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For a moment her voice wouldn’t work. Anger was clawing inside her like an animal, trying to climb out of a pit. ‘How can you say that?’ she said, her voice high and shaking. ‘We haven’t just been sleeping together. We’ve shared meals; we went to Rome—’
He looked at her incredulously. ‘When I said we were just going to have sex, I didn’t mean that literally. I’m not a Neanderthal.’ Flora blinked. His eyes were staring through her, as though he had already deleted her from his life. ‘But that doesn’t make this a relationship.’
Shock and anger and misery rose in her throat, and for a second she thought she was going to throw up. ‘But what about yesterday and last night?’
‘What about it?’
Watching her eyes widen with shock and hurt, his skin tightened. He’d been right: he’d let her get too close. That was why she was so angry at him now. And that was why he needed to make sure she never did it again. Letting her know that his plan for the resort was off-limits was as good a way as any of proving to her that she was in his life for one reason and one reason only.
She stared at him wordlessly. She knew how hard it had been for him to tell her about his father and stepmother’s treatment of him. So why was he acting now as though none of it had mattered?
A white ball of anger was swelling inside her chest and she swallowed, battening down the pain. ‘Didn’t what happened between us mean anything to you?’
His eyes on hers were cold, incurious. ‘It was just a conversation—’
‘It was not just a conversation.’ She interrupted him, eyes blazing. ‘I told you things about myself, and you told me about your dad and your stepmother. We shared something.’
‘Yes. Too much alcohol and too little sleep.’
The chill in his voice made her feel faint.
‘Why are you being like this?’ She breathed out unsteadily. ‘Something happened between us. I know it did. I felt it, and I know you felt it too.’
Her heart was pounding but she wasn’t going to walk away from this without a fight. Massimo found it difficult to trust. She knew that was why he was in denial about what had happened between them. All she needed was to find some way to make him trust her.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said carefully. ‘I know you want to push me away. And I know why you want to push me away. It’s because you’re scared.’
She took a small step towards him, trying to find the words that would make him see that she would never hurt him.
‘But you don’t need to be. Not any more. Not with me. You can trust me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘That’s what I was going to tell you—’
His face looked glittering and hard and impenetrable, like a diamond. ‘What were you going to tell me?’
For a split second she felt as though she were standing on a window ledge. Fear, thicker and blacker than smoke, filled her lungs and then, shaking her head, she gave a small, strangled laugh.
‘I was going to tell you that I love you.’
He stared at her, the expression on his face so still and blank that she thought he hadn’t understood her.
And then he said slowly, ‘Then it’s probably a good thing that you found those plans now. Keep your love, cara, for someone who wants it.’
He watched her face, saw the flash of pain and knew that he wasn’t being fair or kind. But that simply seemed to wind him up more tightly, and he couldn’t stop the rush of anger rising inside him.
She might trust him, but he sure as hell didn’t trust her—or anyone else for that matter. And he would certainly never trust anyone enough to love them.
It wasn’t his fault.
It was just how it had to be.
And he’d been fair. He hadn’t promised what he couldn’t give. Nor had he lied about what he wanted. And he didn’t want her love. Hell, he’d never even asked for it. Yet now she was trying to make him feel guilty about that!
‘I didn’t intend for any of this to happen,’ he said roughly. ‘You and I. Us.’
Her head jerked up. ‘I thought there was no “us”,’ she said, unable to hide her bitterness. ‘There’s not even really a me, is there? You’re the only one that matters—aren’t you, Massimo?’
She watched him, saw his face close and harden.
‘So when were you going to make yourself homeless?’
