“Tell me why you said you could never love a man like me. Those words nearly killed me. Why did you say that?” He stroked her hair like she was the most precious female on earth.
Randi tried to make her brain functional again, his questions sinking in as she slowly regained coherent thought. She hadn’t said that, had she? “I never said that.”
I can never love a man like him.
Her brain started working, and she shook her head at the conclusion it was making.
It wasn’t possible, but yet . . . She’d never said those words to Evan; she’d made that comment in writing to S.
Somehow it all made sense. Actually, hadn’t S. started encouraging her relationship with Evan, even asking her to give him a chance after he’d warned her away?
S. had changed since she’d started a relationship with Evan—now that she really thought about it. He asked a lot about her relationship, and was almost prompting her to give Evan a chance, a man he’d never met. His behavior was exactly the opposite of his normal and constant cautiousness.
She stood, feeling naked figuratively as well as physically. Snatching her dress from the floor, she donned it mechanically, pulling down the silky material of her gown to cover her scanty remaining lingerie hastily.
Her stomach lurched as she thought about some of the conversations they’d had, and the fact that S. now had a woman in his life. The Sinclair Fund was Evan’s business, so it wasn’t a stretch that it could be him, that it had always been him.
Her heart started to bleed as she thought about the fact that if he was S., he hadn’t told her, had actually lied to her. He’d used the relationship to his advantage, and to hell with how she felt. They were incongruent actions from the Evan she’d come to know and love.
Maybe I only thought I knew him.
“I didn’t say those words to you. I wrote them to a man I thought was a friend, a man I trusted.” She took a deep breath and asked quietly, “Are you that man?”
Randi wasn’t looking at him directly but she saw him give an affirmative jerk of his head from the corner of her eye as he stood up. “Yes,” he admitted huskily.
“The calla lily on Dennis and Joan’s graves. It was you?” She already knew the answer. Gut instinct told her that it was true. Maybe she was able to blow it off before, but that made sense to her now, too. Evan Sinclair was probably one of the only men who could get anything he wanted, even a perfect calla lily every day in the dead of winter in Maine.
“Yes.” Evan zipped his pants and reached for his shirt and tie. “I did it every day to thank them.”
“What were you thanking them for?” Her mind was spinning, and she was still trying to wrap her head around the idea that S. and Evan were one and the same man.
As he jammed his arms into his shirt, he replied, “I was thanking them for saving you when I couldn’t. I’m grateful you’re here, that you’re healthy and strong. I’m grateful that they gave you a home. Most of all, I’m grateful they saved you for me.” He shouldered into his jacket and put his tie in the pocket.
Randi felt completely destroyed and betrayed by the two men who meant the most to her. “You lied to me. When did you know who I was?”
“The day I brought you supplies and you lost power. Hope told me that you had recently lost your foster mother, and everything fell into place. I should have told you that day, but I couldn’t.”
Okay . . . so maybe he hadn’t known for very long, but he’d known before they’d ever been intimate. He should have told her before anything ever happened between them. “There was nothing stopping you from telling me,” she told him furiously, angry now that the initial shock of his confession had worn off. “You played me.” He’d used his status as a trusted friend to get information from her.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he grumbled as he strode forward and gripped her by the shoulders. “Why did you say you couldn’t love me if you do?”
She shook off his hands, not wanting him to touch her. He’d betrayed her, and his dishonesty and the way he’d toyed with her emotions infuriated her.
“I didn’t say I didn’t love you. I said I can’t love you because of my past and the problems it might cause. You’re a billionaire who travels and I’m a teacher who stays in the same place. Don’t worry. I’ll get over it. The fact that you’re a liar and that you deceived me will help me get over you that much faster,” she answered hotly.
Evan grabbed her shoulders again. “You’ll never get over me. I’ll never get over you,” he growled, sounding enraged. “I’ve never gotten over you. I feel the same damn way every time I see you. I wasn’t as shocked as I should have been to learn that you were the woman I was corresponding with, either. I should have known that two different women could never hold my interest in the same way. I have to wonder if deep down inside, you knew who I was, too.”