AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She didn’t turn to face him, though. She kept her head tilted away, so that he had to crouch down in front of her to see her. “You’re sunburned.”
“Am I?” The words were barely a whisper.
He nodded, and when she still didn’t look at him, he reached for her chin, his thumb and forefinger lifting her to him.
“Who’s Maria?” The words were hollow, but at least she was looking at him.
Guy’s mind worked quickly. She’d been walking to the house. He and M
aria had spoken outside – the only place they could get any privacy; or so he’d thought. So Addie had overheard. Everything?
“Someone I used to … date,” he said, the euphemism a crude descriptor for what they’d been.
“Was it serious?” Addie pushed, pressing her chin into the gap between her knees.
“It was a long time ago.”
“You didn’t know she was coming tonight?”
“It hadn’t occurred to me to check,” he said, as though it didn’t matter.
“Santiago told me about her. He seemed to think I would know who she was, but of course, I didn’t. He told me that you’d loved her though. That she’d broken your heart.”
Guy frowned. “He was exaggerating.”
“But you did love her?”
Guy expelled a sigh. “Maria is irrelevant. There is no sense talking about her. She’s gone.”
“She knew about me.” Addie looked at him and then looked away, pain in her features. “She seemed to think you were using me to fool everyone.”
“Do you think that is true?”
She didn’t answer. “Are you … are you still seeing her?”
He expelled a sigh. “That is nothing but Maria’s ego at play, believe me. She wishes that is why you are here.” He pressed a finger to her chin once more, tilting her face to his. “It has nothing to do with what I want from you, and I think you know that.” The words were hoarse.
She nodded slowly. “You want me to be your mistress.”
His eyes sparked with something like triumph. He felt it deep in his chest. “Si.”
Addie pulled away from him. Her eyes were hollow. “No.”
The word was incongruous; it was the opposite of what he’d been expecting. He looked at her for a moment, allowing the simple denial to find purchase in his mind, but it still made no sense. “No?”
“I don’t want to be your mistress,” she said simply. “Not for any price, nor any time.”
Guy wasn’t convinced. He knew very little about Adeline, except that she’d lied to him before, needing money, wanting it enough to do just about anything. The part of him that was softening to her, that wanted to comfort her, was easy enough to silence.
She had a right to an explanation though, and he saw no reason to hide the truth from her. “I met Maria when I was sixteen. She was – is – a very beautiful woman. Bewitching. It did not matter that she was thirty five to me. I didn’t notice.” His lips curled derisively. “I was, simply… blown away. Lost. I fell for her very much, very hard, without thought. My hormones left little room for thought.” Another derisive twist of his lips. “Ours was a mutual infatuation, all-consuming. I had no idea she was married to one of my parents’ closest friends. That she was married at all.”
“But she knew! She was thirty-five years old and you were still a boy!”
His smile was derisive. “Believe me, querida, at sixteen, I was a man. Or ready to become one.”
Addie was frozen, watching him, and Guy stood abruptly, shoving his hands in his pockets as he looked down the beach. “I swore, the day I discovered the truth, that I would never be in that position again. That I would never love a woman. That I would never leap before I looked.” When he shifted his gaze towards Addie now, it was with anger, once more, like the day in Madrid.
“Until you.” The words came from deep within him. “You made me forget that promise, and it was with you I most badly needed to remember it.”
