The room was the third along the corridor—the door she had noticed was locked earlier. Leandro selected a key from a bunch of keys he had in his pocket. The sound of the lock turning over was as sharp and clear as a rifle shot.
Miranda stepped inside, her breath catching in her throat as she took in the little fairy-tale princess bed with its faded pink-and-white cover and the fluffy toys and dolls arranged on the pillow. There was a doll’s pram and a beautifully crafted doll’s house with gorgeous miniature furniture under the window. There was a child’s dressing table with a toy make-up set and a hairbrush lying beside it.
There was a framed photograph hanging on the wall above the bed of a little girl with a mop of dark brown curls, apple-chubby cheeks and a cheeky smile.
Miranda turned to look at Leandro. He was stony faced but she could sense what he was feeling. His grief was palpable. ‘Thank you for showing me,’ she said. ‘It’s a beautiful room.’
His throat moved up and down over a swallow. ‘She was a great little kid.’ He picked up one of the fluffy toys that had fallen forward on the bed—a floppy-eared rabbit—and turned it over in his hands. ‘I bought this for her third birthday with my pocket money. She called him Flopsy.’
Miranda blinked a couple of times, surprised her voice worked at all when she finally spoke. ‘What will you do with her things once you sell the villa?’
His frown flickered on his forehead. ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead.’
‘You might want to keep some things for when you have your own children,’ Miranda said.
She got a sudden vision of him holding a newborn baby, his features softened in tenderness, his large, capable hands cradling the little bundle with care and gentleness. Her heart contracted. He would make a wonderful father. He would be kind and patient. He wouldn’t shout and swear and throw tantrums, like her father had done when things hadn’t gone his way. Leandro would make a child feel safe and loved and protected. He would be the strong, dependable rock his children would rely on no matter what life dished up.
He put the rabbit back down on the bed as if it had bitten him. ‘I’ll donate it all to charity.’
‘But don’t you—?’
‘No.’
The implacability of his tone made her stomach feel strangely hollow. ‘Don’t you want to get married and have a family one day?’
His eyes collided with hers. ‘Do you?’
Miranda shifted her gaze and rolled her lips together for a moment. ‘We’re not talking about me.’
The line of his mouth was tight. White. ‘Maybe we should.’
She pulled back her shoulders. Lifted her chin. Held his steely look even though it made the backs of her knees feel fizzy. ‘It’s different for me.’
A glimmer of cynicism lit his dark gaze. ‘Why’s that?’
‘I made a promise.’
Leandro gave a short mocking laugh. ‘To a dying man—a boy?’
Miranda gritted her teeth. How many times did she have to have this conversation? ‘We loved each other.’
‘You loved the idea of love,’ he said. ‘He was your first boyfriend—the first person to show an interest in you. It’s my bet if he hadn’t got sick he would’ve moved on within a month or two. He used your sweet, compliant nature to—’
‘That’s not true!’
‘He didn’t want to die alone and lonely,’ he went on with a callous disregard for her feelings. ‘He tied you to him, making you promise stuff no one in their right mind would promise. Not at that age.’
Miranda put her hand up to her ears in a childish attempt to block the sound of his taunting voice. ‘No! No!’
‘You were a kid,’ he said. ‘A romantically dazed kid who couldn’t see how she was being used towards the end. He had cancer—the big, disgusting C-word. In an instant he had gone from being one of the top jocks to one of the untouchables. But he knew you wouldn’t let him down. Not the sweet, loyal little Miranda Ravensdale who was looking for a Shakespearean tragedy to pin her name on.’
‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You have no right to say such things to me. You don’t understand what we had. You don’t commit to a relationship longer than a few weeks. What would you know of loyalty and commitment? Mark and I were friends for years—years—before we became...more intimate.’
He tugged her hands down and loosely gripped her wrists in his hands so she could feel every one of his fingers burning against her flesh. ‘Am I wrong?’ he asked. ‘Am I really?’