A wind whipped up, tugging at her hair as the launch sliced through the water. Sienna laughed as she was caught offbalance, the hair flicking loosely around her face, her hands unsuccessfully trying to recapture the wayward locks, until Rafe captured her hands in one of his own and pulled them down low. ‘Leave it,’ he said, using the sway of the boat to tilt her towards him so he could kiss her brow. ‘I love your hair just the way it is.’
And then he angled up her chin, and his lips met hers, her hair blowing unrestrained around them as the empty yawning hole inside her latched onto a single truth that jolted her to her core.
Please, no, she thought, feeling herself shrivel away from him in panic.
Please, not that!
But as his mouth moved over hers, the truth refused to be ignored, unfurling inside her, filling the vacuum in a revelation that could see her damned.
She loved him.
Shock wrenched her from the kiss, and when he came after her she claimed the motion of the boat was making her queasy. He had no trouble believing her, just as she had no trouble convincing him, a wave of nausea snapping closely on the heels of her discovery.
She couldn’t love him.
She clung to the railing, while he insisted on fetching her some water, her world tilting and yawing in a way that had nothing to do with the motion of the boat and everything to do with a growing fear in her heart.
How could she have let it happen?
And yet, her mind recalled, one night in Paris, on a night filled with lovemaking so passionate and intense it had rocked her world, hadn’t that been exactly what she’d thought? That if a woman wasn’t careful, a man like Rafe was everything she could fall in love with?
But that had been before he’d shunted her out the door and out of his life without a second glance, and that was before he’d only wanted her back when he’d discovered she was pregnant to him. How could she fall in love with someone who’d treated her that way?
Too easily, it seemed. She’d allowed the same things she’d been attracted to from the very beginning to influence her now, overriding her reasons to hate him. He’d ridden roughshod over her at every opportunity, denying her any choice, telling her that they would be married and when. And still she’d let him under her skin, wanted him by her side, in her bed. Wanted him.
And that had been the real reason why she’d wanted to flee from Montvelatte the first chance she’d had. Not just because she was angry with him for the way he’d thrust her from his room that night, but because she’d known, ever since she’d landed on the island, how he could make her feel with just one look or one touch, and so she’d had to escape, and as soon as possible.
And that had been the real reason she’d stayed. Because in spite of everything, he held the magic to make her want him.
And she did want him.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, though. He could love her, he should love her, but she wasn’t supposed to love him, not if he could never return that love.
Sienna clung to the railing, breathing in great bursts of air, as the launch lurched over first one swell, and then another, swallowing them down and wishing she could swallow down her memories. Memories of her mother, her face contorted and tear-stained, her voice cracking as she pleaded with Sienna’s father to stay at home and not go to the bar that night. Begging him not to go. Telling him that she loved him.
And her father had bellowed back at her, calling her a stupid bitch, and yelling that he’d never loved her and never would and that the only reason he’d married her was because of the baby she’d been too stupid to get rid of. The hatch door had been slammed shut and he’d gone.
He hadn’t come home that night. Or the next. And, worried about her mother’s deepening depression, Sienna had asked her where her father was. It had been an innocent enough question. She’d known she was that baby for years, the one who had ruined her father’s life. But she’d thought in her young adolescent mind that if she could find her father and tell him that she would leave, things might once again be good between her mother and her father.
She’d only wanted to help.
But her question had only brought fresh floods of tears from her mother that had answered nothing, only bringing on a sick feeling that had buried itself deep into the pit of her stomach—that it was already too late.
And that it was all her fault.
A week later Sienna had overheard the news from her friends at the English school on the side of Gibraltar’s mountain, from girls who whispered in the rabbit warren of corridors in hushed tones, that her father had moved in with the woman from the bar and that he’d been boasting to everyone that he was never going back.