A heart full of hate had no room for love and she needed his love.
“Why are you defending him?” he asked sounding both confused and strangely wounded by her words.
“I’m not.” She laid her hand on his thigh in comfort. “I’m trying to make you see reason.”
“In what way?”
“Revenge can consume you and I don’t want you consumed.” She pleaded with him with her eyes, hoping he would read the message there and heed it.
He gave her one of the slashing smiles she’d come to adore. “Don’t worry, it’s almost over and the only thing that consumes me lately is when I get to make love to my beautiful wife next.”
“I want that to be true.”
“It is. Believe me when I say I spend a lot more time thinking about you than anything else.”
That was a huge admission and she gave it the response it deserved, standing up to kiss him with all the passionate love beating in her heart.
CHAPTER TEN
“TARA?” They were naked, snuggled against each other on the oversized reading chair in the far corner of the study with their legs entwined and stretched out on its matching ottoman.
Angelo had responded to her kiss with flattering enthusiasm, locking the door and then proceeding to demonstrate just how much he thought about her during the day.
She nuzzled his hair roughened chest. “Mmmhmm?”
“Why was your breakup with Randall so public?”
The languorous aftermath of their lovemaking dissipated like the steam on a latte. This wasn’t something she’d talked about to anyone, even her mom. It had hurt too much.
He rubbed her back soothingly. “I’d really like to know.”
“At first, it wasn’t. Baron told me he was getting married, but that he wanted to keep our relationship going.”
“You said no.”
“Right. Up to this point, everything had been pretty low-key between us media wise. The apartment we shared was in the suburbs, we didn’t do high profile dating. I thought I was safe from the paparazzi and their blood sniffing.”
“Something had to happen to change that.”
“It did. I had a couple of friends, or at least they were women I thought were my friends, from the modeling community. They sold the story of my affair with Baron, along with some embellishments, to the press after his marriage was announced. When it became obvious he’d been sleeping with me while courting her, he had to do damage control.”
It was Angelo’s turn to go stiff, his palpable fury enveloping her. “Painting you as his sexpot mistress who wouldn’t listen to the word no, was it?”
“Yes.” She sighed, the pain of her friend’s betrayal and Baron’s willingness to destroy her good name to protect himself only a dull ache, but still there as a reminder to what a naïve fool she’d been. “It hurt so much.”
“Because you loved him?”
“Because both he and my so-called friend betrayed me, devastating my life and for what?”
“Money?”
“Right, but it didn’t do any of them all that much good. The two models are working fifth string trunk shows and hardly living the high life. Baron’s divorcing his wife. Their betrayal didn’t take them as far as they expected it to, I bet.”
“What?” His hold on her tightened and he went on before she could answer his question. “How do you know about Randall’s divorce?”
“He called me.”
“He called you?” Angelo’s fury was incandescent now. He sat up, pulling her up so he could see into her face. “Why the hell didn’t you say something?”
She frowned at his over the top reaction. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Of course it mattered.”
“No. It didn’t. Listen, Angelo, Baron might have some idiotic notion about renewing ties, but I wasn’t interested.”
“You told him no.”
“Do you think I would be married to you if I hadn’t?”
“What else did he say?”
“He warned me off you as a matter of fact.”
Angelo looked a little gray around the edges and she thought that was sweet.
“Don’t worry about it. His opinion is the last one I would take on relationships.”
“What did you say to him?”
“To leave me alone and then I hung up.”
“If he calls again, I want to know about it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t go all macho controlling on me, Angelo. I’m a grown woman and no one, not even you, is going to boss me around.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
They’d played a variation on their favorite game the night before with him doing the directing. She hadn’t minded one bit, particularly when she’d gone to sleep so sated and exhausted she’d had a hard time waking up when their alarm went off that morning.