Which was why, taking her time with her soup and letting her mind toy with the fantasy of a time ahead when she could barely remember his name, let alone what he looked like, Tessa almost managed not to see the tall, dark figure that was suddenly looming at the far end of the room. He was talking to Bill Winters, the owner of the hotel while his eyes drifted slowly across the expanse of the dining area. And those blue eyes connected with hers just as realisation hit home with a resounding crash. Even so, the sight of Curtis here was sufficiently unbelievable for her to take it in. So she watched as he crossed the room, blinking in disbelief. The vision didn’t clear. It continued to come closer until her shocked brain forced her to acknowledge that this was no dream. Curtis Diaz was here. At which point she gently returned her soup spoon to its bowl, before it clattered to the floor, and eyed him with gaping horror.
‘Your sister told me where you were,’ he said heavily. ‘Carry on eating. I don’t want to disrupt your meal.’
Disrupt her meal? What about disrupting her life? He had no right to be here, Tessa thought with uncurling anger. He had no right to just show up when she was trying so hard to forget all about him!
‘I seem to have lost my appetite.’ He was staring at her and she couldn’t fathom what was in those dangerous, deep blue eyes. ‘Why have you come here?’ she demanded in a low, shaking voice. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve…shouldn’t you be out somewhere?’ With a leggy blonde?
‘Do you think I want to be here?’ Curtis rasped, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘I came because I had to.’
Which smelled to Tessa of work. Curtis Diaz only felt obligated to do things that impacted on his professional life. Mr No Commitment had no such qualms when it came to emotions, she thought bitterly.
‘If it’s to do with work, forget it. My replacement can deal with whatever I left behind. There’s no way I’m going back to hold anyone’s hand and walk them through my filing system.’
‘It’s not to do with work, for God’s sake!’ He banged one fist on the table and Tessa started back in alarm, heart beating like a sledgehammer.
‘Then what? We’ve talked already. Too much. There’s nothing left to say.’
‘You never told me that you loved me.’
His words dropped like lead pellets into the thick pool of silence and every ripple that spread outwards was more horrifying than the last. Tessa felt her face whiten. She opened her mouth to speak and nothing came out.
‘I…I…well,’ she finally managed to say in a voice she didn’t recognise as her own, ‘I didn’t because it’s a ridiculous idea.’ As if to lend edge to what she had said, she laughed hysterically, a little too hysterically.
Someone came to remove her soup bowl and she was aware of Curtis telling him to wait a while before he brought the next course. The instruction was accepted with a deferential nod. Tessa watched all this through a haze of sickening panic.
‘It’s not a ridiculous idea,’ Curtis said quietly, leaning forward so that his elbows were on the table and the space between them was diminished to suffocating proportions. ‘You’re not the kind of girl to sleep with a man for no better reason than she wants to test the water or have a bit of fun. You’re the kind of girl who sleeps with a man because she’s involved with him, because her heart tells her it’s the right thing to do.’
‘I thought we’d established that,’ Tessa muttered uncomfortably. ‘Which is why I wasn’t interested in a fling with you…’
‘We established that,’ Curtis agreed. ‘Which made me wonder why you slept with me in the first place…’
Tessa’s struggle to deny the truth collapsed. And she didn’t even feel angry with him any more. She still wondered what he had had to gain by coming here, by cornering her, but even that curiosity was a pale shadow compared to her own sense of utter defeat.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Did you think that this would be unfinished business unless you happened to drag the whole truth out of me?’ She gave a short, mirthless laugh, but her eyes stung from the pressure of unshed tears and her fingers were compulsively twisting the serviette on her lap. ‘Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we? After all, Curtis Diaz is a man who always finishes business, isn’t he? Even though this could have waited! So I’ll help you out here. Yes. I didn’t mean to and I knew that it was stupid, but once your heart starts galloping down a certain path, then it’s impossible to catch up with it. I fell in love with you. Against all my better judgement, I fell in love with you and you’re absolutely right. That’s why I slept with you, because it just felt right. My only saving grace was that I knew from the word go that you weren’t looking for a relationship. But I stupidly thought that maybe I could just enjoy something temporary. Thinking that you and Lucy were going to become an item made me realise that I couldn’t. So, there you go, Curtis. Happy?’