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‘She has her reasons.’
‘Your medical condition?’
Lulu’s heart began to speed up.
‘I’d like to go to my room right now, if that’s all the same to you.’ She sounded curt even to her own ears. ‘It’s been a long day.’
‘Lulu—’
‘No,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘This is not your business.’
To her confusion he looked as if she had slapped him, when all she’d been trying to do… What had she been doing? Didn’t she want to change things? But it was so hard, Lulu thought as she followed him closely up the stairs, when your mind and body betrayed you at every turn.
‘This is your room,’ he said at the top of the stairs, opening the door for her.
‘The thing is,’ Lulu blurted out, ‘when I was looking to push my life in a different direction I didn’t factor in pregnancy.’
He leaned back against the door frame. ‘It wasn’t exactly on my radar.’
No, she guessed not.
If the latex hadn’t split would she even be with him right now? It was a confrontational thought. Just because he’d come looking for her the night before last it didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t used any words to her that had even hinted at them pursuing anything beyond the weekend.
He raked a hand through his tousled chestnut hair, stepping closer to her as if he wanted to take things in another direction, and the masculine scent of him tugged on all those new sexual responses she had to him.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Lulu bit her inner lip. The urge to confide was very strong. To tell him what was going on with her…to share a little of the struggle she faced on a daily basis. But, given he wasn’t interested in trying a relationship with her, it was probably not a good idea.
She knew now that she’d misread everything on the eve of Gigi’s wedding.
Sex was part of Alejandro’s normal life—it wasn’t some big deal. She didn’t have a normal life—let alone a sex-life—and somehow in her inexperience she had made it into something it wasn’t.
They were both doing the right thing: waiting for confirmation together. It was good of him to put her up in his home, but it didn’t mean she should be holding him hostage to her issues.
It was the house that had thrown her. Managing the space. She couldn’t share any of that with him. She couldn’t share it with anyone.
Lulu had never felt more alone.
‘There’s nothing to talk about, is there? We don’t know yet—it might all be worry for nothing.’ She needed to get out of his sight before she burst into tears. ‘I’m really tired, Alejandro…’ She turned away. ‘Let me go to bed.’
Alejandro found himself standing alone in the hall, staring at Lulu’s closed bedroom door.
There wasn’t anything more to say, was there?
He’d learned long ago that trying to help someone who didn’t want to be helped was a dead-end road. He’d tried to help his mother, and then his sisters to launch their lives free of the estancia, but it had earned him nothing from the girls but requests to butt out.
He didn’t open himself up like that any more. He’d offered support—Lulu didn’t want it. There wasn’t much more he could do.
He’d seen her face as they drove up. The way her features had frozen to mask her disappointment. He knew now he should have left her at the hotel.
She’d made it obvious she was uncomfortable here. He had vivid memories of long before his ex-wife had made it clear she hated it there—of his mother, dropping them at the house and then tearing back up the drive in a cloud of dust. But worse had been the times his grandfather had insisted she remain, when she’d closeted herself away in her rooms, from which she’d refused to emerge.
Sí, eyeing Lulu’s closed door brought back many memories. None of them good.
He turned away abruptly. He didn’t need reminding.
*
