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His face tightened into grim resignation. His eyes dulled with weariness. ‘On your honeymoon,’ he replied, each word a heavy drip of despair. ‘On your wretched honeymoon with Brett.’
Natalie shuddered as the apt description struck home, stirring all the memories of painful confusion and disillusionment that summed up her honeymoon with Brett. The revelations rebounded on the intimacy she had just shared with Damien. She suddenly felt dirty and shamed and hurt and wounded. The compulsion to cover her nakedness was compelling, overwhelming.
She whirled and almost ran to the bathroom, remembering the robes hanging behind the door. She couldn’t bear to hunt the floor for her clothes. Such a reminder of her utter abandonment to Damien Chandler was humiliating. In this place...of all places! How could she have chosen it?
‘Natalie...’
She ignored the imploring call, plucking a bathrobe from its hook, frantically pulling the belt apart, thrusting her arms into the long floppy sleeves, wrapping the heavy towelling fabric tightly around her in a fierce need to be properly covered.
But there was no hiding from the man who had brought her here, the man she had shared a honeymoon bed with, the man whose influence was so pervading and inescapable. She stepped out of the bathroom, her head tilted high, her hands thrust into the deep pockets of the bathrobe.
‘Yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘It was a miserable honeymoon with Brett. As miserable as any woman could have. And apart from Brett himself, you had more to do with it, Damien, than any person alive.’
She glared at him, her mind flooded with black resentment of the perfection he had promised. ‘How can you ever be forgiven?’
CHAPTER NINE
DAMIEN’S expression underwent a profound change. His eyes kindled with fiery determination. He rose from the bed with all the bristling pride of a man whose honour had been challenged. He was totally unconcerned by his nakedness as he strode down the room. He scooped his jeans from the floor and drew them on as though girding his loins for battle. Steely grey eyes pinned Natalie to where she stood by the bathroom doorway.
Not that Natalie wanted to move any closer to him. Damien Chandler had a lot to answer for. Outrage burned through her stomach, turning the desire she had felt for him to blistering bitterness. He had known what memories Merlinmist held for her, and he had let her make the decision without saying a word to stop or discourage her. Had there been some lurking subconscious thought that she would regain her memories in such a horrible fashion? What kind of man did that make him?
&n
bsp; ‘Now, tell me, Natalie...’ he stood with his arms hanging free, his torso bare, aggressive in its raw muscular power ‘...what possible blame can you lay at my door for what happened on your honeymoon with Brett? I wasn’t here. I am not responsible for...’
‘You were here,’ she cut in fiercely. ‘Every minute of every day you were here. It was because of you Brett chose this place for a honeymoon. Not to please me, but to best you, Damien. He beat you so he could boast about it to you.’
‘That is not...my...fault,’ Damien bit out, his eyes as sharp as scalpels, intent on slicing to the heart of her retreat from him.
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I hated you before I came to know you.’
‘What did I do to deserve such prejudice?’ he demanded.
She stared at him, her mind tunnelling back to her wedding-day... Brett’s best man...his best friend and business partner...Damien Chandler...charming, courteous, faultlessly correct in his behaviour towards her, yet holding an aloofness that denied her entry into his personal world. That hadn’t worried her at the time. She had had Brett. At least, she’d thought she had Brett. She didn’t know then that Damien was the centrifugal force around which Brett’s life spun, that she was a pawn in a competition, giving Brett a leading edge over Damien.
‘You knew all about it, Damien,’ she stated with unequivocal conviction. ‘You knew Brett a lot better than I did.’
‘What a man knows of another man is not what a woman knows of him, Natalie,’ he argued. ‘From what Brett told me, you were the perfect woman for him, and from what I observed on your wedding-day you were very much in love with him.’
‘But that wasn’t all you observed, was it?’
There was a flicker of evasion in his eyes. ‘What are you referring to?’
‘You knew what a womaniser Brett was. He didn’t even have the discretion to keep by my side at the wedding reception. The only time you engaged me in conversation, at length, was when Brett went missing with one of your married friends. You should remember her, Damien,’ she said with biting sarcasm. ‘I asked you her name. It was Rhoda Jennings.’
‘She was...the wife of a friend,’ he replied stiffly. ‘A gushing flirt...particularly after a few drinks. She meant nothing to Brett.’
‘You covered up for him. You deliberately moved in and covered up for him while he...bonked is the word, isn’t it?...another woman on our wedding-day.’
His head jerked in a pained negative. ‘I couldn’t believe he’d do it. I still don’t know if he actually did. Why would he do such a thing when he had you?’
‘You stopped me from looking for him.’
‘I wanted to protect you from any needless upset. Brett had finished with Rhoda months before. Slipping off with her could have been a stupid impulse he’d quickly think better of. I hoped...it worried me...but I didn’t know for certain, Natalie.’
‘You protected him. Or tried to. You were two of a kind...’
‘I disagreed violently with some of the things Brett did.’ Damien was clearly disturbed by the course the conversation was taking. ‘But I don’t feel I have to disown someone because I violently disagree with them.’
