In a very cool, very detached, laudably rational way, of course. After all, all he would be doing would be to put her straight and move on with a clean slate. Get right back to the sort of woman he understood. Some uncomplicated, fun creature. The world was full of them, as he had always found.
Looking at this particular woman now, though, was doing nothing for all his good intentions. He didn’t feel very cool or detached or even rational, come to think of it.
‘No,’ he drawled, moving towards her until they were doing a weird dance, with Tessa retreating in the face of Curtis’s slow, relentless advance. ‘How cruel would I have been not to have allowed you the pleasure of ripping my personality to shreds?’
‘I didn’t rip your personality to shreds,’ Tessa mumbled, wincing. She had now backed herself into the sitting room and she scuttled into the closest chair, curling into it.
‘No?’ Curtis intoned silkily. He was no longer advancing on her, but, almost as bad, prowling through the room like a great jungle cat exploring the limits of its cage. And he was every bit as threatening as any great jungle cat. ‘If I remember accurately, you accused me of seducing your sister in this very house, when I was still fresh from sleeping with you, of arranging to meet her with your smell still lingering in my nostrils. Now, I’m not sure what school of morality you attended, but the one I went to clearly stated that those types of accusations come into the category of personality shredding!’ Each sibilant, vicious word was like a drop of poison.
He had ceased his restless prowling and was now standing in front of her, hands shoved into his trouser pockets, his face a mask of freezing contempt.
‘You should have said something,’ Tessa flung at him. She lifted her chin and eyed him mutinously. ‘You let me jump to all the wrong conclusions and now you think you can just walk in and throw it in my face!’
Had he thought for one minute, seriously, that she would open the door, meekly and tearfully accept what he had to say, fall at his feet with hands clasped in apology, simply because she had made a mistake? Her cheeks were two burning patches of colour and the stubborn tilt of her chin spoke volumes for her determination to fight him right back.
Let her.
Yes. Yes, he had done the right thing in coming here. Every muscle in his body was pulsing and it was a damn sight healthier than that impotent, frustrated, dead feeling he had had earlier.
And he still wanted her. With all her complications, her intolerance of his basic ground rule of just have fun, her wild accusations. A sex thing. But he felt his rage ratchet up a notch and this time it was directed solely at himself.
He angrily stalked off and sat down, glowering. ‘I was going to let you walk away. Of course I knew you’d find out the truth sooner or later, but guess what? Why should I drop it? Why should I allow you to get away with defamation of my character? I notice you haven’t even had the common decency to apologise!’
‘Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I jumped to the wrong conclusions. Satisfied?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Because…?’
‘Because it’s more than just jumping to the wrong conclusions, isn’t it? It’s about trust. What kind of man do you think I am? That’s the basic question, isn’t it?’
‘What was I supposed to think?’
‘You were supposed to think that a few overheard snatches of conversation just might not add up to the worst possible conclusion. You were supposed to think that you knew me well enough to presume me innocent before condemning me to the guillotine.’ He knew how he sounded. Cold, indifferent, composed. He knew that only he would be able to discern the awful truth behind what he was saying, which was that he had been hurt. Curtis Diaz, the man who had always burnt the candle at both ends, the man who worked hard and played hard, had been hurt.
Tessa’s face was closed as she looked at him. Now this argument, she thought, was one she could really get her teeth into. He obviously hadn’t followed through with his logic. Unusual for him, since he had the most logical brain of any man she had ever met, but everyone had a blind spot and this was his. He was a charming, dangerously sexy man who nurtured a reputation for never staying with one woman for too long, whose tastes had always run to a very specialised type of female, and yet he naively thought that he should be seen as Mr Trustworthy. The ego of the man!
Tessa focused very hard on that side of him. The side that wasn’t witty and thoughtful and sharp and ironic. She concentrated on his house-sized ego. Safer.
‘Why do you think I should have done that?’ she asked, with a coldness that almost matched his but didn’t quite. ‘Why do you think I should have heard what sounded like a very compromising conversation and immediately come to the conclusion that it was innocent?’ She would have done, she knew it, if she’d thought that he loved her, because mutual love was all about trust. But she was just a passing fancy and passing fancies didn’t necessarily qualify for exclusivity. That was life.