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“You cared for him, you didn’t love him.” His broad hand cupped her face, his thumb caressing over her swollen lips gently. “You would never have loved him, Maggie. Because you loved me.”
She breathed in roughly as she stared back at him, remembering the nights she had ached for him, dreamed of him. The nights she had cried for him.
“I cared for him,” she repeated. “He wasn’t the man I thought he was, so I wasn’t given the chance to love him.”
She felt him behind her, hard, erect. There was no demand in him though, at least not yet. He smoothed her hair back from her face as he watched her patiently, his gaze velvet-soft, flickering with emotion.
“Wouldn’t have mattered.” The arrogance that suddenly stamped his features moments later had anger simmering inside her. “You loved me, Maggie. You still love me. You married Grant loving another man and you know it.”
She gritted her teeth. She was not going to argue with him. Arguing with him got her nowhere.
“Stop it, Joe.”
His smile was patronizing. “You knew when you married him that you didn’t love him. You loved me. Admit it.”
“Why? So you can gloat? So you know you’ve won?”
“Oh baby, I already know I’ve won,” he growled. “I just want to make certain you know it.”
“I know you have got to be the most infuriating man I have ever met in my life,” she snapped, jerking out of his embrace as she moved from the bed. “You just can’t help yourself, can you, Joe? Being an asshole is so deeply ingrained inside you…”
“I loved you, Maggie.”
His calm, quiet announcement shut her up. She stared back at him in surprise, her eyes wide, the elation she would have once felt overshadowed by more than two years of pain.
“You loved me?”
Maggie watched as Joe flicked the blankets back and moved to the opposite side of the bed. The muscles in his back and lean buttocks flexed as he rose to his feet before turning back to her.
He was aroused. The hard length of his erection jutted forward demandingly. Muscular, hard, and proud, the sheer power in his body had always commanded her attention.
“You seem surprised,” he grunted. “I haven’t had a woman since you left my bed. Do you think it was from choice?”
Of course it wouldn’t be. Joe was highly sexed, a creature of lust when it came to his pleasure. That didn’t mean it was love. Did it? Or could it?
“I think I’m very much afraid you’re playing one hell of a game with me,” she admitted the possibility to herself. “You terrify me, Joe, simply because you hold the power to destroy me in the palms of your hands. And if you’ve already judged me guilty, you wouldn’t hesitate to use whatever weapons you could come by. Even lying.”
His eyes narrowed on her; the distance of the bed between them suddenly seemed much farther and much more difficult to cross than it had been even days before.
“You’re right,” he finally answered. “If I thought you were lying, if I thought you were involved, nothing would save you, Maggie. But I haven’t lied to you. I don’t believe you were involved.”
“You’ve just suddenly found all this love for me that wasn’t there two and a half years ago?” She jerked her long shirt from the floor and pulled it on with shaking hands.
“It was always there, Maggie.” He didn’t bother to pull his sweatpants on, he just stood facing her, aroused and proud and so damned confident she wanted to throw something at him.
Her smile was mocking as she shook her head slowly. “I don’t believe you, Joe.”
A frown jerked between his brows. “Oh, really?”
The dangerous undertone of his voice wasn’t exactly a comfortable sound.
“Really.” Maggie ignored the nerves building in the pit of her stomach as she faced him.
She had never truly challenged Joe, not in anything he said or the parameters of their relationship. Confrontations weren’t her first choice in solving anything, but as she stared back at him she realized that t
his particular confrontation had been coming since he had taken her from the police station.
“You don’t want to do this right now, Maggie,” he warned her quietly. The velvet softness of his voice was a sure sign that his temper was rousing.
