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‘No,’ she whispered, her pulse thready as she denied the older man’s involvement in this.
But Rio was jumping two steps ahead. ‘Was he hoping I’d drop the price if you asked it of me? That the inducement of you in my bed would be some kind of a bargaining chip?’
‘No—no!’ She shook her head violently, repulsed by even the suggestion. ‘He doesn’t know. It’s... Cressida asked me...we’re so alike, you see.’
He stared down at the picture. The woman had long red hair like Cressida—no, like Matilda. Pale skin, and, yes, a wide mouth. But there were differences too. A thousand of them. Though perhaps not to the untrained eye. It was simply that he was the world expert in all things Cressida—no, Matilda.
‘You lied to me.’
She nodded. That was undeniable, something she would always regret. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t make him understand her reasoning.
‘I... I didn’t even know you when I agreed to do this.’
His lips twisted in a cruel smile. ‘You know me now, though, and still you have been lying to me. Why?’
She opened her mouth and closed it again, her eyes shifting to the paper. She stared at Cressida, and the sense of having been betrayed filled the room. Not just for Rio, but for Tilly, too.
Cressida had used her.
Tilly had provided cover for Cressida to do something Tilly would never knowingly have been involved in. Her marriage to this man was a disaster. He’d already cheated on Cressida publicly, joked about getting her addicted to drugs... He was bad news. And now he was Mr Cressida Wyndham.
‘Well, Matilda?’ asked Rio, and the sound of her name on his lips did something odd to her heart.
It squeezed as though a band was being tightened around it. She had dreamed of him saying her name! But not like this. Not with derisive anger and disgust.
She no longer felt bound by secrecy. Cressida’s news was in the papers; there was nothing left to protect.
Except herself.
The idea that she’d taken money so that Cressida could scamper off and marry a man no one in their right mind would approve of made Tilly feel dirty and mercenary. Rio was already looking at her as though she were filth on his shoe; how would he react if he knew she’d been paid? That this was a business deal for her, first and foremost—a chance to profit from a genetic twist of fate that had made her and Cressida twins that weren’t related?
After so many lies, surely honesty had to be the way forward. She needed to trust him enough to tell him the truth. He’d said he loved her. That meant that he loved all of her. What was in a name?
‘Who I am doesn’t change what we are.’ She moved to him with urgency and pressed her hands to his broad, strong chest. ‘I lied about my name.’ Her words were hoarse with urgency. ‘Nothing else. Nothing else.’
Her fingers splayed wide and then his mouth was crushing down on hers with ferocious intensity. His hands pushed at her shoulders, tangling in her hair, and her heart skidded in her chest with a kind of relief she’d never imagined.
It was going to be okay.
This made sense.
She kissed him back and her fingers sought flesh, pulling at his shirt and lifting it so she could run her fingers over his ridged abdomen.
His hands dragged over her sides and she ground her hips against him, needing him, needing to remind him of what they shared. It was a primal imperative, a certainty that she wouldn’t allow him to forget.
Her mouth clashed with his in a fierce meshing of teeth, tongues and lips, angry and desperate. His mouth was demanding and she met his demands, explaining in that kiss that she was still the woman he loved.
He swore into her mouth—a guttural expression of his anger and darkness as he lifted her, hooked her legs around his hips and pushed her back against the wall. His weight held her captive.
She groaned and tasted salt. Sweat? No, tears. Her tears.
‘I love you,’ she promised him through her kisses and her tears, and he pulled away, his hands lifting her from the wall and carrying her through the cabin to his bedroom. The bedroom she’d woken in that morning, feeling that all was right in the world.
His expression was a hard mask of disbelief. He laid her down on the bed—not gently, but not roughly either, just matter-of-factly. Tilly had the sense that he was as focussed on her as he would be a competitor in the boardroom. There was determination in the steel glint of his eyes as he brought his mouth back to hers, as though he was weighing her strengths and weaknesses and developing a plan.
But, for Tilly, this was what she needed. He was angry, and she understood that, but still he wanted her—because he knew, deep down, that there was rightness in what they were. Was he angry at himself for wanting her even now?
He pushed out of his shorts and relief speared through her.
