Teresa shook her head sadly. He couldn’t see how much she loved him. Or if he did, he chose to not recognize it. So how could she explain that for her, there hadn’t been a choice at all? “I wanted to help you, Rico. Louis got sick and I was right there, so I helped.”
“What are you trying to do to me?” His voice was low, deep and rough. As if every word had to scratch its way past his throat.
“Do to you?” She huffed an impatient breath. “Nothing, Rico. I’m here for a month. Would it be easier on you if I sat in a corner and cried over being trapped here by a man who clearly can’t stand to be around me unless I’m in his bed?”
“Maybe,” he muttered thickly as he shoved one hand through his hair. “I don’t know anymore.”
Teresa didn’t even know what she was feeling now. Impatience, irritation, a swell of love that was so rich and deep it filled her entire body and throbbed in her heart.
“Rico, would you rather I just sit on your bed naked, awaiting your pleasure? Would that be hostage-like enough for you?”
“Yes. No. Yes,” he ground out, then continued in a ragged voice, “if you behaved as if you were frightened or worried, that would make more sense to me. Instead you make yourself a part of things here, even knowing you won’t be staying.”
“If it would help, I could whimper for a while.”
He snorted. “You wouldn’t know the first thing about whimpering.”
A small smile curved her mouth. “At least you know me that well.”
All trace of amusement drained from his features and his eyes flashed in the firelight. “Once I thought I knew you better than anyone I have ever known.”
Her heart ached at the wistful tone in his voice. How much she had destroyed when she’d left. How much she’d given up, never to find again. How much they had both missed in the last five years because of a twist of fate. If Gianni hadn’t stolen that dagger… If she had told Rico the truth about her family when she first met him…
But ifs were nebulous creatures and changed nothing.
“You did know me, Rico.”
“No.” He shook his head and reached for her, dropping his hands onto her shoulders and pulling her up close. “I thought I did, but you weren’t real. You weren’t mine.”
“I was, though,” she argued, willing him to believe it.
“Not then,” he answered. “Your heart was torn, your loyalties tested too deeply for you to have been mine alone. But tonight, you are mine.”
He was right. In spite of her love for him, she had been torn between Rico and her family. Maybe she’d been too young to appreciate what she had found with him. She only knew that if faced with the same decision today, she would do it all differently. She would tell Rico everything and trust him to do the right thing.
God, she’d been an idiot.
She was in love with her husband and that was the one thing she could never tell him.
* * *
Rico had been waiting for her for hours. Convinced that she had an ulterior motive for offering her help when it was most needed, he’d worked it over and over again in his mind and still was no closer to discovering what her plan might be. She had to know that he hadn’t changed his mind. That no matter how much she integrated herself into life on the island, he would still watch her leave at the end of the month.