A Touch of Temptation(51)

“Yes,” she replied, her mouth a tight line.

Was it downright sadistic of him to enjoy the fact that she could be hurt by his actions? That he had a hold over her, however tenuous?

“I couldn’t trust myself to not lose it right in front of her. That’s why I left. I will understand if you...want me to leave.”

He cursed—a filthy word his mother would have washed out his mouth for. “What the hell does that mean?” At her grating silence, he answered. “I don’t miss her.”

“Then why is she here? Who are you trying to punish by pushing us all together? Yourself or me?”

He frowned. “You want me to cut her out of my life? Tell her she has no part in it now that you are here? She’s the one person who has stood by me my whole life. Whether I was a success or a failure, whether I was being a sanctimonious bastard or not. What do you expect me to do? Tell her—?”

Kim shook her head, feeling sick to her stomach. She got it now. Marissa was the constant whereas Kim was the variable—the one who could disappear from his life any minute.

Maybe even the one he could leave behind when he didn’t want her anymore?

“I don’t know,” she said, her anxiety spilling into her words. “All I want to know is whether you’ll give this...us...a real chance or not.”

“And bringing a friend of mine here means I won’t?” He smiled. “Is this you being jealous, gatinha?”

Kim flinched. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I have no right to—”

He tugged her around. “Yes, you do. You have every right to ask me whatever you want to. You might not always like the answer. It could be worse than what you lose by keeping silent. Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Walk away silently.”

She tried to shy her gaze away from him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Even last time on the island, when I said I was done with you, you didn’t utter a word. You should have called me a bastard right then. Instead you left without a word. You fight more for your company than you do for yourself.”

“If I don’t ask anything of you, don’t expect anything of you, you can’t hurt me.”

He shook his head. “It is never that simple.”

“It’s the only way to survive.”

“Who hurt you?”

She tried to turn away from him but he wouldn’t let her. This was not a conversation she wanted to have. “No one hurt me, Diego. However, you will be disgusted by the depths of selfishness I can fall to.”

His hands locking her in place, he looked into her eyes. “Nothing you do or have done will ever make me despise you. Make me angry, yes. Drive me crazy, yes... But disgust me...? No. Haven’t I showed you that already?”

“The night before my mother left I found her note.”

“A note?”

Every inch of her shook just remembering that night. “It was one line. Addressed to my father. She was leaving him and taking Liv with her.”

Leaving her behind.

She had gone to her mother’s room to check on her, to inform her of what her father had planned for the next day, to tell her that she had taken care of everything needed for a small party at their house.

Instead she had found a small bag sitting on the floor of the closet. It had contained her mother’s jewelry, cash, her passport and—the thing that had sent a shiver down Kim’s spine—Liv’s passport. For a frantic minute she had emptied the bag, looking for her own passport, her lungs constricting painfully.

It hadn’t been in that bag.

Wondering if her mother had made a mistake, her head reeling from what it meant, she had walked to the bed and found the note scribbled on her mother’s stationery.

It had been the worst moment in her life—sitting there, wondering what she had done wrong, how she could have acted any different, why her mother would choose to take Liv but not her...

Her vision blurred. The same confusion, the same utter desolation sprang inside her at the memory. The words she hadn’t dared to speak aloud, the thoughts that wouldn’t leave her alone even after all these years, the fears she hadn’t shared with another soul, poured out of her on a wave of uncontrollable pain.

“For as long as I can remember I did everything I could to shield her from my father. I always stayed strong for her. I stayed by her bed when she was ill. I never once asked her for anything, Diego. And in the end she—” her voice broke, her insides twisting into a mass of pain.

Diego’s rough palms on her cheeks, the familiarly comforting scent of him, pulled her out of the depths of despair. He forced her to look at him.