‘We do.’
Before she could take it any further he had turned back to another departing guest, switching on a smile that had none of the stunning impact she had seen earlier. And unless she created a scene, throwing a tantrum in front of everyone, there was nothing she could do but wait and watch everyone else leave while inside her head the words that Santos had used earlier circled round and round.
I’m not ready to let you go … You’re here because I want you here.
Then she’d taken them as a compliment. Now she was no longer so sure. Had she been here all afternoon because he wanted to use her company to distract him from the public stab at his pride that had been his jilting at the altar? Or was she, as a slow, creeping sense of dread was starting to make her fear, here as some sort of prisoner, the reasons for which she couldn’t begin to guess?
‘What are you doing down here?’
Staying silent hadn’t worked. He’d known she was here all the time. Either that, or some faint movement she hadn’t been aware of making had given her away.
Just the sound of his footsteps coming swiftly down the flight of stone steps, bringing him to her side, made her whole body quiver in response.
‘I needed a break—a breath of air.’
‘I know how you feel. It’s been a long day.’
There it was again, that note in his tone that suggested the reception that had now come to an end had been a strain for him too.
He came to sit beside her, his lean, strong body a darker, bulkier shadow in the gathering dusk, and on the still air she caught a waft of the scent of his skin, clean and warm and faintly musky. Instantly she was transported back to the moments earlier, inside his beautiful house, when she had been held in his arms as they danced. She had been so near to him then that she had felt his breath on her skin as he bent his head close to hers, and the strong, steady thud of his heart under the hard ribcage had beat under the touch of her hand so that she had sensed her own pulse rate kick up instantly in response.
She had felt surrounded by him, enclosed by his touch, lost in the sight, the sound, the feel of him. And the sensation had overwhelmed her. She didn’t like the way that he made her feel, and yet at the same time it was all that she wanted to feel.
And it was a sensation that, disturbingly, was creeping over her again as Santos came close once more. Her fingers itched to reach out and touch the hard strength of his arm in the white shirt that gleamed in the moonlight. She wanted to feel the warmth of his skin, inhale its scent on each indrawn breath. She wanted to know what that beautiful mouth tasted like, how it felt to tangle her fingers in the dark fall of his hair and press their tips against the fine bones of his skull. She wanted it so much and yet at the same time it terrified her to be feeling so out of control, to have lost so much of herself.
‘But those were all your friends …’
And family, she had been going to add but, recalling his reaction earlier, she swallowed down the words hastily, not knowing whether they were safe to let fall or not.
‘If they were real friends, do you think I would have needed to go through the farce of holding a reception for a wedding that hadn’t taken place? Too many of them were business acquaintances, people it is important for me to know.’
‘That’s a very cynical approach.’
‘I’m a very cynical man.’
The harshness of his tone made her catch her breath against the impulse to ask just what had made him that way. What had turned him into a man who saw marriage as a business arrangement, the way to provide himself with an heir without any need for or thought of love? But every instinct warned that he wouldn’t welcome the question from her, and right now she didn’t want to risk pushing him too far when she didn’t know what his mood might be. Better to be careful when she felt as if she was treading on eggshells.
‘Someone once told me that to become cynical you first had to be an idealist and it was the loss of those ideals that created the disillusionment.’
‘Truly?’
Santos’s harsh bark of laughter made her flinch inside.
‘Then I fear I must be the exception that proves the rule. I was born without any ideals to lose. And if I’d had them, they would not have lasted very long as I grew up.’
‘That sounds a very sad way to live.’
‘While you were born with stars in your eyes and a belief in fairy tales and a happy-ever-after?’
She had very nearly convinced him, Santos reflected disbelievingly. She had caught him off guard and actually sounded as if she had meant what she had been saying. It must be the effect of the moonlight or the glass of two of wine he’d drunk. He wasn’t usually so easily conned.