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‘Everything!’ she cried. ‘You. Me. Us. My job. Our marriage. Where do you want to start?’
He stared at her, his golden eyes reflecting the early-afternoon sun. ‘At the beginning.’ He gave her an infuriating smile. ‘When we got married. Which makes you my wife.’
She gazed at him helplessly. ‘Only I don’t feel like your wife, Laszlo! It still doesn’t feel like a real marriage to me. But even if it did we haven’t been together for seven years. We broke up—remember? And now we’ve crossed a line.’ She bit her tongue. ‘I know couples who split up do end up sleeping together and it’s understandable. I mean, everything’s so familiar and safe and easy.’
Feeling his steady gaze on her, she paused, blushing, for none of those adjectives bore any relation to her intimacy with Laszlo.
She glowered at him. ‘But they have a one-night stand! They don’t have to live and work with each other afterwards. We do—and I don’t even know how to describe our relationship any more, let alone how to make it work.’ She felt a spurt of anger. ‘Everything’s so messy and confusing, and you just stand there and do nothing like it’s all going to just fall into place—’
‘And what are you doing, pireni?’ he interrupted her harshly. ‘I fail to see what you think you’re actually achieving here. You’re just asking me unanswerable questions.’ His mouth twisted. ‘What happened between us in the cottage isn’t the problem, Prudence. You are. You turn everything into an inquisition. Hell, seven years ago you turned our relationship into an inquisition.’
Prudence choked in disbelief. ‘An inquisition? Did you ever stop and think why I asked all those questions?’ She shook her head, bunching her hands into fists. ‘No. Of course not. Our relationship was never about me, was it? It was only ever about you and your needs.’
Misery washed over her in waves and she curled her fingers into the palms of her hands to distract herself from the pain.
‘I asked questions because I wanted answers. I wanted to know you; to understand you. But you made me feel like I was an intruder in your life. When you were there you never wanted to talk and then you’d disappear for days and I wouldn’t know where you were. And you just expected me to put up with it.’
Laszlo shook his head in frustration. ‘Not this again. You knew I didn’t have a nine-to-five job. You knew I sometimes worked away for days at a time. And you knew I’d be back.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Her voice sounded suddenly loud and harsh. ‘I didn’t know that.’
Her whole body was shaking and she stopped, breaking off as she saw from his face just how baffling and irritating he found her insecurities. She bit her lip. She’d had reason to feel like that. Only aged twenty-one she had felt too unsure of his love, too aware of how boring he found any sort of soul-searching, to blurt out her life story.
‘I didn’t know,’ she said again, more quietly this time, for the old pain was welling up, making her hurt inside.
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
His face was like stone and she looked away from it. ‘I know it sounds crazy but I didn’t know that you’d come back. Every time you disappeared I thought that was it. And I couldn’t bear it.’
Laszlo said nothing and she felt the pain inside her spread. But had she really thought he would want to understand now, after seven years of hating her, just because they’d had sex again?
‘Why did you feel like that?’
His voice was so gentle it startled her, and she looked up, half thinking that someone else must have asked the question.
‘Did you feel like it right from the start?’
She nodded slowly, suddenly deprived of speech. Looking up, she saw him frown.
‘But if you felt like that,’ he said softly, ‘then why did you stay with me?’
Prudence sighed. There in that one sentence was why their relationship had ended. For surely he knew the answer to that—just one look at her face had been enough for her Uncle Edmund to guess the truth.
She’d stayed because she’d fallen deeply and desperately in love with him.
Those few short weeks with him had been the most incredible, the most exciting time in her life. Exciting but terrifying, for Laszlo had unlocked a part of herself that she’d denied and feared in equal measure: a part of herself that she’d spent most of her life trying to repudiate or forget.
And here, now, after everything they’d done and said, she was afraid of giving too much away. Or, worse, destroying the memory of their time together, the time when she’d loved him and believed he loved her. Her lip quivered. She might no longer love Laszlo, but part of her still wanted to protect and preserve her memories.
‘Like I said, I was acting a little crazy.’ She smiled weakly.
Laszlo studied her. ‘You were never crazy. Anxious and insistent, yes. And sweet, gentle and sexy.’ His gaze rested on her mouth. ‘Not crazy, though.’ He paused, his eyes cool and unreadable. ‘But why does that mean you didn’t think I’d come back. I mean, I admit I was unreliable. But I was reliably unreliable: I always came back.’
He was attempting a joke and she tried to smile. But instead, to her horror, she felt hot tears sting her eyes and she shook her head.
Laszlo stared at her with a sort of bewildered anger and then his jaw tightened. ‘So you’re saying it’s my fault? I made you feel like that?’
But Prudence didn’t answer; she couldn’t. Not with Laszlo standing so close. He wouldn’t understand her fear, the creeping uncertainty. He was just so certain of himself—so sure and utterly without doubt.
