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“Oh, I’ve analysed it so many times.” She sighed as the past dragged at her, threatening to suck her under the raging current of her recollections. “I was sure you’d told me that you loved me, but you hadn’t. You talked about love, and you talked about…” the words physically hurt her to say, so she had to regroup for a moment, banking her eyes shut and sucking in a deep breath before continuing. "You talked about a future without placing me in it. You talked about a life and I thought you meant a life with me…”
“It was one weekend,” he said cynically, easily rejecting and shutting down all of the childish dreams she’d foolishly fabricated, four years ago.
“I know that now.” Her voice was stiff. “I was young and naïve and completely overwhelmed by how I felt. I wasn’t exactly firing on all analytical cylinders.”
He jerked his head in acknowledgement of her defense.
“None the less, you went out of your way to make me think we were both falling madly in love. It was so skillful. So damned dishonest.”
“I cannot defend this,” he said roughly. “I have no idea how I could do that. To you, or Arabella.”
Ellie winced.
“I do know that the idea of cheating offends me hugely. That I would punch myself if I could go back in time. I do know that the man I am today would never do something so unconscionable. You are not the only one who has changed, querida.”
“Don’t call me that,” she whispered, shaking her head with vehemence. “You called me that before. It’s a name that has no place in our marriage. Let’s stick to Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth,” he repeated, but it was no better, for he rolled her name in his Spanish tongue, dipping it in spiced accents and mysterious breaths. Querida might have mean darling, but Elizabeth, the way he said it, was trouble too.
She nodded, as though her stomach wasn’t in knots. “So? What happened to your marriage?”
He returned to the paella and began to plate it up, a scoop in each bowl and a cut lemon for garnish.
“Come on, Xavier. You’re right. We should know this stuff about each other. I’m not asking because I care about you. It’s just information your new wife should have. Wouldn’t you agree?”
He eyed her warily for a moment and finally nodded, but he might as well have been agreeing to put his head right into a crocodile’s mouth, for all the pleasure he took in his agreement.
“So?” She sipped her wine, waiting.
“The accident changed me,” he said finally, a frown on his face as he launched back in time. “I was… impatient. Difficult to live with.”
“You’re kidding?” She interrupted, sarcasm dripping from the question.
He shot her a look. “More than usual. I was so angry with the world. It took me a long time to really accept how close I came to death, or permanent disability. I can see, now, how lucky I was, but at the time, I hated the state I was in. You were right when you said that I had wanted to die.”
“Why?” She breathed, moving back to the stool and perching on one. She rested her chin in her upturned palm and focused all of her attention on his face.
“Because I was half a man. My body was scarred. It’s a work of art, now, compared to what it was at the time. Bruised, swollen, bloodied, infected.” He shook his head angrily.
“That’s all superficial,” she murmured.
“Yes, but it was a far cry from the man I saw myself as. I’ve always been physically strong. Powerful. And I could barely lift my own toothbrush for weeks.”
His eyes met Ellie’s and something passed between them. Sympathy. Pity. And then his swift and total rejection of those emotions. His next statement explained why.
“Arabella had to do everything for me. Brush my teeth, my hair, help me shower.”
“You couldn’t get a nurse?”
“I didn’t like them,” he said, with such trademark churlishness that she had to bite down on her lip to stop from laughing. Because it wasn’t funny – not even remotely. She felt the pain that he must have faced and she felt jealous. Yes, jealous, that he had needed someone else. That Arabella had been there to pick up the pieces while she, Elizabeth, was left to face the prospect of a life without him.
“And then you married her,” Ellie prompted, wishing her heart wasn’t convulsing as it was.
“Yes. She was adamant that we go ahead with the wedding, and I was … grateful to her for the way she tolerated my changes.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Ellie murmured. “She loved you. Tolerance didn’t come into it, I’m sure.”
“I was a bastard. She must have known her life would be miserable if we married and yet she went along with it. I think she couldn’t bear the thought of being a woman who walked away from a man like me. So broken. She pitied me.”
