by Kim Lawrence
‘An idea you did nothing to dispel.’ The furrow in his brow deepened as he recalled the level of genuine animosity in her voice when he had mentioned Paul’s name, yet it was now clear they were strangers.
‘You’ve obviously never met Paul, so how come you had such a strong reaction when I mentioned his name?’
‘You mean like you do, I jump to conclusions?’ She shook her head, sidetracked from the question by her feelings of angry resentment. ‘You know, I really do believe that you take some sort of twisted pleasure in thinking the worst of me,’ she accused, remembering all those occasions when his eyes had held contempt when he had looked at her. Though his contempt was easier to cope with than the... She lowered her eyes, swallowing hard. Even the memory of his burning stare could make her insides shudder.
Naked and under me.
He really had said it. And the words had carried all the hallmark of compulsion.
Anna knew all about compulsion. Bringing her eyelashes down in a concealing sweep, she wrapped her arms around herself, but the instinctive protective action did not protect her from anything. She felt wide open and exposed, her feelings so close to the surface that she shook with the effort of maintaining a façade of control.
Having now experienced forbidden lust, she felt guilty, because although she had always said the right supportive things to Rosie, no matter how hard she had tried not to judge, secretly she had wondered how her cousin could allow herself to fall for the man who had wrecked her life. Rosie wasn’t stupid; she was smart and beautiful. She could have any man so why choose one who belonged to someone else and believe every lie he told?
It had seemed utterly incomprehensible to Anna, who knew that she would never allow herself to want someone unsuitable. Yet here she was, looking at the embodiment of unsuitable and wanting...wanting so badly that she ached with it. She dreamed that want, she breathed it and she was utterly exhausted trying to pretend it wasn’t there!
Giving her head a dazed shake, she unwound the fingers that had somehow got tangled with his and snatched them away, laying her hands primly in her lap. Unlike Rosie she wasn’t being lied to and unlike Rosie she was going to protect herself.
‘What else was I meant to think? Your name...’ His voice thickened as his eyes lifted to her burnished head. ‘I saw you, your hair—’ he shook his head and dragged a hand through his own dark hair. ‘It was obviously not you, but you looked so alike. You looked like the girl I saw with Paul in the restaurant and you didn’t deny it!’
Anna’s slender shoulders hunched as her attitude of defiance fell away. Enough was enough—he’d find out the truth with or without her help. ‘It wasn’t my story to tell. Rosie swore me to secrecy. No one else knows about any of it.’
The tension in his shoulders relaxed slightly. At last they were getting somewhere. ‘Is Rosie your sister?’ That would explain the likeness, the similarity in colouring.
‘As good as—she’s my cousin but we were brought up together. Aunt Jane and Uncle George became my guardians after my parents...the accident, but we couldn’t be closer if we had been sisters.’
‘I did not know you were an orphan.’
‘Why would you?’
‘And the name?’
‘I’m Rosanna and she’s Rosemary. I get called Anna and she gets Rosie. She’s the last person in the world you would imagine having an affair with a married man,’ she told him fiercely.
‘And where do you come into this? I’m not judging your cousin. I just want the facts.’
But Cesare was judging her. Anna had tricked him. Had she been laughing while he...? He clenched his teeth. He needed to stop blaming her for what was his massive error of judgment.
Again she displayed her startling ability to tune into his thoughts. ‘You judged me;’ she hit back bitterly before lowering her gaze to hide the sudden rush of tears that she blinked rapidly to disperse.
The glistening point of moisture sliding down her cheek made his chest tighten. He lowered the hand he had reached out to blot it and said roughly, ‘I thought you didn’t give a damn what I think of you.’ No one in a long time had challenged him the way this tiny little redhead had.
Her head came up at the charge. ‘I don’t.’ She bit her quivering lip and sniffed angrily. ‘But I won’t have you sneering at Rosie,’ she told him fiercely.
‘I’m not looking for a target. I’m looking for explanations.’ He clenched his jaw and struggled to control his impatience. ‘My best friend just came to ask me for help and I showed him the door. I think that entitles me to a little information.’
Anna’s eyes widened, some of her anger falling away as her blue gaze lifted in startled enquiry to his face. ‘You sent him away?’ she probed. She couldn’t imagine what had happened to make Cesare act this way to the man whose cause he had championed so robustly. A man he had been determined to think the innocent victim.
‘Because it’s time to break the cycle, because I’m his friend and I owe him a debt, one I can never repay.’ It was the right call but it wasn’t easy.
Anna struggled to make sense of his comment. ‘He lent you money?’ While she had had the impression from Rosie that her ex lover was not a poor man, she had not got the idea that he was in the same league as Cesare, but then who was?
‘There was a period in my life after I learnt I would never drive again professionally that I...’ His sooty lashes swept downwards, concealing his eyes from her as he delivered a dry smile. ‘Let’s just say that adrenaline is addictive and I took some risks.’
Anna, recognising an understatement when she heard it, went icy cold. The images the comment evoked made the hairs on her nape stand on end.
‘I had taken delivery of a new car that day and... Was I trying to prove something?’
It seemed to Anna, who watched as he shrugged, his lips curving into a self-contemptuous smile as he considered the motivation of his younger self, that he was almost talking to himself, asking himself the questions, not her.
‘Well, either way, I took a tight bend too fast—something an amateur or a boy racer would do—and ended in a river. I took a blow to the head and lost consciousness.’
The blow to the head had resulted in the bleed on the brain that had necessitated the doctors operating to relieve the pressure. The full, utter selfishness of his action had been brought home to him when Angel told him later that the doctors had been unable to confirm until he had woken up with the mother of all headaches that there would be no permanent brain damage.
Anna pressed a hand to her stomach and swallowed. Her reaction to this story was physical.
‘But you did get out.’ Stupid question, Anna. He was sitting here looking very much alive. In fact the most alive person she had ever met; his vitality had a combustible quality.
For once he let her stupidity pass without comment. ‘Paul happened to be following behind. We’d been friends at school but lost touch and gone in different directions. If we hadn’t then bumped into each other in the casino the previous evening, who knows? He saw it all and didn’t hesitate. He dived in and fished me out.’
Anna released a shuddering breath and abandoned her hunched defensive position. It was hardly surprising, given the story, that he had been so stubborn in championing his friend.
‘That was brave of him.’
The dark brooding expression in his silvered eyes became gently mocking as they swept her face. ‘I thought he was a monster?’
‘Not a monster, just selfish and cruel, but even monsters are capable of bravery on occasion, I admit that. Your friend saved your life.’ And had been milking it ever since, she speculated, finding charity hard to come by when it came to this man. ‘But he almost took Rosie’s.’
Cesare arched a brow, his stormy grey eyes narrowing to slits. ‘Isn’t that a little dramatic? Broken hearts are
rarely fatal.’
His mockery hit her on the raw and the bitter words were out before she could check them. ‘When a bottle of painkillers and half a bottle of vodka are involved they can be.’
An awful realisation hit Cesare. ‘Your cousin attempted to take her life?’
Regretting her words, Anna leaned towards him, reaching out in a gesture of unconscious fluttering appeal. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Nobody knows. Not her parents, not anyone,’ she told him urgently.
She appeared to think it likely that he was about to expose her cousin’s secret. Cesare swallowed the insult and tore his eyes off the fluttering hand that had somehow got itself sandwiched between his two.
How did that happen?
As the small hand curled tight within his, Cesare was conscious of an emotional response shaking loose in his belly. It was anger, he decided, anger that the older cousin had selfishly placed this burden of secrecy on Anna’s shoulders. Admittedly Rosie had been young at the time but that meant that Anna had been even younger.
Her eyes remained on his but Cesare had the impression it was not him she was seeing as she began to recite in a strange monotone flatness a story that he assumed she had never told anyone.
‘I was still living at home. Rosie had her first flat. I was really envious,’ she recalled with a sad reminiscent smile. ‘I’d arranged to go that night to pick up some...’ She shook her head and slid a sideways glance at Cesare; his expression told her nothing. ‘That doesn’t matter, but she’d forgotten I was coming and...’ Her voice faded as she saw the scene again, the pills scattered over the table, the vodka spilled. The air had been thick with a sour smell—Rosie had been violently sick at one point, a circumstance which, according to the staff in the casualty department, had saved her from any long-term damage.
It was while she had sat with Rosie in the hospital cubicle, a thin curtain separating them from the chaos of a busy Saturday night of an inner-city casualty unit, waiting for the psychiatric consult the hospital insisted on before they would discharge her, that she heard the full story. Rosie had known it was wrong because he was married but she loved him and he loved her. He had told her so often and he was so wonderful.
It turned out the wonderful man discovered he couldn’t leave his wife, who was expecting their first child. A week later Rosie had discovered that she was too.
‘When she lost the baby—’
His sharp intake of breath made her turn her head. ‘Your cousin really was carrying Paul’s child? He said...’
Anna tipped her head, her smooth brow pleating into a sad, contemplative frown. ‘She found out just after he left her. She didn’t think he believed her. Afterwards she just told him she lost it, no details, it was just a text.’
Cesare bit back the exclamation on his tongue, not wanting to interrupt her halting narrative. Any lingering guilt that he had sent his friend away vanished.
‘I think Rosie thought the miscarriage was her punishment for briefly considering a termination.’ She scanned his face and, seeing no evidence of the rush to judgment she had anticipated, lowered her defences a little. ‘If only she’d spoken to someone, but she didn’t. She was too ashamed to tell her parents. She felt it was all her fault. She still loved him.’
Cesare listened to the level of pain and the depth of emotion in her voice, and wondered how he could ever have thought her capable of the actions he had accused her of.
‘She lost the baby. She was all alone and then she came back home to the flat.’
‘It was at this time she attempted to take her own life?’ And he had considered Paul the victim.
Anna nodded, unable to look at him as she struggled to govern her emotions. She heard him swear. ‘I had a key. I let myself in. There were pills on the table and drink. Luckily she’d been sick. The hospital said if I’d been a little bit later...’ She closed her eyes, aware as she sat there with her head in her hands of his footsteps on the wooden floor.
‘Drink this.’
She opened her eyes and shook her head, her nose wrinkling in response to the smell of the contents of the glass he held out to her.
‘I don’t like spirits,’ she said through chattering teeth.
‘You will feel better.’
‘You’re a bully,’ she accused, curling her fingers around the glass. Her eyes met his over the rim as he watched her take a sip then shudder. ‘It’s horrible,’ she complained without heat. The glow was making its way down her throat and pooling in her belly. She had stopped shaking. ‘It was all a long time ago.’
The indent between his dark brows deepened as he studied her face.
‘Good girl,’ he commended as he retook his seat. It was obvious the memory of discovering her cousin had left its mark on Anna.
Anna choked a little. ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’ She felt her eyes fill with emotional tears and blinked madly. She didn’t want him to run away with the crazy idea she’d been waiting for a word of praise from him.
‘Slowly,’ Cesare advised, touching the glass that was pressed to her lips.
She nodded and even managed a realistic little cough to reinforce the idea raw alcohol was responsible for her tears, not raw emotion.
‘So how did your cousin’s parents take it when they found out?’ His eyes narrowed as he contemplated his own response. In that father’s place he would have hunted down the man responsible. Of course if the girl had been as stubbornly mute as Angel had been that was not easy—at least Angel had come to him. For that he would remain eternally grateful.
‘They never did—she didn’t tell them and she swore me to secrecy. I suppose other than Scott I’m the only person who knows.’
He stiffened at the name. ‘Scott?’ A man she felt close enough to share her cousin’s secrets with.
Anna smiled and sniffed as she fumbled for a tissue and found none up the sleeve of her top. ‘Her husband.’
The relief he felt was so intense that his entire body slumped.
‘Rosie got married last year. Scott is Canadian—they moved to Toronto. Aunt Jane and Uncle George have gone over to be there with her for the birth of her and Scott’s baby, who was born yesterday...a little girl called Annie.’
Cesare swallowed, struggling to acknowledge the jealousy that had caused him to rush to judgment as he handed her a tissue and watched as she blew her small nose. It had never occurred to him that it was possible for such a prosaic action to trigger a rush of gut emotion. While recognising it he stopped short of identifying that visceral tightening as tenderness.
He ground his teeth as he asked himself why. Why would he be surprised? From the outset his reaction to her had been unlike that to any other woman, totally disproportionate even if she had been the woman he had wanted to believe her to be.
And yes, he acknowledged he had wanted to, but why? It was hard to discount the possibility that there had been an element of self-protection—some might call it cowardice and they’d be right—in his eagerness to believe she lacked any morals. He had needed her to be the sort of woman any sensible man would avoid involvement with.
That much, at least, had not changed. Cesare needed to control his feelings with women, needed to keep his emotions separate from sex. The ability to walk away without regret was important to him. That was why he only allowed himself to be involved with women he could not hurt, women who knew the score, women who could not hurt him. Dio, I’m the king of shallow, he thought with a grunt of self-disgust.
But it was who he was.
Even after these revelations essentially nothing had changed. Anna Henderson had stepped out of the box he had put her in but she still remained off limits. Possibly more so than previously. She was everything he avoided in a woman; she was not the sort of lover for whom a diamond bracelet would ease the pain of separation. Anna
Henderson had been acting the part of a woman who invested emotionally in a sexual relationship because she hadn’t been acting; she was the sort of woman he didn’t go within a mile of.
One barrier lowered and another lifted. A man just had to go with the flow. It might be easier if he could stop thinking of her underneath him, her lovely legs wrapped around him. He cleared his throat.
‘So the story has had a happy ending.’ At least for the victim that he had been so eager to condemn. He suspected that the trauma of watching her cousin driven to the brink of utter despair by a man had left a few scars for her impressionable young cousin.
Some man would need to work hard to earn her trust—some man, but not him.
Then it hit him like the proverbial bolt from the blue: the ‘scared virgin afraid of her own sexual impulses’ act was not an act either—it was what she was!
The truth had been staring him in the face. There had been dozens of clues. How had he managed not to see it until now?
Opening his clenched fists, he took her chin between his long fingers and brought her face up to him. ‘You have never had a lover.’ Despite his efforts he could not keep the accusation from his voice.
Did she have it tattooed across her forehead or something? With an angry, embarrassed growl she snatched her chin from his fingers. He was looking at her as though she had two heads.
Anna cleared her throat and observed bitterly, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.’ Was she meant to apologise or something?
His jaw clenched. ‘Why the hell didn’t you say something?’
‘I really don’t see how my frigidity affects my ability to do my job!’
‘I’m not your employer, as you never cease to remind me, and...’ He took a deep breath, his eyes darkening as they fastened on her face. ‘And you are nothing that even faintly resembles frigid!’ he blasted.
The raw comment caused everything inside Anna to dissolve, the denial of her feelings washed away along with the rush of jumbled emotions. The deluge drew a fractured sigh from her parted lips.
