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‘Believe what you like. There isn’t a future for us. You never wanted what we shared to continue. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave.’
She moved towards the front door, desperate for him to leave. All she wanted to do was give in to her grief. The man she loved would never love her. She’d been nothing more than entertainment on a cold winter night. If his family had arrived as planned there was no way she and Xavier would have spent the night together.
‘No, Natalie.’ He spoke firmly but still managed to caress her name, taunting her with the use of it. She closed her eyes against the memories that soft and seductive tone released. She couldn’t remember now. She had to be brave and strong. ‘Lo non lascio.’
Tilly’s heart sank. Did he have to use his first language? She tried to think through the fog of confusion, trying to recall her childhood Italian. He wasn’t leaving. Well, she wasn’t going to stand here and be tormented by him.
‘You will leave. Right now.’ She folded her arms, whether to protect her heart or stop herself from reaching for him she wasn’t sure.
Xavier moved towards her, his dark eyes intense. They made her feel as if she was the only woman in the world he wanted. But she knew that wasn’t true. ‘I don’t want to leave you, Tilly.’
Please, she wanted to shout as he spoke again in Italian. It sounded so romantic, so seductive, but she knew it wouldn’t mean what she wanted it to—that he wanted her, loved her.
She was so distraught by his presence that she couldn’t fathom the fast-flowing words, couldn’t decide what he’d been saying. All she knew was that he had to leave. Right now.
‘Just go, Xavier. I don’t want to hear what you have to say, no matter what language you use.’ She turned her back on him and strode to the window, looking out over the grey London street.
* * *
Xavier walked to the door of Tilly’s flat, total desolation filling him. He’d almost poured his heart out. Unable to think in English, he’d told her in Italian, which he knew she could understand, that he was not going to walk away from the woman he loved. But her insistence that he leave had numbed him, making speaking in any language impossible. She’d even turned her back on him.
He couldn’t go. He couldn’t leave her. Sofia’s advice drove him on and he strode over to where she stood, resolutely staring out. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Natalie, not without saying what I have to say about us.’
She turned to look at him, her face upturned and the blue of her eyes so vivid it was like being at sea on a summer day. ‘There is no us. Never has been and never will be. I was your hired help. We should never have done what we did. It was wrong. Wrong on every level.’
‘Not after the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, you weren’t my hired help. And what is so wrong with passion?’
‘Nothing.’
He narrowed his eyes as she looked up at him, defiance in every breath she took. She was so beautiful he wanted to lower his head and claim her lips once more, to bring that passion back to life until it consumed them completely.
‘Then why hide from it? Why don’t you allow it into your life? What are you afraid of, Tilly?’
He touched her arm in a gesture of concern but she flinched and stepped back from him. He was losing her—and he couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t lose the only woman he had ever loved. The only woman he would ever love.
‘You are the one hiding, not me,’ she said calmly, and frustration zipped around his body. He’d never thought telling a woman he loved her would be so difficult.
Her words were true. He was hiding, or rather avoiding the issue. He knew he was sidestepping the moment he had to put his heart on the line and tell her he loved her, that he couldn’t live without her. He would be exposing all his vulnerabilities, exposing himself to her rejection. Was that why he couldn’t form the words in English? Because he knew for certain she would understand?
‘I’m not hiding from anything.’
‘All the time you were at the manor you hated the Christmas tree and everything it represented. If I’m hiding from passion then you too are hiding from something.’
‘You are right,’ he said, and let out a deep breath. She had to know everything, from the nightmares that haunted his sleep to the love he felt for her. He had to tell her now, because he sensed this was the last time he would ever see her, that if he didn’t say something now she would shut him out of her life completely—and he wasn’t about to stand by and allow that. ‘Maybe we should talk over dinner?’
