“I’m sorry if I worried you,” she said quietly. “I just needed time to think things over.”
Nick drew back, holding her at arm’s length and quelling her to meet his gaze. “Before you say anymore, you need to know this: I love you. More than I ever thought it possible to love anyone in my life. Forget what you saw or heard that day in the garden at the reception.”
Keyonna stared up at him, stiffening. “How did you know I’ve got my memory back?”
“You still don’t understand it, do you, how attuned I’ve become to your emotions, your expressions?” Nick asked with a gentle smile, combing his fingers through her loose, tousled locks. “I sensed something was different; the way you looked when you stood there earlier today.” He shook his head with a grimace. “Part of me is happy that you’re okay now, but if it’s going to change the way you feel about me.”
At his words, she pulled out of his hold, feeling his reluctance to let her go even as she slipped away to stand by the window, looking out.
“So, how did it happen? How did you remember everything?” he asked with a weary sigh.
Keyonna shrugged, hugging her arms to herself. “Nothing fantastic, I’m afraid. I simply took one look at Trisha and suddenly, it just…clicked.”
“Trisha?”
Keyonna turned to view Nick’s confused frown. “Mark’s cousin – well, adopted cousin. You might have heard that Marilyn Tucker, Mark’s aunt, has an adopted daughter. Well, like you once did, she believed I’d treated Mark unfairly. Anyway, she was the one who fed me stories about your one time involvement with your stepmother.”
And quelling her inner distaste for the topic, Keyonna related everything Trisha had told her, and how she’d followed him and his stepmother and found them alone together.
“It wasn’t just the things you said,” Keyonna said, shoulders hunched as her arms tightened around her shivering frame. “But the way you said them. Like I was nothing to you. Like I didn’t matter at all. Back then, I was stupid enough to think I could love you for both of us. I’d begun to nurse feelings for you despite the fact that you’d blackmailed me into being your wife for a year. I kept telling myself I could make you care. But that day I realized that I couldn’t bear the thought that you married me but loved someone else.”
“Oh God, Keyonna,” Nick groaned, stepping forward as if to come to her, but she backed away, and this made him pause as he flinched.
Sighing raggedly, he pushed fingers back through his ruffled hair. “It’s true that when I was younger, I believed myself infatuated with Lena. We lived in the same house, saw each other every day. She was married to my father but was closer to me in age and I was at that point in my life that I really hated my father and didn’t care about going against him. I was so sure Lena felt the same for me but she was much too good at withholding her feelings. I told her to run off with me but she bluntly refused, claiming not to want to come between my father and me. Devastated, I left home, determined to make it on my own. But a few years ago my father reached out to me, saying he was ill and didn’t have much time. I never knew if he’d guessed what had almost happened between Lena and me, and frankly I didn’t care because my feelings for her had long died. I was ready to put it all behind me if my father would. We were never close, him and I, but we grew to have a grudging respect for each other and when he died, I did feel the loss very strongly for a man who never tried to know his son like a father should.”
Nick turned away for a moment, shoulders rigid. “One thing I never did put behind me though, was Lena’s rejection. It made me cynical about love and about women. I always believed she’d stayed with my father because of his money and power, and wasn’t going to give that up for any short-lived passion she said was all we’d ever have. Anyway, I had no wish to ever fall in love; romance or a woman’s affection meant nothing to me. That’s why Rachel suited me just fine. She didn’t pretend to love me. We had an understanding; we knew the score. She didn’t care that I could never give her the true intimate passion a man can provide a woman he truly cares for.”
He moved forward once more, and this time didn’t stop until he was right before her. Keyonna edged back against the wall, though her eyes were mesmerized by the dark flames swelling in his gaze.
“That’s why I was such a jerk to you at that party when I overheard you turning Mark down. It was like watching a re-hash of what had happened between me and Lena. To me you were just like those opportunistic females always holding out for something better. Dumb, isn’t it? What made it worse was how attracted I’d been with you from day one. I was so torn that I couldn’t stop myself from sticking my neck in. But I’m glad I did because it gave me the excuse I needed to get close to you.”