There was nothing Christien would not do for Jake. She had seen his relief when the consultant had told them that Jake’s asthma was unlikely to get worse and that he looked set to outgrow it. Christien adored his son. He didn’t say it, didn’t need to say it, just lit up with tender pride and protectiveness around Jake and got down on his knees to play with toy cars as if it were the most fun he had ever had. Her wretched eyes misted over. No, she could not fault him for loving Jake. That would be unfair. But she had a right to her own self-esteem and it was being battered into the ground by the cruel confirmation that the only true interest the guy she loved had in her was her wanton talent for meeting his every passionate demand in bed.
‘I’m really sorry that you’ve been upset by this,’ Christien breathed grittily. ‘But it doesn’t touch us. Can’t you see that? I wasn’t in love with Veronique and she wasn’t in love with me either. I offended her pride by rejecting her. But you and I…we have so much more-’
Her throat ached. ‘Yeah…great sex.’
‘Zut alors…don’t talk like that, don’t try to talk down what we have.’
‘I’ve never forgotten the way you dumped me four years ago,’ she confided tightly. ‘You didn’t even have the grace to tell me. You let me come up to your family’s villa chasing after you-’
His black brows pleated. ‘When…when was that?’
‘The day I flew back home with my stepmother, Lisa. Veronique met me at the door. I had to face the humiliation of your very good friend telling me I’d been ditched and that you were going to have to change your mobile phone number to shake me off!’
Christien took a hasty step forward and reached for both her hands. ‘Veronique had no right. She went behind my back. I never discussed you with her, nor would I have allowed her to speak to you in such a way. But at the time I did believe that you were seeing another guy,’ he reminded her. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to come to the villa-’
‘I don’t care. You hurt me then…and tonight you hurt and humiliated me again and I can’t forgive you…won’t forgive you!’ Tabby’s aching eyes were wide to ensure the gathering tears stayed out of sight and she didn’t trust herself to listen to his arguments in his own defence. He was downright gorgeous and she loved him, but just then she hated him too. Trailing her fingers free, she yanked the ring off her finger before she could lose her nerve and set it down on the console table beside her.
‘No…’ Christien grated.
Tabby fled upstairs. She wouldn’t let herself cry. She took a nightdress from her bedroom and stole across the corridor to Jake’s room where she knew she would not be disturbed. Distressed as she was, she was asleep within minutes of climbing into the twin bed next to her son’s. Around dawn she wakened and went for a shower to freshen up. Her head was sore. Too much champagne, just as Christien had said. The night before, she had been all drama and brave defiance. Now in the cold light of day she was trying to imagine what it would do to Jake if the promised wedding failed to take place. He was so excited. And it was not as if Christien were in love with Veronique. But what would it do to her to love Christien without return for years on end? It would humble her, damage her confidence.
The second time she wakened, she was back in her own bed and she sat up in bewilderment. His back turned to her, Christien was lodged by the windows, the curtains partially opened to let the sunlight flood into the elegant room.
‘I moved you in here because we have to talk,’ he breathed harshly.
‘No…I don’t know what to say to you-’
Christien swung round. The lines of strain grooved between his nose and mouth were matched by the brooding darkness of his gaze. ‘I should have asked you just to listen. I’ll do the talking.’
Tabby looped a straying strand of hair off her brow in an effort to hide that she was still reeling from the way events had overtaken them the night before.
‘That day four years back, when you tried to see me at the villa and Veronique spoke to you instead, I was probably drunk. After I’d dealt with the formalities of my father’s death and my mother shut herself away here demanding to be left alone, I spent the rest of that hideous week drunk.’
Green eyes huge, Tabby gaped at him because he had told her something she would never have suspected for herself, for he always seemed so much in control. ‘Perhaps I should’ve thought of that. Naturally you were having trouble coping-’
Christien dug lean hands into the pockets of his well-cut trousers. ‘It was getting by without you I was struggling to handle,’ he ground out in a driven undertone.
The silence stretched and
stretched.
‘Zut alors…I was planning to marry you and then I saw you with the biker and it all went pear-shaped on me. When our fathers died in that car accident, I wanted you,’ he bit out. ‘But pride wouldn’t let me have you, so I drank myself into a stupor to ensure I didn’t weaken.’
Tabby blinked. She was transfixed. He had been planning to marry her?
Christien shrugged a broad shoulder with something less than his usual grace. ‘I didn’t like feeling like that. I watched my mother sink into despair without my father. They had always been very close and for a while after his death she did not want to live without him. It was terrifying to watch. I decided I didn’t want to feel like that about any woman ever.’
‘I can understand that…’ Tabby mumbled, and yet she could offer nothing to match his unhappy experience.
Her stepmother had had shallow affections. Aside of a few noisy crying jags, the discovery that she was not as prosperous a widow as she had hoped had infuriated Lisa and ensured that her grief had been even more short-lived.
‘Were you serious when you said you were planning to marry me then?’ Tabby prompted hesitantly. ‘I mean, you were furious with me for lying about my age. How could you have been thinking about marrying me?’
‘How not?’ Clear dark golden eyes met hers in fearless acknowledgement. ‘I still wanted you. In the end that’s all it came down to.’
Still wanted her but much against his will, she translated. But she was still deep in shock. While being very moody and unsentimental about it, Christien was nonetheless giving her riveting information about what he had felt for her in the past. He was so tense, though, that she felt a sudden shout might shatter him to pieces and she was touched.
Christien expelled his breath in a slow, measured hiss. ‘Once you lied to me about your age because you didn’t want to lose me. In the same way I chose to hold fire on telling you that I was engaged to Veronique on terms that you would never understand. Why? I didn’t want to lose you.’