Right now they were tainting a good moment in his life with Caprice that he wanted to preserve in memory. Yet how could he when he suspected she was lying to him about something in her past?
It would be impossible until he got to the truth.
That would come. He would uncover her secrets before he made another costly mistake with a woman.
* * *
Caprice wasn’t sure who fell asleep first, or who awakened first. One moment she was sated and warm lying in his arms on the floor. The next he was gently tipping her face to his and staring at her with eyes that always saw too much.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes. Fine.” Better than she thought she’d be, and that alone told her she’d made the right decision.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had only had one lover before me?”
Because she hadn’t had a lover. Her attacker didn’t deserve that title.
“What difference does it make?” she asked.
He heaved a sigh. “None, I guess. I just thought...you’d had more experience. Hell, I thought you’d had experience when I met you at the World Cup.”
“I admit I was naive but fearless.” To her own peril.
“I have thought long and hard about how poorly I treated you in the past,” he bit out, as if hating to admit that much.
“It’s okay. I was too young to understand that relationships were all a game to you.” Too young to realize that some men were only out to use and abuse.
She reached up to cup his jaw, desperate to connect with the man who’d just pleasured her beyond belief. Had granite ever felt this hard? She chanced a peek at him. Had blue eyes ever looked so icy cold?
He grasped her hand and pulled it away, and she felt the distancing yawn between them, felt the old rejection nip at her nerves. “I did you a favor, bella.”
“It didn’t feel like it at the time.” She rolled away and got to her feet, wrapping the towel around her naked body, breaking the physical contact, but still plagued with a jumble of good and bad memories.
“I was in the wake of a bitter divorce. You knew that.”
She nodded. “I heard rumors surrounding the end of your marriage and none of it put you in a good light. Is it true you threatened divorce unless your wife got a paternity test?”
He got to his feet, unabashedly naked. “Yes, which she refused to do. If you knew that, then why didn’t you ask me if it was true?”
“I didn’t believe you would do such a thing to your family.” Even now she had trouble accepting his matter-of-fact confession.
“You’d heard the truth and yet you flirted with me.” He shook his head. “My God, you were naive.”
“I call it trusting and loyal,” she added. And she still was in many respects.
“Yes, you have always been that way to me,” he said, eyes drilling into her so intimately she felt as if he were touching her still. “But that is not why I wanted you now.”
“You’ve made it clear from the start that you simply wanted rights to my therapy program,” she said. “I don’t have a problem with that or what just happened between us.”