He dropped beside her, rubbing his arm over his forehead to wipe the perspiration away. Dio.
A few more moments lying like this, then he’d ask her. Start his revenge. Satiation purred within him. It was a good time to leave before he started wanting her again. Although the thought set his flesh stirring anew. Hell, the effect she had on him was incredible. She stretched beside him and he had to hold his hand back from caressing her love-flushed skin.
* * * *
Only Matthias could cause time and thought to subside.
Her body felt gloriously heavy and she wished she could dissolve into him, weave her way into his body, into his soul, his heart. She’d never come back out again.
“Drink?” Matthias lifted himself up.
She couldn’t speak.
“What would you like?”
“Whatever you’re having.” Decisions were too hard to make.
When he got off the bed and strode to the mini-bar, she feasted on him with her eyes. The perfect V of his wide shoulders and slim waist, firm, round buttocks bunching when he walked, each muscle in his back defined, gave him grace like a panther.
The sound of liquid pouring into a glass snapped her back to the present and she blinked away the post-coital haze. Her heart thumped uncomfortably. Ava took the tumbler Matthias offered and knocked back the whiskey, welcoming the fire down her throat.
Matthias grinned wolfishly, and dropped to the bed beside her, stroking her leg. His touch warm and reassuring to her heavy limb.
“Ava Whittaker, you get better and better. I remember our first night well.”
Something in his voice grated through her softened senses, sent soft jangles through her veins. His expression did nothing to help either, his frown was back. What the heck was going on?
“What is it?” Rolling away from him, she grabbed the sheets and dragged them around her, giving a sharp tug when they reluctantly came away from the bed.
“I was wondering…” He waited until she met his eyes, wariness glimmering in her navy depths. “Why you didn’t bother telling me about Bella. Why you waited until you had to. Because if I hadn’t appeared in London, then I would never have known, would I? You would have robbed me of her entire life, not only her first two years.”
Horror swamped her, rendering her limbs too heavy to move and her brain sluggish. Deep down, she had known this conversation was the white elephant in the room. Sweet God, help me now. Help me say the right thing.
Adrenaline pole-vaulted into her veins, and she got up from the bed to pace around the room, gazing absentmindedly at the print of a hunting scene on the wall.
“That night, the night we spent together, I…” She gathered her thoughts and words. The carefully planned speech, worked on during her sleepless nights, took flight like a flock of pigeons.
“Matthias, I lost a bit of myself. No, I didn’t lose it. I gave it freely.” She risked a glance, his implacable face set in granite. She was going to have to go deeper.
God this is hard.
“It scared me, you scared me.”
His head jerked in her direction, a deep frown and narrowing eyes nearly quailed her spirit.
“No, no I didn’t mean it like that. The connection I felt scared me. I mean, Matthias, you’ve got to try to understand me, please.” The words tumbled out. “I had just travelled the world for eleven and a half months. I had to return to my life. Otherwise I’d have felt like I was running away. And the reason I chose to leave then was because if I had spent any more time with you …”
His pulse showed strongly in his neck, while his jaw formed a forbiddingly straight line.
Her tongue became too big for her mouth and she couldn’t swallow, let alone speak. But she had to try again. “I would’ve become one with you. You completed me in a way, with further time, I wouldn’t have been able to sever. And I couldn’t risk that.” Her voice died under the fury crackling from him.
His lips curled in a snarl. “So you left like a coward.”
The insult halted her heart. “I am not a coward, Matthias de Romero. How dare you call me names? One of the bravest things I have ever done is walk away from you. Oh, don’t you think I laid there and thought about how we could make it work together? Don’t forget, this was hot on the heels of our conversation where you said you didn’t want love, children or anything cluttering up your perfectly well-ordered life with your Maman!” She threw the words at him, knowing she couldn’t take them back but also that she couldn’t withhold them anymore. “I wanted to stay. God how I wanted to. But I knew you wouldn’t want me once our trip was over. So I left.”
His shoulders stiffened and a pulse beat rapidly in his neck. Ava held her breath. Did he believe her? He scowled, curling his lip. Trembling overtook her limbs and she exhaled over the sound of a heavy heart beat in her ears.
“Pretty words, Ava. But what about when you found out you were carrying my child? You decided I wasn’t good enough to be a father. Who made you judge and jury?” His Argentinean accent was heightened by his anger, emanating from him in waves, and Ava gathered her forces in order not to rise to his sharply spoken words.
“It wasn’t like that.” She held her head high. He must believe her.
“Really? Well forgive me if I see it that way.” He glared, demanding answers.
“I came back.” The words emerged weak and she cleared her throat. The expression in his eyes was implacable, hard and impossible to read.
“Pardon?” He growled. In a fluid movement, he was off the bed and putting on his Calvin Klein’s. He stood then to face her, arms folded. A separate part of her enjoyed the image he displayed, hard muscle and attitude. Another part sighed. His South American blood would never forgive her.
“To Argentina. When I found out I was pregnant. I came back to tell you.” Please believe me.
“And I should believe you why? You left me on the first night and then the second in my apartment. Not a great track record, hmm, Ava?”
Ava swallowed against the hurt flaring, and did her best to ignore her damned inner voice—the one saying, He’s right.
“I…” She stumbled to a halt when she saw the carefully bland expression on his face. “I left the first night because…” Dammit, tell him. “I had fallen in love with you.” Encouraged by the silence and also by the lightness she felt now her deepest secret was out in the open, she carried on. Her eyelids were too heavy to open. She didn’t know if she could cope with his expression anyway. “I didn’t know that every day since then I would regret it. Especially after…” God, was she really telling him this or was she safe in one of her dreams? She bit hard on her inner cheek, hoping it would wake her. No such luck.
“Especially after?” Ground out through clenched teeth, his tone did nothing to persuade her she was going to wake from the nightmare anytime soon.
“I found out I was pregnant.” She turned to face him, having to see his reaction to what she said. All edges, his arms folded against his chest, legs planted shoulder width apart, his jaw tight with suppressed anger. And his eyes, those deep chocolate eyes now obsidian black, hard as coal. A little part of her died. Desperation seeped through her. If she could say what she had to say and get out of there, she could spend the rest of her life getting over it. Flee, her inner voice cried.
“I flew back to Argentina to tell you—” A snort stopped her but she ploughed on, regardless. “After arriving in Argentina, I pulled over for some water and saw your photo in the newspaper, announcing your engagement to her…Beatriz. I couldn’t carry on. Not only would I ruin your relationship, but my heart broke. I couldn’t bear to see you.”
The stillness in him brought to mind a hunter. She lowered her head, feeling the tears well up. When his reply came, it was exactly what she feared.
“Very convenient for you. Then you went home and forgot about your morals. Felt you had tried, and it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t tell me. You’re lying.” He turned the words on her, weapons in their
own right, but now, accompanied by the sneer on his face, deadly assassins.
Don’t listen, he’s only hurt by what you’re telling him.
With a sense of impending doom, she looked at him fully. Ava took a deep breath to still her trembling and allow her rationale time. The spicy scent of him filled her head, his smell, and worse, hers, intermingled.
Pull it together, dammit.
“I did. I told you why I left in the first place. And the reason I left the second night was because I saw the boy…Victor did you say?”
No reply. This was going from bad to worse. Say what you have to and leave. At least that way you know you’ve tried and have nothing else to regret.
“Anyway, him and Beatriz. I was afraid they were your family. To be honest, and without getting too deep, I grew up with my father always going away on field trips and filming television series. I now see it wasn’t the right thing to do. But I had allowed myself to feel love for you and yet again, I was left feeling a fool because of it. So I left.” Flat and expressionless, her voice petered out. Keeping her head down, she gathered her clothes.
“You were feeling a fool? You? Go.” Quietly spoken, the words seemed to lend him strength. He padded around the room to pick up the rest of her discarded clothes and pushing them into her arms, he pointed to the door.
“You played me for a fool. Now go!” The last word bordered on a shout and flung itself into her heart, awakening her fight or flight reaction. She scrambled into her clothes, battling suddenly stiff jeans and recalcitrant buckles with numb fingers.
She had blown it. If she were honest, she had always kept a little hope alive that he would be happy and would love her and Bella. A last hope being snuffed out from the force of his rage.
“I’m sorry.” She stood behind him, wanting, needing to reach out again.
“Take the car and go!” The last word roared, the sound only breaking at the end.
Ava opened the door, and with one last glance back, stepped over the threshold. The door safely shut between them, her emotions overcame her. Silent sobs wracked their way through her to stream from her eyes, nose, mouth. She brought her hand to her lips in an effort to stall them. Her ribs ached and she placed an arm around her stomach, supporting herself, quietly sinking to the floor.
Every iota of her yearned for things to be different. She had to walk away and leave him. She had never been so aware of her heart, as a muscle certainly to keep the blood pumping, but not as a real live organ capable of feeling. All she could feel, all she was, was hurt.
Matthias, the man she loved, despised her. Her heart should stop, put an end to this agony. Instead it pumped harder, bringing despair to flood through. Why hadn’t he thrown his arms around her and told her he loved her and wanted to be part of a family with her? The old hurt she had thought gone, resurfaced, stronger than ever, whispering she hadn’t been good enough for him to start a relationship with right at the start. He had only used her for sex that night in the Andes while his prospective fiancée waited in the wings. She believed him when he’d said he didn’t want to be tied down, didn’t believe in love. Which was why she had left in the first place. Perhaps she should’ve stayed.
A small part of her scoffed, yeah right—and what would’ve happened then? You wouldn’t have gotten to know Bella unless you’d moved to Argentina.
She should get back to her daughter.
Her head weighed a ton but she rose up from the floor, clinging to the wall, quiet tears starting anew. She didn’t want to leave him. The button to the lift glowed red and she called it.
Going down.
Chapter 15
Matthias felt every inch of the sleepless night. The buzz of the show and the international flight to get him there on time besieged him.
Was it true? Had she returned to Argentina? Surely not. But, how had she known he was engaged? It couldn’t be. Surely, she hadn’t come back. For if she had, his carefully constructed low opinion of her would disintegrate, leaving only a deep and abiding love for her. And she had said she loved him too. A faint hope sparkled through him. Even the reasons she gave for leaving him made sense now.
That damned conversation they’d had when hiking—he should’ve known it would come back to haunt him. Hell it wasn’t as if he truly meant the words, he trotted them out on a regular basis to stop any woman getting too attached. Now they were the reason he was in this mess. Had she really come back?
No. He didn’t—couldn’t—believe her.
He walked to the window and moved the heavy brocade curtain open to see the limousine idling. She hadn’t gone yet. He could get her back, talk to her. But he didn’t think he could see her again.
Let her go. He needed time to think without her disturbing presence. Low ringing sounded from his jean pocket. Pulling it out, he saw it was the limousine driver and he walked over to the window before he answered. Ava stood there, arms wrapped around herself. He gave the driver permission to take her but asked him to return tomorrow, or to send another driver. The driver helped Ava into the car. Just before the door shut, Ava glanced up, her face pale against the dark background of the car. The interior of the car threw light on previously dancing eyes, now limp and puffy, and he could see pain clearly etched in her taut cheekbones and thin lips.
His heart tugged and, almost enjoying the pain, he let the curtain fall closed in the plush bedroom, seeing images of Ava everywhere.
Ava. He crashed on to the bed, head in hands. He had thought she was different and finally he could learn to trust again. Trust women to lie, more like.
Damn. Now he thought about it, there had been occasions when he wondered at the softness on her face, dismissing it as something else. He’d been so consumed with desire for her that he had overlooked it, relegating it to the back of his mind. How he wished he hadn’t. But, a part of him asked, what would he have done if he had acknowledged there was something she wasn’t telling him? Push her until she told him, then been in the same position, except without tonight’s experience. And he didn’t need a truth drug to know he wouldn’t have swapped tonight for anything. Perhaps, just perhaps, she did love him.
Barriers crumbled in the force of his feelings for Ava, strong ones that had never let him down before. She had beguiled her way into his heart, right from the moment she fell off her darned horse to the moment she walked out the door.
And where had she left him? Not even sure of his actions and reasons for sending her away. Dammit, he had never questioned himself so much. Picking up the phone, he dialed room service.
“Send a bottle of Chivas Regal, please.” After being told it would be ten minutes, he turned the shower on, scorching hot. He needed to scrub himself clean, Ava’s musky scent still clung, along with fading tendrils of her perfume, the perfect mix of vanilla with the faint smell of anise that summed up Ava, discerning, but difficult to nail. Although his male pride thumped at the thought, he had certainly nailed her. Dio. The memory of her in his bed sucked the breath from his chest. But, only another notch on his post. That’s all she was, one more woman in a long line. She should count herself lucky for at least having borne a true de Romero. A lot of other women would love to be in her place.
Hours before, he gloried in Ava, her strong lithe body, her hair, but most especially her mind. Her naughty nature, her spontaneity, her total lack of self-consciousness and the drive to throw herself into any new project with the enthusiasm and joy of youth. His heart lurched, a physical pain taking hold. He breathed deep, hoping it would go away at the same time as embracing it as a means to harden the edges which clearly had softened. He figured it out once before—women were nothing but trouble. Now nothing or nobody was going to shake his belief anymore.
A knock on the door alerted him that his whiskey had arrived. Hot on the heels of this realization was the thought he didn’t actually want to drink into oblivion. He opened the door, a ten-pound note in his hand.
“Sorry to waste your time, but please take it back.�
� He pressed the money into the waiter’s hand and closed the door. What he did want to do was get on Reina’s back and ride until the ache within subsided, or at the very least, numbed for a short while. Reina was a continent away. He would have to do with whatever the stables attached to the hotel may provide. He would ride at first light. Decision made, he slammed his mind shut against an image of him and Ava riding together, after spending the night tumbling between the sheets.
He switched the television on, seeking distraction in the hope sleep may soon come to claim him. But sleep wasn’t in the cards. An idle flick of the remote control and this evening’s episode of To Dance or Not to Dance blazed up. Of course, Ava being the darling of the show, it was her dance on screen. Much as he ached to turn away from her glowing, dazzling appearance in that red dress, he couldn’t. He admired anew the long athletic legs, perfect for dancing—and wrapping around him—and the sinuous grace with which she stepped out with Luca. When they performed the lift that won such praise, and no doubt the reason they rose to the top of the leader board, the show put it on a loop. Again and again, Ava glided around Luca, her perfect poise and balance when he raised her above his head in a graceful arc. But now Matthias wished he could pause the recorded show. An odd expression flitted across her face when, if he was not mistaken, she looked in his direction. A glance which didn’t fit with the sexy Rumba, breaking her link with Luca, and whatever she saw put extra roses in her cheeks. Dio.
To hell with this. His head ached dully now as he saw the weak morning sun appear. The stables would be open so he headed down, anticipating the smells of home.
* * * *
Time disappeared as the powerful engine ate up the miles between the Lake District and London. Ava turned down the back seats to convert to a small double-bed. She lay back and contemplated the orange lights of the night play on the ceiling in vain hope of sleeping before switching the windows to dark.
Taming the Tango Champion Page 14
