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They’d reached the small bridge, the stream below, iced at the edges, leaving just a trickle of moving water. He pulled her to a stop, forcing her to face him, but didn’t let go of her hand.
‘What happened last night...’ he began, but she cut him off.
‘No, not now.’ She didn’t want to hear his admission that he’d never meant it to happen, that he’d never intended to make love to her with such passion, because that would be too painful. Last night should have been about just one night. A fling. But she’d let passion rule and with a start she realised she had fallen in love with him.
She had no idea how it had happened, how her feelings had turned to something so powerful, but they had. Now she had to block that out, stop the surge of love that had flowed through her. And she would.
‘Yes, now, Natalie.’ He touched his free hand to her cold face, shocking her into looking at him. ‘Last night needs to be discussed—right now.’
‘No, it doesn’t. It happened. That’s all we need to say.’ She pulled herself free and walked away as best she could through the snow. The shrill call of a blackbird startled by her sudden movement made her falter and he caught hold of her again.
‘Don’t walk away from me, Natalie.’ The gruff harshness of his voice shocked her as it seemed to echo in the snow-covered branches above them.
‘It doesn’t matter if I stand here or walk away, Xavier. Nothing will change what happened. There is nothing we can say that will change that.’
‘Or the fact that it shouldn’t have happened?’ At first she thought he was stating a fact, but the inflection of those last words changed it to a question. Or was that just his accent?
She looked at him, all the fight that had bubbled up inside her evaporating, but he was right. Question or statement, last night should never have happened. Just as she should never have kissed him on New Year’s Eve, they should not have spent last night like lovers. They weren’t lovers and never could be.
‘Last night was a one-off, Xavier. A fling,’ she said firmly, looking directly into his eyes, her strength returning with every breath she took. She’d been scared and had sought comfort in his arms, but had found so much more. She shouldn’t have let her romantic fantasy carry her away, sweeping to one side her ability to think rationally.
* * *
Xavier looked down into her face, watched as the nervous hesitation in her eyes turned to sparks of determination. There were things about last night he regretted, like the fact he’d revealed far too much about himself, but not for one moment did he wish they hadn’t enjoyed the passion that had flowed between them. He didn’t regret making love to her, making her his.
‘A night with a beautiful woman in my arms is not something I am prepared to apologise for, but I can see you would rather it hadn’t happened.’
‘We were seduced by the moment,’ she said quickly, barely acknowledging his last words. ‘Can you honestly say that if we had met at a party in London, we would have spent the night together?’
The reality of those words weren’t lost on him. The fact that they were true didn’t help. It would never have happened.
‘I used you...used last night,’ she continued boldly. ‘I was proving to myself I could move on and now I know I can.’
He let her go, moved away from her, the temptation to kiss her, to taste her lips beneath his just one last time snatched away by her revelation.
‘Then we both got what we wanted.’ The roughness of his words shocked him.
He hadn’t been seduced by the moment, he’d been seduced by her, by her kiss on New Year’s Eve, which had been more than just a kiss. It had held the definite promise of more, much more. But there had been something else too, something new, something he’d never felt before, and it had stirred emotions he’d thought dead.
For the first time he’d caught a glimpse of a happy future. He’d seen it, tasted it. It would never be possible, not now she’d made it obvious she didn’t want him, that he’d been a chance opportunity to chase away the memory of another man.
If any other woman had told him that, he’d have been relieved, but hearing Tilly say it cut painfully into his slumbering emotions. It didn’t alter the way he felt about her. If he didn’t know better, he’d even go as far as to say it might be close to deeper feelings, the sort he’d vowed not to allow into his life because of his guilt over Paulo’s death.
