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He didn’t wait for her to answer. Good, because she couldn’t, anyway.
‘I know you never thought I was good enough.’
She shook her head angrily. ‘That’snottrue.’
‘Just like your father, you were looking for a project.’
‘Stop it,’ she ground out, conscious of the hurt of his insults but also the closeness of his face. Of their own volition, her eyes dropped to his mouth, glorying in the outline of his lips even as she wanted to shove him backwards. How satisfying it would be to send him straight onto his butt.
‘You are someone who looks to feel worthy by “helping” those less fortunate.’
‘Is there something wrong?’
He ignored her interjection. ‘That’s what you were doing that summer, wasn’t it?’
‘It was ten years ago,’ she said quietly, her heart splintering. She tried to stay focused on Annie, to remain calm in the face of his anger. ‘Why does it matter?’
But it did matter. A decade might have passed but the pain of their parting was as much a part of her now as it had been then. She tried to blink away from him but her eyes felt trapped.
‘True. And so much has happened since.’ He lifted a finger, pressing it to her cheek, and she trembled, desire making her pulse frantic. ‘We’re different people now.’
They were. Ten years, nine of them spent sole parenting, almost completely on her own. Alicia was not the impressionable teenager who’d fallen in love with this man the moment she’d laid eyes on him.
‘But that night, the pleasure you felt, that was real, wasn’t it, Alicia?’ He said her name how he used to, heavy with his Spanish accent, loaded with desire. Her skin lifted in goosebumps and she shuddered, desire making it impossible to think of or feel anything else.
He leaned closer, his mouth just an inch from hers.
‘Do you remember when we first kissed?’
Her heart kicked up a notch. ‘No,’ she muttered.
His lips showed he saw that for the lie it was. ‘It was in the library. You told me you needed help fetching a book that was on the top shelf. I retrieved it, and when I handed it to you, our fingers touched and you made a soft little gasp, before lifting up and looking at me, just as you are now, silently begging me to kiss you. Do you remember that?’
She shook her head, but to which question, to which assertion?
‘You snapped your fingers and I came running.’
She frowned. He wasn’t wrong. Graciano had always been there for her. Anytime she’d needed him, she’d only had to ask and he’d done whatever she required. But he was mischaracterising it, taking what she’d believed to be loyalty and...friendship...and turning it into something sinister and manipulative.
‘You’re acting as though what happened between us was a big deal,’ she said, when she could trust herself to speak again. ‘Butyouwere the one who left without a backwards glance. You were the one who told me, in no uncertain terms, that you’d moved on with your life, to never call you again. You were the one who changed your number.’
‘I did not change my number to avoid you,’ he said.
‘No, I’m sure by then you’d forgotten all about me.’
‘Yes. But not the lessons you taught me.’
It stung as though she’d been whipped. ‘If you’d truly forgotten about me, then why does it seem as though you hate me?’
A muscle throbbed at the base of his jaw, drawing her attention to it. ‘I hate people like you, like your father—’
She flinched at that. ‘You don’t know me.’
‘I know all I need to know.’
She swept her eyes shut, fighting a tsunami of pain that was unexpectedly strong. ‘Then why hire me? And don’t lie to me. This isn’t because you need an event planned in a hurry.’
‘Why can’t it be both?’ He lifted a hand slowly, as though trying to fight himself, to her ear, cradling it lightly. Sparks ignited. She swallowed hard, but moved closer, even when that brought them nose to nose.
