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I tensed where I stood, everything in me resisting. Of course Daisy wanted us to talk. She wanted to know. I’d spent the last day and a half keeping out of her way and keeping my head down, working. When I focused on business it blotted out all the other thoughts and memories clamouring in my brain. Almost.
But now, as much as I wanted to dismiss her and keep on with work because it offered me salvation, I knew I couldn’t. This reckoning had to come at some point. It might as well be now.
I turned around to face her and folded my arms. ‘Fine. Let’s talk.’
She looked at me uncertainly, clearly taking in my aggressive stance. ‘Your grandfather spoke to me this morning,’ she said after a moment.
I jerked back. ‘That was manipulative—even for the old bastard.’
‘Matteo, he wants your forgiveness—’
I could hardly believe that she was taking his side, that this conversation was going to be about him. ‘He’s not going to get it. I don’t want to discuss it, Daisy—and, frankly, it has nothing to do with you.’
She blinked, her eyes full of hurt. ‘Do you really mean that?’
‘I’ve told you my history with that man. It doesn’t give you the right to interfere.’
Her hand came up to her throat. ‘Interfering? Is that what you think I’m doing?’
‘In this? Yes.’ I stared at her flatly, refusing to be moved one inch. One iota.
Daisy drew a shaky breath. ‘I know he hurt you...’ she began.
I made a scoffing sound. ‘You have no idea—and I really don’t want your pity. I certainly didn’t ask for it. Just drop it, Daisy. It has absolutely nothing to do with you.’
‘He wants your forgiveness, Matteo,’ she repeated doggedly, and for once I didn’t like that determined tilt of her chin. ‘Can’t you respect that? Honour it?’
‘No, as a matter of fact, I can’t.’
‘He can’t help it that he wasn’t strong enough to love you the way he should have—’
‘Is that what he told you? What a crock of—’
‘He’s dying—’
‘He really gave you the full sob story, didn’t he? He’s been “dying” for three years.’
Daisy pressed her lips together. ‘You just have to look at him to know this really is it, Matteo—’
‘Then fine. This is it. Good riddance, I say.’
I met her shocked gaze with a flinty one of my own. If Daisy couldn’t accept this, if she couldn’t back down, then fine. So be it.
‘How can you be so cruel?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘To a dying man?’
I opened my mouth to ask her if she knew what he’d done, what he was capable of. But then I didn’t. Because I already knew the answer. She didn’t know because I hadn’t wanted to tell her. And I wasn’t going to tell her now because it was suddenly, glaringly obvious what was really going on here.
We were finished.
The last two weeks we’d been play-acting at marriage, even at being in love, but for all my talk of a real marriage it wasn’t real at all. This was.
‘Daisy, I’m afraid I’m not the man you seem to persist in thinking I am. Some gentle, tender, tortured soul who will take his dying grandfather in his arms and pat his fevered brow, all the while assuring him of my love and good will.’ I locked on her gaze unflinchingly. ‘I’m not that man at all.’
‘You’re a good man, Matteo.’
She sounded uncertain, and that made me ache, which only made me more determined to do the one thing I could.
‘I think we most likely have a difference of opinion when it comes to what we think a good man is. If a good man to you is someone who forgives and loves easily, then I’m afraid you’re sadly mistaken. Deluded.’
