‘Luis—no!’ she cried. The look he sent her had her scrambling off the bed. ‘You don’t understand!’
‘What’s to understand? I’ve noticed the pattern here. Have you noticed it?’ he rasped. ‘You run; I follow. You take the sex. You run again—or in this case you kick me out.’
‘I don’t mean it to be like that—’
‘No?’ He released a hard laugh, dragged on a pair of pale chinos and zipped them up. ‘I’ve offered to marry you—again,’ he delivered. ‘I’ve offered to save this bloody awful place. I’ve given you the sex! Who is the fool here, do you think? You or me?’
This time she didn’t answer. Reaching out, he picked up a white T-shirt and dragged it on over his head.
‘And of course I must not forget that you have other options now,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Enrique Ramirez has seen to that.’
‘Y-you said—’
‘What did I say?’ he lanced at her, ignoring—refusing—to see the way she was standing there naked, shivering, face as white as the worn sheet on the bed. ‘That I would sell you out to the Alagoas Consortium if you tried to pay me back? Do I really come over to you as the kind of bastard who would do that to you?’
Without wanting a reply, he ripped out a sigh and went hunting for a clean pair of socks in his bag. He came out with another folded white T-shirt and tossed it at her.
‘Cover yourself,’ he said, as if he hated the very sight of her body now—and turned his back on the next pained look that crossed her face and sat down on the bed to pull on his socks. ‘You married a man old enough to be your father to save all of this once. I would love to know why you could not bring yourself to do the same thing with me.’
‘You are not old.’
‘So you’ve come to prefer older men, is that it? Does their lined and sagging flesh turn you on?’
If only you knew, Cristina thought painfully as she pulled on the T-shirt, emerging from its clean white folds to have her breath catch in her throat at the sight of him. Fully dressed now, and standing at the end of the bed grimly stuffing clothes into his bag, his height and the lean muscle power beneath the casual clothes hit her harder than the sight of him in one of his smart business suits had ever done.
‘You look very much the Latino,’ she remarked helplessly.
‘I am English,’ he declared. ‘To the last drop of my blood.’
‘You never used to deny your Brazilian side,’ she whispered. ‘You—’
‘Well, now I do deny it!’ Rocking her back with a fresh blast of his anger, he swung away from her, then violently back again, hard lines suddenly raking his lean face. ‘Six years ago you rejected me because my Englishness did not appeal to you. You didn’t want to move to England and play the banker’s wife. You did not want to rear English children who would have their natural passions bred out of them.’
Like a machine gun he shot her with all the hateful words she had thrown at him six years ago.
‘Finding out that my real father was a Brazilian does not alter the person I am inside, Cristina. I still am an Englishman who thinks like an Englishman.’ Hard fingers made a tight, stabbing gesture at his head. ‘And I promise you that I will go back to England and marry an Englishwoman, remain this English banker who will rear English banker children, while you—’ he made a gesture of derision ‘—get your dearest wish.’
With that he bent to zip his bag up, cursed when he remembered his soap bag, still languishing in the bathroom, and strode that way, leaving Cristina standing there white-faced and shaken, stripped to the very bones by her own cruel lies.
A shudder raked her slender body, a hand jerking up to cover her mouth in guilt-ridden dismay at the cruelty she had used six years ago to make Luis walk away.
She had mocked his English upbringing, his public school accent and his stuffy banker family. She had scorned his offer of marriage and demanded to know where he had got the idea that what they had was anything but a temporary affair. Cringeing inside, she had listened to her own voice demolish everything they’d spent a whole year cherishing.
Then she had just walked away.
This time Luis was going to do it. And she could see in the hard set of his face as he strode back to his bag that this time he would not come back.
He zipped the bag up again, ignoring her as he straightened and turned for the door.
Oh, Meu Dues, she thought. He was going.
It hit like a thunderbolt. ‘No,’ she wrenched out, and moved like lightning, racing past him to stand with her back against the door. ‘I need you to listen while I tell you something.’
His wide shoulders tensed—his back, his whole body. He did not look into her eyes and she knew—knew—he did not want to look at her ever again.
‘Move out of the way, Cristina,’ he instructed grimly.
‘Please,’ she begged him. ‘You must understand before you go why I cannot marry you!’
Fury leapt in his eyes. He took a step towards her. ‘If you say that to me one more time—’
‘I lied to you Luis!’ she cried out. ‘Everything I said to you six years ago was just one big wicked lie! I never, ever wanted to hurt you. I have always loved you more than anything else in this world! But I am not what you need! Your mother said—’
‘My mother?’ he lanced at her. ‘What the hell has she got to do with this?’
‘Nothing.’ She had not meant to say that. ‘Sh-she loves you.’
‘Great,’ he snapped. ‘So everyone loves me.’ The bag dropped to the floor as he threw out his arms in an arc of blistering contempt. ‘So what am I supposed to say to that life-changing statement, Cristina? Oh, that’s okay, then. Now I don’t mind if you walk all over me!’
‘Don’t shout at me!’ she shouted, on a loud, anguished sob. ‘I need to tell you something and it is hard for me!’
‘Tell me what?’ He was not going to make it easy for her. ‘That you treat me like a football for my own good?’
‘I was pregnant with your baby when you left me to go to your papa’s funeral!’
CHAPTER TEN
THE agonising confession left her lips at the same moment that the weather front moved in. Anton just froze where he stood as the sky blackened around him. Nothing moved on his face—nothing!
Christina was suffering from the opposite. She was shaking all over, her arms wrapping tightly around her body as if they were trying to hold it all in.