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He released his breath in a hiss. ‘You were only eighteen. You didn’t belong in my world. I didn’t want to hurt you. I also never wanted to make love to anyone as badly as I wanted you that night. I was twenty-seven, but I felt like a middle-aged lecher!’ he gritted abruptly. ‘I didn’t plan to see you ever again.’
‘Have you any idea how many nights I sat up, waiting for you to call?’
‘I knew it.’ He sounded grimly fatalistic. ‘I could feel you waiting and I couldn’t get you out of my head. I also found that I couldn’t stay away from you. I believed that once I went to bed with you I would be cured.’
‘That’s disgusting!’ she gasped.
‘Per Dio, what do you want? The truth or a fairy-tale?’ he slashed back at her in sudden anger. ‘You think it is easy for me to admit these things? The lies I told to myself? That first night in Switzerland—how is it you describe euphoria? You thought you’d died and gone to heaven? Well, so did I, the first time I made love to you!’
The shocked line of her mouth had softened into a faint smile.
‘But naturally I assured myself that I only felt that way because it was the best sex I’d ever had.’
Her smile evaporated like Scotch mist.
‘I was in love with you but I didn’t want to accept that fact,’ he admitted harshly. ‘I hated being away from you but I didn’t want to take you abroad with me. The papers would have got hold of you then.’
‘Would that have mattered?’
‘Seven years ago, cara, you couldn’t have handled a more public place in my life.’ He shrugged in a jerky motion. ‘And I didn’t want to share you with anyone. I didn’t want other women bitching at you. I didn’t want gossip columnists cheapening what we had.’
She lowered her head. ‘And perhaps you didn’t want anyone realising that I had a literacy problem.’
‘Yes. That both embarrassed and angered me.’ He had to force out the admission. ‘But I wouldn’t have felt like that had I known you were dyslexic. I could have been open about that. In spite of that, wherever you were was home for me. If something worried me, I forgot about it when I was with you. I didn’t realise until you had gone just how much I relied on you.’
She was trying very hard not to cry. He pulled her rigid figure into his arms very slowly, very gently. ‘I have few excuses for what I did five years ago. But, if it is any consolation to you, I paid; Dio…’ he said feelingly, ‘I paid for not valuing you as I should have done. If only I’d intercepted you before you left the apartment that morning! I must have missed you by no more than an hour.’
She bowed her head against his broad chest, drowning in the warm masculine scent of him, feeling weak, shivery and on the brink of melting. ‘I hated leaving you.’
‘For a while, bella mia, I too hated you for leaving.’ The hand smoothing through her hair was achingly gentle. ‘It was the one and only time I lost interest in making money. I hit the bottle pretty hard…’
She was shocked. ‘You?’
‘Me. I felt unbelievably sorry for myself. I let everything slide.’
Her brow indented. ‘Drew told me that you almost lost the shirt off your back a few years ago. Was that true?’
‘It was.’
‘Over me?’ she whispered incredulously.
‘I needed you,’ he said gruffly. ‘I missed you. I felt very alone.’
Tears swimming in her eyes, she wrapped her arms tightly round him, too upset by the image he invoked to speak.
‘I picked myself up again because I believed you would come back,’ he shared. ‘When I saw you in the Savoy two weeks ago there was nothing I would not have done to get you back.’
‘No?’ She positively glowed at the news.
‘It was not, however, how I pictured our reconciliation. You shouldn’t have been with another man. You should have looked pleased to see me, instead of horror-stricken. I’m afraid I went off the rails that day,’ he breathed tautly.
‘Did you?’ She smiled up at him, unconcerned.
He frowned down at her. ‘I threatened you. I took advantage of your amnesia to practically kidnap you. You could have been madly in love with Huntingdon and I was determined that you would get over it. When you came round in the clinic and smiled at me, I was lost to all conscience. When I realised you’d lost your memory, all I could think about was getting you out of the country.’
‘You were always quick to recognise a good opportunity,’ she sighed approvingly.
Long fingers cupped her cheekbones. ‘Catherine, what I did was wrong. This week, after I learnt about Daniel and cooled down, which I did very quickly, I felt very ashamed of what I had done. It was completely unscrupulous of me.’
