"Merda." He straightened from the wall and took one step toward her. "You are interested. You're just using good old Gerry as a shield against what you feel for me."
"I feel nothing for you-"
"You are hiding behind a dead man because you're scared of what will happen between us. And it will happen. Let us be very clear about that."
His words hit her like stones. Stones she didn't deserve and didn't want. Stones she couldn't handle. With a shudder, she turned and headed for the door.
With a swift step, he followed. His arm wrapped around her from behind, bringing her to an abrupt stop. "No more running," he breathed into her ear.
Stifling the shiver of response from the touch of his breath and the feel of his heat, she armored herself with resentment and turned in his arms. "What part of no don't you understand?"
"Then make me understand." His ebony stare held hers, prying into her secrets.
Impossible. No one knew and no one would ever know. The years in England, from the moment she was told she was stupid until the moment she'd buried her abusive husband, all those years were frozen in her heart like old bones in ice. The thought of unfreezing even one for this man's scrutiny-
"No," she said softly. "No."
Dante's arm tightened around her and he growled in disagreement.
Those secrets were well hidden and she meant to keep them that way.
But his hold was tight and strong, and she had to find some way to get him to let her go. Once and for all. She'd told herself she would never tell him how much she knew of his betrayal. He didn't deserve to know, didn't have the right to know how devastating his actions had been for her. But if it was the only way-
"All right." She forced herself to look him in the eye. "I'll make you understand."
His grasp went lax in apparent surprise at her unexpected acquiescence. His eyes flamed with immediate victory. Little did he know, this would be his ultimate defeat. "Tell me what he did to you."
Stepping away from him, she folded her arms in front of her, tucking her shaking hands to her sides. "I'd rather tell you what you did to me."
He stilled. "What?"
"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" She chuckled, a hoarse, harsh noise. "Did you think I was that stupid?"
He didn't move, only stood silently, waiting.
"My father has a terrible habit of leaving papers lying about." The cool night air clung to her skin, sending goose bumps up her arms. "Sometimes those papers find themselves into letters. Old-fashioned letters sent by snail mail."
"And?" His one word was cautious, hesitant. As if he were approaching a bomb.
He was. A bomb that would explode any of his hopes for their future together.
"About a year after I got to England." She lit the fuse. "I received a letter from Papa."
He said nothing.
"In it were some papers I don't believe he wanted me to see. He must have shuffled them into the long letter he'd written me." She chuckled again. "The information was very clear. The plane ticket paid for by you. The college entrance exams waived at your request. It wasn't my father's idea to send me to England, was it, Dante?"
The line of his shoulders went taut.
"No, it was your idea." The bomb exploded inside her exactly as it had eleven long years ago.
A pungent, piercing silence descended, leaving only the whisper of the wind and the whooshing of the waves to fill the air between them.
"Si," he finally admitted. "The idea was mine."
The simple admission shocked her. She'd expected a denial, some attempt to shift the blame. "How could you? How could you have sent me away from my home?" The wail came from her broken heart, the heart that had never quite recovered from this blow.
"Lara." He stepped forward, but came to a halt when she shrank from him. "Let me explain."
"This should be good." Before she wept in front of him, she walked past him and headed toward the sturdy oak. She stopped with her back to him, wiping her tears from her face in a quick jerky movement. "Go ahead," she threw over her shoulder. "Try to explain."
"After that night." His voice was cool, yet a strand of desperation ran through his words. "The night of your birthday, I knew I had to do something."
She gasped and turned to stare at his shadowed figure. "More than what you'd already done? More than brutally reject me?"
Moonlight traced his tight jaw. "I would not have been able to stay away from you."
Another shock ricocheted through her, leaving her breathless and speechless.
"I went to your father the next day." One large hand ruffled through his hair. "I told him about the educational opportunities England could give you. I suggested it might be good for you to stay with his English relations for a while."
"You made him feel guilty for keeping me in Italy." The memory of Papa's face as he told her about his plans for her to visit her uncles and aunts came back with painful intensity. Hugo Derrick had been doggedly determined, even in the face of her anguished pleading to stay home.
"Si." He paced away to lean on the wall as if trying to run from what he'd done. "That was the only way I could convince him to let you go."
"You bastard."
Her stark words blasted into the garden. The garden that had once been filled with their laughter and friendship.
"Perhaps." He stared across at her. "I did it with the best intentions, though."
"Really?" She wouldn't let him get away with it. Even if it meant telling him of her painful years. "Your best intentions left me in a cold house in England with relatives who didn't know me and couldn't have cared less about me."
"It was not my intent-"
"Your best intentions put me at Oxford where I wasn't prepared enough to be anything else but a disgrace to my English relatives." The old shame bubbled in her words, making it hard to catch her breath.
His big body flinched.
"Your best intentions," she ruthlessly drove her spiked accusations into him, "had me marry a man because he was the only one who'd been nice to me in the year I'd been in the UK."
"I thought," the desperation in his voice was now palpable, "the experience of going to Oxford would be good for you. I thought going to England would allow you to spread your wings."
"Spread my wings." Her fingers tightened on her arms. "Well, thanks, Dante, for letting me spread my wings these past twelve years."
Straightening from the wall, he moved his shoulders as if taking on a huge weight. "I will admit, it didn't turn out the way I expected-"
Her laugh was hard, jarring.
"However, we cannot go back and change the past." He obstinately pressed on. "We must face what happened and learn from it."
"I learned a lot." She'd learned never to trust a man. After Dante, and then Gerry, she had learned that lesson very well. "That's why I'm sure you and I will never work."
"Just as I'm sure we will." He strode toward her. "You can't let one bad relationship stop you from-"
"Two." She stood her ground. "You and Gerry both taught me well."
"We never had a relationship." He came to a standstill, hovering over her. "Not in the male-female sense."
"Dante." She struggled to find the words, the final words between them. "I am not interested in having any kind of relationship with a man-"
"He's not worth throwing yourself-"
"And even if I were," she forced herself to keep her gaze on his dark visage so he would understand she meant what she said, "the last man I'd pick is you."
He tensed. Then, with the swift move of a practiced hunter, he wrapped a warm hand around her neck and pulled her to within an inch of his face. Her focus dropped to his lips, firm and smooth. They moved, and she experienced the warmth of his exhalation and smelled the cleanness of his breath. "I hear the words coming out of your mouth." His glittering gaze swept over her. "But the mouth itself-"
His touch was soft as a butterfly. He angled her head and moved his lips on hers with a measured, searching taste. Nipping at her, he took advantage of her gasp. His tongue slipped into her, sipping and sucking and pulling her into him.
Trying to keep herself from ceding everything to him, within moments she lost the battle, losing herself in his grasp.