“I never claimed to be a saint,” he muttered, his accent suddenly flaring into life and coloring his words with a seductive tang he probably didn’t intend at the moment. “But I never lied to you.”
“What about the phony divorce papers?”
He frowned, gritted his teeth and kept quiet, silently admitting he had no answer for that.
Taking a deep breath, she looked up into his eyes and searched for the man she loved behind that wall of ice he’d built between them. “I didn’t want to lie to you, Rico. I didn’t want to leave you, either. But there was nothing else I could do. Can’t you understand lying to protect someone?”
“I can’t understand a family who demands that kind of loyalty.”
“Really?” She tipped her head to one side and met him, glare for glare. “Because the King family isn’t loyal?”
“We don’t cheat for each other,” he snapped. “We don’t lie to protect each other.”
“But you would if you had to.”
His mouth flattened into a grim slash and his eyes narrowed. She could see that he was thinking about it, considering…and not really enjoying the answer he was coming up with.
She took a long breath. “Rico, I’m not asking you to forget what happened five years ago. But maybe you could try to see it from my side.”
“Your side? All I know of your side is one thing.” He released his hold on her, shoved his hands into his pockets and stared over her head at the surrounding trees. “You chose them over me.”
“They’re my family.”
His gaze shot to hers. “And I’m your husband.”
“Do you really think it was easy for me?”
“All I know is that you did it,” he ground out. “Easy or difficult, you made your choice and we were both forced to live with it.”
Pain squeezed her heart and radiated out to every square inch of her body. There was nothing she could say to that. No excuse. No plea for understanding. Rico would never see what she had done as anything less than betrayal.
Their gazes locked, unspoken tension practically humming between them in the soft island air. The ocean was a murmur of sound and somewhere in the distance an animal’s screech sounded out.
There was so much to say and so little all at the same time. Teresa had hoped that they might find a way to reach each other again, but for every step forward she took, Rico moved that much farther away. He was slipping away from her even as she stood beside him. Missing the feel of his touch, Teresa scrubbed her palms up and down her arms in a futile attempt to ease the chill of the cold that was deep inside her.
“Teresa,” he asked quietly a moment later, “what happened?”
“What?” She shook her head and looked at him in confusion.
“With your aunt,” he said, reminding her of the story she had been telling. “What happened?”
It took her a second, but a smile curved her mouth as she looked at him. Nothing had been solved. They were still on opposite sides of the same battle. But his question told Teresa that Rico, too, missed their all-too-brief truce. So she willingly played along and dipped back into her memories.