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“Vitalo Katrakis,” he said, and she frowned slightly.
“I feel like I know you.” She skimmed her eyes over his features with deep concentration.
Hadn’t he thought the same thing? “Perhaps we have been at a similar event, some time or another?”
“I guess that’s possible.” Her frown deepened. “I should get back,” she said, after a moment, her smile wistful.
And his regret grew. He reached out, curving his fingers around her wrist. “Stay the night.”
Her cheeks still glowed pink, and he ached to see her face crinkle with pleasure once more. But she shook her head. “I can’t. I have jobs to do.”
“Jobs?”
“Mmm. Mom will be looking for me.”
“Your mother’s here?”
She pulled a face. “My mother’s the bride,” she said carelessly, standing and turning her back on him, as though his whole world hadn’t just exploded, as though this woman he’d just slept with, the virgin he’d introduced to sex, wasn’t the daughter of Kat and Andrew Howard – two people whose lives he’d been intertwined with in the best and worst of ways.
Nausea rose in his chest and he sat up straighter, his mind spinning over the last ten years, and that relationship.
Bella.
Arabella. God, but Andrew and Kat had always called their oldest daughter Arrie. The diminutive name ‘Bella’ wasn’t what he’d have been looking for, even if he’d thought to look for their child. How old was she? Christ. She’d been a teenager, hadn’t she, when Andrew had died? A little younger perhaps? So there was, what – twelve? Thirteen? – years between them. Christ.
Panic made his skin clammy, his gut clench tight. Guilt, too. Mentally, he swore, every curse he knew, as what he’d done began to wrap around him, making breathing difficult.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the whole virginity thing,” she said, her smile relaxed, her expression one of rueful amusement. “I’d say ‘I meant to’ but honestly, I thought you might stop…”
His eyes were on hers, but he wasn’t seeing her now as his lover. He was seeing her as a mash up of Kat and Andrew, of his best friend and mentor, Andrew, and Kat who’d begged him to become her lover. Kat who’d fallen in love with a twenty five year old Vitalo and begged him to take her away with him.
His stomach clenched hard.
Kat who he’d been determined to obliterate from his mind by having sex with any random woman he could find – and he’d chosen her daughter.
Disgust, guilt, self-recrimination flared inside of him.
“You’re angry again?” She murmured, her face dropping and his guilt exploded to a whole new level.
“No,” he rushed to assure her, pushing out of bed and closing the distance between them. He had to live with what he’d done, she had no idea who he was nor why this was problematic. She didn’t need to carry this angst.
“No,” he said again, his thumb lifting her face to his, his eyes boring into hers and wishing now he didn’t see so much of her father in their almond-shape. “Not angry.”
But he was angry. Furious, all with himself. He’d spent ten years trying to do the right thing by his friend, a man who hadn’t lived long enough – thank God – to know that his wife had wanted to leave him. He’d spent ten years honouring Andrew’s memory and now he’d unceremoniously slept with the man’s oldest daughter.
Bella had zipped up her dress and was straightening her hair. Her mascara was a little smudged but even before his eyes she pulled out a compact and began to neaten her face. He watched as she erased every physical trace of their love-making and he resisted the impulse to swipe the mirror from her hand and take her back to bed.
That could never happen again.
He could never see her again.
This had been one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
He spun away from her, stalking towards the window. It was dark now, the stunning view of the Mediterranean muted, the visage given over to inky concealment.
“I feel like I should thank you,” her voice was soft and breathy, from behind his shoulder.
His chest felt like it was being ripped apart. “Don’t thank me,” he demurred, turning around, fixing her with a level stare. “I don’t deserve it.”
