Hawk hadn’t been lying. Angelo looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week, not a mere three days. His cheeks were hollow and lined with strain. His jaw line was shadowed with three days of stubble…it was almost a beard and his jeans and sweater looked slept in. But it was his eyes that were the worst.
They reflected the tortures of the damned in their indigo depths. “I do need you, Tara. More than I can ever say with simple words.”
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Hawk said, as if Angelo hadn’t just made an impossible declaration.
“I couldn’t stay away. I had to see her.” Angelo’s gaze was glued to her face.
“Well, it looks like she’s not faring any better than you.”
“My fault.” Angelo turned away, his proud shoulders slumped. “I should go.”
Hawk said something ugly under his breath. “Don’t be an idiot, Angelo. Does she look like she’ll be better off if you go?”
Angelo turned back. “I had Hawk bring your clothes. If you need anything else…” His voice trailed off, his throat working like he was trying to hold in some intolerable emotion.
“You,” she croaked, unable to let him walk away.
He’d used her and that hurt. So much. But she’d spent three days grieving that pain and there was more here than a man who had callously used a woman to exact revenge. This man was hurting and vulnerable in a way a man like Baron never could be.
“Me?” Angelo asked.
“Stay.”
“Very good.” That was all Hawk said before walking toward the door. When he got there, he looked back at Angelo. “Don’t screw this up. I’m not baby-sitting you through another day of mourning. Men in love give me a stomachache.”
Men in love?
Angelo heard the door click shut, but his attention was fully on his wife. She looked like hell and it was all his fault. He’d hurt the woman he loved and hadn’t even known he loved her until he did it.
How could it have taken Baron’s revelations and their painful impact on Tara for him to realize he loved her?
If he lost her over his own stupidity, his heart would turn to stone. For the last three days, he’d thought it had. He’d hoped she would call, but when she didn’t…when she ignored his calls to her cell phone, he’d known what he’d done had been too heinous for her to forgive.
He didn’t know why he’d come, except that like he’d told Hawk, he couldn’t stay away.
He needed her.
And she did not know it.
She thought he had married her as an act of revenge and he would give anything to be able to deny that claim, but since he had hidden his own feelings from himself with the excuse, it now stood between them like an uncrossable chasm.
Only he had to cross it. Somehow.
He had to reach her and convince her of his love because the alternative was unthinkable.
He’d lived three days in hell and he knew he couldn’t stand one more.
Tara stumbled to a chair and sank into it as she considered the possibility Hawk had been right. That her husband was actually in love with her.
He looked like a man who had loved and lost.
He came forward as if drawn by an invisible string and knelt beside her, but did not touch her. “I’m sorry.”
“You used me, just like he did.” It hurt to talk, her throat was so dry.
She’d left a glass of juice on the small table beside the chair earlier. She lifted it now and drank it down, desperate for the ability to talk this out with her husband.
“Not like him.”
She glared at Angelo, not willing to accept anything less than total honesty. “Yes, like him.”
“He doesn’t feel. I do.”
She shook her head. “You can’t. You married me to keep me away from him.”
“I thought so, yes.” His voice was low, full of anguish. “I wanted him to lose everything he valued.”
“It worked.”
“But I lost more. You never would have gone back to him. I know that now. You are too strong…too smart. Because my motives were wrong, you left me and I don’t know how to get you back.”
“You want me back?”
“Yes.” She’d never heard a single word spoken with so much fervency, filled with such desperation and yearning.
“Because of the baby?”
“Because I love you.” Even now, she could tell the words were hard for him to say.
“You don’t love me,” she whispered in denial, unable to accept that after all the pain and betrayal, he could actually feel what she so desperately wanted him to feel.
“I do. I love you more than my own life, Tara, and I would take back everything I have done that has caused you pain if I could.”