A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [32]
‘Why did you do it?’ she demanded, whirling to face him, blue eyes blazing. ‘How could you?’
No, looking into his face had been a mistake. A terrible mistake.
Because just in the second that she had met his eyes once again she had seen something that looked dangerously, appallingly like—like compassion. And that was the last thing that she needed from him. Because it would destroy her. She was barely clinging on to her control as it was.
It couldn’t be compassion! She doubted he was capable of feeling any such thing.
‘Are you saying you had no part in this?’
Oh, that was better. That was more what she had expected. That was the Giovanni Cardella he had revealed himself to be.
‘Of course not!’
She’d be a fool to even try. After all, she’d been the perfect willing victim, just ready and waiting to fall into his greedy, grasping hands like the perfect, ripe plum. She could just imagine how he had felt. As if all his birthdays had come at once. He could never have imagined that she’d be so damn easy that she’d do half the work for him—more than half.
‘But at least I never told anything but the truth! I never lied!’
‘And neither did I!’
‘Oh, no!’ Terrie scorned. ‘Not half! So you didn’t say you weren’t married—but you dodged the issue quite nicely. And you…you…’
‘I what?’
‘You called me cara! And I told you that that is one Italian word I do understand. Cara! You said—’
‘I would have said anything at the time. And I’m sure you would too. We all say things we don’t mean in the heat of the moment.’
‘And if we think it will get us just what we want! Oh—don’t look at me like that!’ she flung at him when he turned a sidelong glare of reproof on her. ‘That’s what men do, isn’t it? They’ll say anything, anything at all if it will get some poor gullible fool into bed with them!’
‘I—’
‘Oh, don’t start backtracking now! Don’t try and wriggle out of it! It was all a lie from start to finish. All of it—even—even…’
The knot in her throat threatened to close up completely, making her choke on the words.
‘Even when you called me belleza.’
‘No!’
He shook his head violently in furious rejection.
‘No. That was no lie. You are beautiful. Amazing.’ He actually sounded as if he meant it. ‘You must know that.’
Just for a second Terrie let the words touch her. Let that vehement ‘beautiful’, that ‘amazing’ sink in, appease her, soothe the raw wounds he had inflicted on her.
But almost immediately she realised what she was doing, what was happening to her, and pulled herself up sharp.
Was she really going to listen to any more of his lies? Was she going to let him get to her again, reach her, touch her, when she knew that every word he spoke was totally untrue, purely calculated to get what he wanted? Get what he could out of her?
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ she said, taking a couple of steps backwards, away from him, putting as much distance between them as she could possibly manage in the tiny room.
The movement brought her up against the small table on which the long-cold pot of coffee still stood, the untouched brandy glasses from the previous night.
‘You can’t think I’d listen to a word you said ever again.’
‘Oh, come on!’ Gio declared, clearly losing his grip on the temper that had been smouldering dangerously for some time. ‘Don’t play the outraged virgin in all this! You were as keen for it as I was—more! You brought me up here! You—’
‘I what? Threw myself at you? Seduced you?’
‘You weren’t exactly saying no. And we both knew why you brought me up here. Why you suggested that we have coffee in your room and not in the lounge. “It would be quieter…’” he said suddenly, dropping his voice, softening it, until it was an uncanny and disturbingly accurate copy of her own tones the night