Her own family had shunned her a long time ago, and she was damned if she was going to let that happen again.
Lexie stalked around the bed and into the bathroom, aware of Cesar’s eyes on her. The fact that he was so silent, not making any attempt to touch her, said it all. She closed the door and with shaking hands that told her of the heightened emotion she was barely reining in, she took off the robe and put on the costume nightshirt she’d been wearing for the rape scene.
When she emerged Cesar had put on a top. He looked serious.
Lexie hated that even now she was acutely aware of her sensitised naked body under the voluminous robe.
She was brisk. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’ From somewhere, Lexie even managed to force a smile—as if this hadn’t just cost her everything.
‘Lexie—’
She cut him off, dreading hearing some platitude, and a spurt of anger made her say, ‘Cesar, we’re wrapping here on Friday. It’s not as if this was ever going to go further. The papers have already lost interest in us—we’ve done what we set out to do in the first place.’
‘We have.’ His voice was flat.
‘Yes,’ Lexie insisted, forcing herself to look at him even though it was hard. ‘I wanted to salvage my reputation and avoid being dragged through the tabloids again as some kind of victim. You wanted to avoid unnecessary scrutiny into your family. It was a mutually beneficial affair—isn’t that what you called it?’
Everything within Cesar rejected Lexie’s terse words but something was holding him back. The feeling that the very walls around him were about to start crumbling—as if some sort of invisible earthquake was happening below ground.
Right at that moment the full impact of just how different Lexie was from any other lover he’d had hit him with the force of a blunt object. She’d turned him upside down and inside out.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘it was.’
Just then there was a knock on the main door of Cesar’s apartment. He cursed even as a very weak part of him welcomed the interruption. He strode through the main living space to get to the door, and opened it to see one of the film’s PAs.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Mr Da Silva, but the director is looking for Lexie.’
Cesar knew Lexie was behind him without turning around. His skin prickled. He felt disorientated, dizzy. Even now he had to battle an absurd urge to protect her and snarl at the young guy to leave.
Lexie was oblivious to the messy tumult in Cesar’s gut. She stepped around him, didn’t look at him, and spoke to the PA. ‘Tell Richard I’ll just change before I come to him.?
??
The PA hurried off, clearly relieved to have delivered his message. Cesar watched Lexie. She was avoiding his eye. He wanted to tip her chin up, force her to meet his gaze, but at the same time he didn’t want to see what was in those blue depths.
‘I should go and talk to Richard.’ Lexie’s voice was husky, her almost belligerent stance of moments ago less evident.
She looked at him then and Cesar tensed, but her eyes were clear. Unreadable. It irritated him—which irritated him even more.
‘The next few days are heavily scheduled so that we get out of here on time. I think it’s best if we just...let this be finished now.’
Cesar felt slightly numb. This was a novel situation: a woman who was ready to walk away before he was ready to let her go.
Humiliation scored at his insides. Lexie was right—this had only ever been about the short term. The thought of anything beyond this place was not an option. He did not chase women around the world. Whatever desire he felt would dissipate. He could not want her so badly that he was unable to let her go.
He was tight-lipped as he reached for the door and held it open. ‘Goodbye, Lexie.’
Something flared in her eyes for a second, and then it disappeared. She didn’t speak again, just turned and walked out, and as Cesar watched her go he thought numbly that she could be a ghost in the long white gown and in her bare feet.
He closed the door on her, on that evocative image, and pushed down the chilling sensation that she would haunt him for ever. Everything he’d been holding in since she’d told him about the rape, and then the baby, surged up in a tangled black mess of emotion.
He went to his drinks cabinet and took out a glass, poured himself a drink. Taking a swift gulp, he felt the liquid jolt him back to life. His hand tightened on the glass as he stared unseeingly at the wall in front of him.
His own mother had abandoned him and left him at the mercy of his grandparents. Lexie had given up her own son. For a moment pure unadulterated rage rose up within Cesar as he acknowledged what she’d done —but it was an old, reflexive anger that had more to do with his mother than with Lexie.
His rage dimmed when he thought of Lexie aged fifteen, a terrified and traumatised schoolgirl. What choice had she had? None.
For the first time in his life Cesar had to concede that by the time his mother had come back for him his grandparents had done such a number on him that he’d had no choice but to reject her.