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“It created a woman who did not exist!”
“I changed my name,” Emily said, “not who I am inside!”
“You let me think you were someone you are not.”
Emily flung the pillow across the room. “Meaning what? That you got off on showing the world to a little country girl?”
His jaw tightened and she regretted the words as soon as she’d said them. The accusation was all wrong. He’d wanted to make her happy, that was all.
And he had.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said quickly. “I know that wasn’t why you—”
“Perhaps it was. Perhaps that was all this was.”
“No. I don’t believe that.”
He didn’t answer. His expression was stony. Emily took a step forward.
“Marco.” Her voice softened. “Don’t you want to know why I became Emily Madison?” He folded his arms. God, she hated when he did that! “I couldn’
t get a job. I couldn’t get anybody to see me as a real person.”
His lips pulled back from his teeth in a thin parody of a smile.
“Perhaps that is because you are not a real person, Ms. Madison.”
“Dammit, the name is rightfully mine. It’s my middle name. It’s right on my birth—”
“The more you say, the worse it becomes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What does it say on your passport, hmm? Emily Madison? Or Emily Wilde?”
“Emily Wilde. But what—”
“Do you recall handing your passport to my co-pilot when we flew to Paris? He took it to airport security. Strangers read that passport and knew your name was Wilde even as I believed it was Madison!”
She gave a strangled laugh. “How does that even matter?”
How, indeed? Marco knew that she was right. What mattered was that this woman, whom he had believed to be so honest, so innocent, so pure of heart and mind that she was unlike anyone he’d ever known, had made a fool of him.
He, the man who had never needed anyone, had let himself need a woman who didn’t exist.
He’d been had. Scammed. Made a laughing stock, although he sure as hell didn’t feel like laughing.
Marco swung away and walked to the other end of the room. He dug his right hand into his trouser pocket, felt the ring he’d dropped inside it what seemed like an eternity ago. The ring he’d bought for Emily Madison, the woman he’d wanted to be with for the rest of his life.
He stopped, his back to her, and closed his eyes, saw once again the shocked look on Khan’s face, the bewilderment on Laurel’s.
He spun around.
“How could you have done this to me?”
“I didn’t do anything to you.” Emily’s eyes filled with tears. “I love you. I never meant to hurt you.”
“You deceived me.”
