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She’d just pulled on a cosy bathrobe when she heard the hammering at the door.
Meg froze. Oh, no, no, no. She should have hidden the car. She should have turned off all the lights. She should have— ‘Meg! Maledezione.’ Anger thickened his accent. ‘Open this door right now!’
She didn’t move. Had he come here just to shout at her? Probably. She deserved it, didn’t she? She’d left him standing there. He was a senior consultant and people were expecting him to attend the ball. Because of her, he wasn’t going. Because of her, everyone would be talking.
Braced for him to hammer on the door again, she almost died of shock when she heard the sound of a key in the door. Before she could move, he was at the top of the stairs.
Meg took one look at the thunderous expression on his face and flattened herself against the door of the bedroom. ‘Where did you get a key to my house?’
Dressed in a black dinner jacket that shrieked of expensive Italian tailoring, he looked sensational. And furious.
Guilt ripped through her. ‘Go ahead, yell at me. I know I deserve it. I know I behaved like a coward and I’m prepared to take what’s coming to me. Just do it. Get it over with and then you can leave. You’re all dressed up and it probably isn’t too late for you to find a woman you’d like to take.’
‘You are the woman I wanted to take! But you climbed out of a window and ran across two flower beds.’ He ran his hand over the back of his neck, his handsome face a mask of incredulity and disbelief. ‘What is going on? What is the matter with you?’
Her heart was hammering against her ribcage. ‘Where did you get a key to my house?’
‘Your mother. It was the first place I looked for you.’
‘Then you wasted your time because I’m not going.’
‘I didn’t look for you in order to force you to come,’ he gritted. ‘I looked for you because I was worried.’
Thinking about the lecture she was now facing from her mother, Meg made a sound that was halfway between a sob and a laugh. ‘She had no right to give you the key to my house. She had no right to interfere.’
‘She’s trying to stop you sabotaging every relationship.’ Dino loosened his bow tie with impatient fingers. ‘Why are you sabotagi
ng it, Meg? Explain. Is this to do with Jamie’s father? Or is it that you don’t like my company?’ When she didn’t answer he took a deep breath and tried again. ‘There are banks and safety deposit boxes that are easier to break into than you. Do yourself a favour and drop the self-protection for a few minutes. I’m trying to understand you.’ He undid the first few buttons of his shirt and she wondered if he were doing it on purpose to make things harder for her. Was he trying to remind her about their chemistry?
‘You know I like your company,’ she croaked. ‘It isn’t that.’
‘Then what is going on?’
She’d hurt his feelings. She was a bad person. ‘I don’t blame you for being angry but I honestly don’t know why you would be this angry because it can’t possibly matter to you that much.’
‘I’m not angry,’ he breathed, ‘at least, not with you. If you want to know the truth, I’m furious with myself for not taking notice when you said you didn’t want to go to the ball. Instead of pushing you, I should have asked you why.’
Her heart skittered and jumped. ‘You’re not angry with me?’
‘Exasperated, yes. Puzzled, definitely. Angry? No. How could I be angry? You must be extremely traumatised to be prepared to launch yourself out of the window into a snowdrift to escape me. Am I that scary?’
‘Not you. I wasn’t escaping you. I was escaping the evening.’
He looked at her and shook his head. ‘Are you going to explain any of this to me?’
Meg dragged her gaze away from the bronzed skin at the base of his throat. He deserved an explanation, didn’t he? That was the least she could do after leaving him standing. She took a deep breath, trying to stay calm as she spoke of the past she’d tried so hard to forget. ‘The night Hayden told me he was involved with another woman…’ It was an effort to force the words through the barriers she’d erected. ‘…we were supposed to be going to a ball. I’d just told him I was pregnant and he thought it was important that I know right away we didn’t have a future. That he didn’t want to keep up our relationship. He said that I was wrong for him. That he didn’t want to be with someone like me.’ Her voice thickened and she cleared her throat, desperately choking back tears. ‘Someone who was more at home in the mountains than a nightclub. He said I just wasn’t glamorous enough for him.’
‘Hayden is Jamie’s father?’
Meg’s voice hardened. ‘Well, that sort of depends on your definition of father. Given that he’s never actually seen Jamie, I wouldn’t exactly say he ever really earned himself the title of father.’
‘Right. So we’ve ascertained he’s emotionally impaired, intellectually challenged and monumentally selfish. Did anyone ever diagnose his visual problem?’
‘Visual problem?’ She stared at him in confusion
‘You’re beautiful, Meg.’ Dino stood strong and firm in front of her, not budging an inch. ‘Really beautiful. If he couldn’t see that, he obviously had a visual problem. Myopia? Cataracts?’
‘He just had a thing for well-groomed women. And who can blame him?’ She lifted her head and looked at him, forcing herself to meet his eyes as she revealed the most humiliating part of it all. ‘Do you know the thing that hurt most? The night he told me I wasn’t glamorous enough, I’d really made an effort. He’d wanted to go to this stupid ball and I’d decided that I ought to support him, so I spent ages on my hair and face and I thought I looked good. Until he said that. And just to make sure I knew how far short of the competition I was, he’d brought my replacement in the car with him.’ Meg’s knees shook slightly as she remembered the horror of that moment. ‘She was sitting outside the whole time he broke up with me. He took her to the ball instead. I haven’t been to one since. I decided to stop trying to be something I wasn’t.’
