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His laugh was a harsh dismissal. “I? Lied to you?”
“You told me you loved me,” she said softly, fixing him with a direct stare. “That you were in love with me. No man could simply forget about a woman he loved, as you claim to have done with me.”
His eyes narrowed assessingly. “You killed what I felt for you. It died, instantly, when I realized that I never even knew you. I am not a fool, Ava, yet you would have turned me into one.”
“You did know me,” Addie whispered urgently. “You knew everything about me except my dam
ned name..!”
He lifted his hand and tapped his fingers, as if to enumerate. “Your name, where you live, where you work, who you are. I knew nothing about you.” He took a step closer suddenly and his expression was one of barely-contained fury. “You deceived me every moment we spent together.”
“It wasn’t like th…”
“Suficiente!” The word was scathing. “No more! No more lies. No more excuses. No more discussing. We were over a long time ago and I have no interest in rehashing our failed relationship.”
Addie had told herself she would be strong. That she would calmly explain, without giving away too much information, that she needed his help. That it would be a loan. She would repay him. She was banking everything she had on the rehab succeeding and her mother no longer proving to be such a dire strain on their meager resources. Within a couple of years, she hoped, she would be able to return the money to Guy.
She had prepared for this like a business meeting. Hell, she’d even brought pay-slips so he could see that she did have a job. That she was working sixty hour weeks to try to get ahead. She’d budgeted what she could repay him per week and drawn it up in a table.
But damn it, she’d been expecting Guy as he’d been then. Before that awful night when an inadvertent meeting had led to her secret being blown wide open.
The sting of tears clawed at her throat and she looked away, her gaze falling intently on the street that ran to the right. Enormous trees, each decorated with dainty fairy lights, stood proud and green against the twilight sky.
“I didn’t come to talk about us.”
“I’m glad. I have no interest in wasting my time in meaningless conversations. So? What is it, Ava?”
She winced at that name. How she’d come to hate it!
“Dios mio! You have flown to Madrid and come to my home…” he paused, his eyes dragging over her speculatively. “How did you know where to come? Where I live?”
Pink suffused her cheeks at the sense that she’d crossed an invisible line. That she’d not only lied to him, she’d stalked him.
“I paid attention to things you said,” she muttered. “It wasn’t hard to work it out.”
“Like the talented scammer you are,” he said with mock approval.
She whipped her head around to face him. “No. Like a woman in love.”
Colour drained from his features momentarily and then he laughed. “You must need something substantial from me, to be carrying on with your charade, even now.”
She swallowed, her eyes giving away the truth of his statement when it was on the tip of her tongue to deny it.
“Let me guess,” he crossed his arms over his broad, muscled chest. “You need money.”
Addie’s breath was squeezing out of her. She met his eyes but couldn’t hold his gaze when she saw the derision bouncing back at her. The judgment. The disrespect.
It physically pained her to have the man she’d loved looking at her in such a manner.
“Well, Ava? Spit it out.”
She had come so far. She’d used all her savings. And he was offering to give her a hearing, at least. Her pride was already in tatters. What point did she have for it now?
“A loan,” she whispered.
His lips compressed, his face angry. “What?”
“I came to ask for a loan.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. She stared at a point over his shoulder, her blood gushing hard and fast through her slim frame, vibrating in her veins with its tsunami-like rush.
