A Touch of Temptation(55)
“You have to forgive yourself. If you don’t you’ll—”
He walked away from her without a word.
His silence whipped at her hope. The weight of his guilt was a crushing weight on her own shoulders, even if he said it wasn’t her fault.
Kim stood there watching him go, her hold on him just as slippery as the sandbanks holding the ocean at bay.
* * *
Kim didn’t see Diego over the next couple of days. It was Miguel who informed her that he had gone to Sao Paulo to bury Eduardo, and that Marissa was by his side. It was Miguel who didn’t leave her side for a minute, as though he could understand her mounting confusion.
Marissa was the one person Diego hadn’t shut out of his grief. His friend had stayed by his side while Kim had watched from afar.
It hurt like nothing else in her life had—like a nail stuck under her skin, gouging into her flesh. And there was nothing she could do to change it
Would it be like this forever? She hated that feeling from the depths of her soul—hated that her happiness, her very state of mind, was dependent on whether Diego would ever smile at her again.
It was the same vicious circle of hell she had gone through when she had found her mother’s note. What could she have done differently? What could she change within herself? It was a powerless, clawing feeling she couldn’t shed.
She blinked back tears, disgusted by the feeble feelings. She missed him every minute of every day with an intensity that stole the breath from her lungs.
How could she live like this forever? Wanting to be more, needing to be more to him, but knowing that she could never change it?
She knew they had formed a bond in the past days. She knew, for all that her life had been an emotional desert, that what they shared had been special. But he would never love her. She would never amount to anything other than the mother of his children.
It was a truth she had already known, except now it felt excruciatingly unbearable.
Pain constricted her chest. Her lungs were collapsing under its crushing weight. She sank to her knees on the hardwood floor in her bedroom and hugged herself.
She couldn’t live with him like this—forever wondering, waiting for the moment he decided she wasn’t worth it, the moment he decided he was done with her.
Because he would. Sooner or later he would decide he only wanted his children. She would go mad waiting for that moment.
She had wanted this chance with him, but she didn’t want it at the cost of losing her sanity, her will.
* * *
Diego couldn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes. His gut kept falling lower and lower as he methodically checked each room through the villa. He left her room for last—like a coward postponing the moment of truth.
She has gone.
Miguel had texted him almost two hours ago. Because Miguel, unlike his pilot and the rest of the staff, had known something was wrong, had known her swift departure was something Diego wouldn’t have agreed to if his life had depended on it.
Lost in his own world on the other side of the island, pushing himself through another rigorous workout, Diego had seen it too late.
His heart, if it was possible, felt as if it had come to a screeching halt. Because he had instantly known it wasn’t a work emergency, as she had claimed to everyone else, or a tantrum because he had been avoiding her since he had heard Eduardo’s news.
Kim didn’t throw tantrums. She didn’t argue, and she didn’t fight back—she left quietly, as though he wasn’t even worth a goodbye.
His helicopter was gone, his pilot was gone and Kim was gone. And yet he couldn’t crush the fleck of hope holding him together.
It was the most pathetic feeling that had ever run through him. Right up there with the hope that had fluttered every time his mother had trotted him down to his father’s house to beg for his help.
He arrived at the suite she had been using. The sheer curtains at the French windows flew in the silence. Crickets chirped outside on the veranda.
She hadn’t left the room as spotless as she usually did. A couple of paperbacks were still on the bed.
The scent she used, lily of the valley, fluttered over the breeze toward him. Knocked him in the gut like a kick to his insides. He breathed deeply, trying to get the knot in his belly to relent.
A strange sense of déjà-vu descended on him. He looked at the bathroom, his heart in his throat, waiting for her to emerge from it as she had in the hotel suite that day. She would come out and turn her nose up at him. Challenge him. Rile him. And kiss him.
Breathing through the pain, he reminded himself that it would crest soon. It had to.
It didn’t.
He rammed his fist into the nearby wall and roared a pithy curse.
Despite his best efforts, he was right where she had left him six years ago—he still wasn’t enough for her. Why else would she leave without a word?