She stopped, stiffened. Her mouth twisted. “Let’s get one thing straight—”
“Only one thing?” he snarled, realizing his temper was off its leash and finding it impossible to catch it and tame it. “There are so many things, mia dolce, that we have to straighten out.”
Itching with the heat of his emotions, he prowled around his desk to confront her in the middle of the room. He half expected another retreat, but the woman surprised him.
She stomped right up to him and one of her long, elegant fingers poked him in the chest. “I may have lied to you once or twice, I’ll give you that.”
“Grazie.” He leaned down, sneering in her face.
“I had my reasons.” She held firm under his looming presence. “And those reasons still stand. You will never be a good father.”
Pain ripped a hole the size of Lake Como in his heart. He nearly gasped at the accusation, so unfair.
So true.
“But I never have been a cheat.” She kept going, seemingly oblivious to the blow she’d given him. “Never.”
The pain retreated, leaving only a yawning, gaping fissure. Before he could process his thoughts or emotions any further, his hands were tight around her shoulders and he’d lifted her off her toes. “Another lie.”
She had guts, his wife. Her frosty eyes stared at him with pure clarity. “I wasn’t engaged when we slept together. Robert had split with me earlier that night.”
The words hit him with a solid punch. He dropped her back on her feet because he couldn’t think, could only feel the primitive male inside him howling and screaming for something. Revenge? Forgiveness? He was afraid of what he’d do to her. What he’d do to himself.
Turning, he stalked to the windows and blindly looked down at the traffic.
That night? Split up that night? His brain whizzed over the events. A woman intent on getting drunk. A woman brokenhearted. A woman grabbing for the first man she found in a vain attempt to console herself for what she’d lost.
She hadn’t been lusting for him.
Hadn’t been driven to take him because she couldn’t help herself. Hadn’t dreamed of him for endless nights. Hadn’t ached for him through endless days. Far worse for his ego and his pride then thinking she was only rejecting him because of stubborn spite, she’d merely been using him to ease the pain and didn’t want him for anything more.
“Vico?” Her voice was tentative.
The breath in his lungs held, then gusted out in a near gasp.
That night had not been what he’d thought. Or dreamed.
“You must believe me.”
This woman destroyed him in every way. But it was too late. Too late to run and hide and lick his wounds. He was married. He was soon to be a father. He was doomed to endless regrets exactly as he had been fifteen years ago.
“Vico.”
“Si.” He turned, forcing his face into a stern, cold stare. “I believe you.”
He shrugged as if it meant little to him. When in actuality, her revelation meant the death knell to his hopes for this relationship. If she didn’t even want him, then what was left to build on?
The baby.
His bambino. He would focus on the bambino. Focus on finding a way to somehow not let the child down. Forget about the stupid dreams he’d harbored in his dark soul in Paris.
“Well.” Her hands rose to smooth her hair behind her ears. “That’s at least settled.”
What was it he’d meant to do in this meeting? What had to be settled?
His brain was fogged with bitter anguish.
“Now the only thing we have to agree on is that I’m able to keep working as much as I want.”
His decisive CFO reminded him.
“That’s all we have to agree on?” He chuckled. A hoarse, rough choke.
She looked at him, her head cocked as if she tried to figure him out. There was little to figure out. He was a hollow man.
“What’s wrong?”
Women. With their uncanny senses telling them when a man was vulnerable and needy and sick with despair. He laughed at his stupidity. Watched as his wife eyed him with guarded caution. Why not? He must appear to be a complete madman.
“I thought it was mutual.” The words came from his mouth before his pride had a chance to rebel.
“Mutual?” Her wary gaze narrowed.
Why had he said that? What good would it do him to lay his pride before this woman and hope for any mercy? Yet the foolish confessions kept flowing from his damned mouth like an unending emotional river of agony. “The lust that night.”
He didn’t need to look at her to know what he’d see. Contempt mixed with pity.
Aiutarlo a Dio.
God help him, indeed.
Turning his back to her, he squinted his eyes in the sun’s glare and ignored the sting behind them.