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‘I said it once...it was a long time ago. It’s the sort of thing you say when you propose.’
‘You were engaged?’ She didn’t laugh but she came close.
‘No, she actually rejected me.’ His lips twisted in a self-derisory half-smile as he recalled the events.
By the time he been brought to the point where he had declared his eternal and undying love in quite a dramatic way, as he recalled, Lucilla could finally afford to be honest about her feelings. She had by that point passed on the information she had been milking him for to the lover he later discovered she had left her husband for. The same husband whose supposed cruelty had filled him with vengeful fury. It was easy to see now why she had been so alarmed when he had announced his intention to confront the guy.
The memory of his younger in-love self, confiding all his hopes and dreams for a future he planned to share with her, made his gut tighten in self-contempt. For a long time afterwards, he’d tortured himself with the thought of her laughing with her lover over his sentimental drivel.
His big romance had been revealed as industrial espionage taken to an extra level. When Lucilla had not been not in his bed, she’d been in bed with one of the main rivals of the firm started by his grandfather and continued by his father—the firm that had been absorbed into Angelos Inc, but even then it had been worth three months seducing the boss’s son.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I had fun. Not just the lovely information you gave me, I had permission to enjoy your youth and...enthusiasm... It has been an exhausting six months for me. I was actually prepared to put up with your sentimental rubbish and poetry for the sex.’
No matter how the memory made him feel, he wanted to remember, so that if he ever felt the urge to mistake sex for anything deeper it would be there to pull him back from the brink of making a fool of himself.
He had not needed the memory; he had not felt that way about any woman since. If the experience had killed off that part of him, he was glad of it.
He had learnt that day how to protect what was his—like chess, his father had said when he had confessed what he had done, you sacrifice your pawn to ensure you win... Play the long game.
His father had made his sacrifice and it had turned out to be Ezio himself.
The only way he’d learn from his mistakes, his father had told him, was if he wasn’t there to clean up the mess. He’d had his chance and he’d blown it, he’d been told, and life didn’t offer second chances. Or, his father didn’t.
Tilda directed her gaze at her food but found her eyes tugged back to his face; his shuttered expression was hard to read.
‘You were heartbroken, I suppose,’ she tossed at him, stirring the food as she regarded him through her lashes, still waiting for the cynical punchline.
‘Badly bruised, but I recovered,’ he assured her, wondering what had possessed him to share this unnecessary information with her.
The half-smile faded and her lips flattened. It was this down-playing that made her realise that this wasn’t a joke. ‘You really... Oh, God!’ She gulped remorsefully. ‘I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to...’
He gave a hard laugh, amazed that anyone could leak empathy this way. ‘Open old wounds? You didn’t,’ he assured her. They were open because he had kept them that way, as a reminder. ‘Anyway, I had my revenge.’
‘What was that?’
‘I got very rich, she let all that lovely money slip through her fingers and it was lovely money she was after.’
No one who had got over it, as he’d claimed, could sound that bitter. Who was the woman who had broken through the cynical shell of Ezio Angelos? And was the animosity a cover for the fact he still loved her?
Well aware of the danger of allowing her imagination full rein, she closed down the line of speculation but struggled not to feel empathy. The focus of her antagonism was for the faceless woman, until the irony of what she was doing hit her—yesterday she would have sworn that Ezio didn’t have a heart to break and now, well, she was aching for him.
And she had to admit he didn’t look much like a classicvictim; actually, not any sort of victim.Conscious of pain, she glanced down where her hands lay on her lap clenched into white-knuckled fists. Flexing her fingers, she saw the deep red half-moons cut into her palm.
Tilda’s tender heart ached. The idea that out there existed a woman who he had never recovered from left her feeling angry. The nameless woman had made him feel he had to guard his heart, had made him lock himself off from love.
Tilda didn’t realise she’d physically shaken her head to clear the anger until she saw him looking at her, his head tilted questioningly to one side. She pushed away her plate, all appetite gone.
‘So, were you together a long time?’ she asked, casually wondering if the other woman had ever drunk from the glass she was holding... She put it down abruptly.
‘No.’
Her lips tightened at the clipped response. She felt frustration well up inside her. His tight-jawed expression made it crystal clear she could fish as much as she liked but he was not opening up any more.
‘You can sulk as much as you like, Tilda... Doyouwant to talk about previous lovers?’
‘I am not sulking and I don’t have...’ She stopped dead and watched the expressions move like some sort of slide show across his face before settling into stunned disbelief.
She sat there folding her napkin with geometric precision before getting to her feet. ‘I think actually I might... It’s been a long day.’
