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but I felt I'd asked for what I got '
'You owed him nothing. He knew about me before he married you. You gave him a free choice. What choice did he give you?'
She wiped shakily at her overflowing eyes. 'None,' she conceded.
'He lied by omission. He deceived you. Why do you still seek to defend him at your own expense?' She was stunned when she felt his arms close round her. Momentarily she went rigid. Carlo drew her firmly back into the hard heat of his powerful body. 'Don't cry.. .1 can't bear it when you cry,' he said roughly.
'I thought I loved him,' she mumbled fiercely. 'I grew up thinking I loved him and I would have trusted him with my life. Not much of a judge of character, was I?'
'You were very young and I was arrogant,' Carlo breathed. 'I never once thought of how you must have felt that day. I couldn't believe that you would still marry him. You said that I never thought of the damage I was causing... you were right. I only thought of winning.'
'Why are you being so understanding?'
Turning her round, he studied her with intent golden eyes that glittered with all-male satisfaction. 'It takes an accomplished liar to recall her lies,' he murmured with fierce amusement. 'Four days ago you lied to me after I made love to you... why did you lie?’
Too late, she remembered her denial of her own inexperience. Her pallor was put to flight by hot colour.
'You were a virgin. Why pretend otherwise?'
'I felt I owed that to Simon's memory,’ she whispered, stiff with mortification.
'And maybe you didn't want to give me the pleasure of knowing that I was the first,' Carlo completed shrewdly, but he smiled none the less.
The one lie she could tell Carlo and be magnificently, generously forgiven for, she realised dazedly. Why had she ever thought he would laugh when she told him about her unconsummated marriage?
The joy of conquest had just been made all the sweeter for Carlo. On that level, Carlo was primitive. She
understood him perfectly. She had never belonged to any other man in the physical sense. On Carlo's terms that meant she belonged that much more to him. All jealousy was magically banished. Simon had not, after all, managed to take what Carlo had regarded as his by right six years ago.
'Let's go down to the beach,' Carlo suggested softly.
In bemusement she blinked. 'The beach?'
'This house suffocates me.'
A rueful grin slowly tilted her mouth. 'You want me to go down to the beach got up like this?'
Carlo flipped her round and suggestively ran down the zip.
Breathlessly she tugged a shocking pink sundress from the closet and slid her feet into flatties. She felt extraordinarily carefree as she walked out on to the terrace to join him. Carlo had changed into jeans and removed the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket beside the bed.
He dropped an arm round her bare shoulders. 'Come on,’
'What did you do with that shoe I left behind six years ago?' she heard herself ask. She had always wondered.
'It's about somewhere.'
'Oh.'
'Did you think I might have had it dipped in pure gold and placed in a glass case?' he teased.
'It was one of my favourite shoes.'
'What did you do with the one you had left?'
'Dumped it.'
'There you are, then,' Carlo mocked. 'I was more sentimental than you were.'
