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‘And I hated you back.’
She closed her eyes. ‘So stop this car and let me out. While we’re both still relatively sane.’
He gave a short laugh. ‘I think sanity deserted us both that night we met on the beach.’
‘We should never have married—’ She muttered the words, wanting him to deny them but knowing that he wouldn’t. Zander had been involved with some of the most beautiful women in the world. Why had she ever expected him to stay faithful to her?
‘But we did.’ His eyes glittered and she closed her eyes, a vision of being Zander’s lover exploding inside her brain with a vividness that was as disconcerting as it was unwelcome.
‘Our relationship was a disaster.’
‘Our relationship was fine until you slept with Farrer.’
She flinched. ‘I did not sleep with Tom!’
‘You were in bed together.’
She looked at him in outrage, wondering how he had the nerve to accuse her of being unfaithful when he’d been the one sleeping with another woman.
‘It’s true that I kissed him,’ she confessed finally, ‘but we never slept together. We’ve only ever been friends. I kissed him because I wanted to hurt you the way you’d hurt me.’
There was a loaded silence and when he finally spoke his voice was cold. ‘Why did you want to hurt me?’
Because she’d expected fidelity and what she’d been given was betrayal.
This was the time to tell him what she’d seen. To tell him why she’d rushed to Tom. To tell him just how much he’d hurt her.
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. What was the point? It was all five years too late.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she said wearily. ‘But for the record, I never had an affair with Tom. And it was me that kissed him, not the other way round. I wanted you to think it was something more.’
His eyes hardened. ‘You were in each other’s arms.’
‘We were friends. I was upset. He was comforting me.’
‘We were lovers,’ Zander shot back relentlessly, his mouth set in a grim line. ‘If you needed comfort then I should have been the one comf
orting you.’
But he’d been the cause of her distress. But she’d never once confronted him with his infidelity. And after that ghastly moment when he’d walked in on her and Tom her whole life had unravelled with alarming speed.
‘There is nothing between Tom and I.’
For Tom’s sake, she wanted to get that straight. The rest of it didn’t matter any more.
‘The guy is in love with you.’ It was a statement of fact, delivered without a shred of emotion, and Lauranne shook her head.
‘You’re so wrong.’
Maybe Tom had been a little bit in love with her at one time, but there had never been anything between them.
Zander stared back at her, lean fingers tapping rhythmically on his muscular thigh. ‘I used to notice him watching you.’ His tone was conversational but something in his eyes stopped the breath in her lungs. ‘If you hadn’t been so fond of him I would have blacked his eye eight weeks earlier.’
Her heart was thumping so hard she was aware of every beat. ‘You’re an animal—’
‘You were mine.’
For endless seconds they stared at each other and Lauranne felt a treacherous warmth spread through her veins. What was wrong with her? His possessive statement felt good when it should have felt bad, the sheer force of his personality melting a resolve that should have been as hard as steel.
