at the strange sparkly bag that sat on top of her handbag with a little grunt. The bag slipped, its contents slipping onto the lush carpet at her feet. It was the goody bag from the sex party earlier that night.
She stared, aghast, at the tasteful assortment of favors scattered against the elegant rug.
Pink fur handcuffs, what were surely painful nipple clamps, two bottles of strawberry and chocolate-flavored massage oil, a contraption in shocking pink made in the shape of a...
It was a vibrator.
A sound—a cross between a gasp and a moan—escaped her. Heat pumped to her cheeks. Excitement dried her mouth. She stared at the doorway, a wild idea taking root in her.
She had had enough of his stupid rewards system. She was going to go for the jackpot.
She picked up the vibrator and settled on to a small settee facing away from the entrance to the main cabin. The smooth silicone was soft and yet hard in her hand. Sucking in a quick breath, she clicked the small button on the side.
A soft whir filled the cabin.
She didn’t know what drove her to it. Maybe it was the horny part of her that she had no control over. Maybe it was the self-loathing running through her veins because she was still a coward who, instead of walking up to Diego and kissing him, as every cell in her wanted to, only dared to sit in here and play sexual peekaboo with him.