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‘I don’t want to talk about the “arrangements”,’ I snapped. ‘I want to talk about why, for the past five days, you’ve done nothing but have sex with me and leave.’
The muscle in his jaw leapt again. ‘I have work I need to do.’
‘You ignored me, Con,’ I said flatly. ‘Funny how you were able to work years ago in your office and you didn’t mind talking to me then.’
The ice in his expression cracked, another emotion I couldn’t name flickering across his beautiful face. He turned abruptly and strode over to the desk, looking down at the stack of papers neatly piled on top of it. ‘I told you that sex was all I could give you, Jenny. I meant it.’
I stared at his tall figure, his broad shoulders rigid with tension, and part of me wanted to go to him and put my arms around him. But I was also angry, and I couldn’t give in to the need to make him feel better, not all the time. Not if I wanted to close this distance between us.
Because it wasn’t a physical distance, it was emotional. He was pulling away from me and, sure, he’d told me he couldn’t give me love, but he could at least be the friend he’d once been to me. Couldn’t we go back to that? Didn’t I deserve that? Didn’t our baby? What if he pulled away from our child? Would he put this distance between them too?
‘What happened to being my friend?’ I asked, my hands tightly clasped in my lap. ‘You can’t be that either?’
There was a long silence.
‘No,’ he said.
A cold current of shock rippled through me.
Are you really that surprised? He hasn’t been a friend to you since you left Madrid.
‘Why not?’ I asked hoarsely. ‘You never told me why you cut me off. Was it me? Did I do something? Con, I—’
‘No.’ He glanced at me all of a sudden, his gaze fierce. ‘It’s nothing you did. It’s not your fault.’
I felt bewildered. ‘Then...why?’
He looked back down at the stack of papers and placed one hand carefully on top of them, as if to protect them from a non-existent wind. ‘I never spoke to you about my childhood, did I? I never talked about Domingo.’
As soon as he said the words, a knowledge that had always been there twisted deep inside me. He had always been tense when his father had been around, always cold, detached. And, no, he’d never spoken about Domingo, or the twin brother he’d lost at seventeen.
There is probably a reason for that.
‘No, you didn’t,’ I said softly.
‘I did not want you to know. I did not want it to...touch you.’
Foreboding gripped me. Domingo hadn’t been an easy man, and he certainly hadn’t liked me. I’d tried my best to be a good stepdaughter, but he’d avoided me for some reason.
‘What did he do to you, Con?’ I whispered.
‘It’s better if you don’t know.’ His voice was completely expressionless. ‘Suffice to say that I decided long ago it was better for me not to form any...emotional attachments.’
I blinked, taken aback. Then immediately I wanted to know why he’d decided that and what had made him choose something so extreme? But I knew from the look on his face that he wasn’t going to tell me.
So instead I said, ‘Is that why you said you couldn’t give me love?’
‘Yes.’
‘But...you were my friend before,’ I pointed out. ‘What changed? Because something did.’
He turned his head, his black gaze pinning me to the couch where I sat. ‘You did, Jenny. It changed because of you.’
A cold little shock pulsed through me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you never wonder why, for the past four years, I never visited you? Never called you? Never replied to your emails or texts?’
‘Of course I wondered.’ My voice had gone hoarse. ‘I wondered all the time.’
