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She leaned back against Luca’s bedroom doors and closed her eyes. And she gave in to the misery that was making her entire body feel too tight. She let one tear slide down her cheek, then another. A sharp, silent sob forced her to suck in a breath.
“Dios. Are you okay?”
She turned toward the sound of Rodriguez’s voice, wiping away the moisture on her face, hoping he didn’t notice that her hands were shaking. “F-fine, I’m fine.”
“Luca?”
“Sleeping. I’m just …”
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He took a step toward her, his dark brows locked together. “I thought … you seemed to want everything …”
“I did,” she whispered.
“Did someone hurt you? Did Luca’s father …”
She laughed, the sound hollow and watery. Pitiful. “Yes. Of course he did. We aren’t together as one big happy family, are we? But he didn’t … hurt me … not like you mean.”
He looked over his shoulder, down the long corridor, vacant for now, but they both knew that staff were still milling around, even though it was past midnight.
“Come on,” he said, touching her hand lightly. “Come talk to me.”
She followed him, trying desperately to keep from dissolving into a dribbly mess. Because no one had really wanted to talk to her about what had happened. Not with any real depth or meaning.
Come talk to me.
The way he said it was like he really wanted to hear it. But she wasn’t sure she could tell. Not when it seemed to live inside her, a dirty secret that roamed around in her belly like a hungry lion, consuming happiness, her joy in normal things. Reminding her, constantly, that she’d failed. That she could never be worthy of forgiveness.
He pushed open wide, double doors at the end of the corridor. His room, she knew. And yet, even though a couple of days ago she might have accused him of trying to seduce her, she didn’t think that tonight.
Anyway, she’d practically led the seducing earlier.
The front section of his chamber was a sitting area, and that seemed neutral enough. She sat in one of the chairs, the one farthest from any of the other chairs, because if they were going to have this discussion, she was keeping her distance. Keeping her control.
Rodriguez didn’t sit. He stood, leaning against the mantel, his posture relaxed, arms folded across his broad chest. He’d never put his tie back on and the top few buttons of his shirt were still open.
From her clawing at them like a deranged sex kitten.
Che cavolo.
“I’m sorry,” she said tightly.
“Why?”
“The whole thing is … all of this. You were supposed to marry Sophia—”
“I was never particularly attracted to Sophia,” he said, his voice rough.
“But Sophia wouldn’t have. I guess it doesn’t really matter.”
“Carlotta, I get that you don’t want to be the focus of tabloids and Luca does make things different. I know you’re worried about him seeing things that have been written about you when he’s old enough to look for them. Honestly, I had never given a thought to what any children of mine might think if they saw the stories written about me. I understand it now. But nothing happened tonight and …”
“Tonight,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “proved that I haven’t changed. I thought I had control over myself.”
“So you said earlier, but I still don’t get it. Chasing a little sexual pleasure, I don’t see the harm in it.”
“You wouldn’t. But I know the other side of it, don’t I? I know what happens when you let something have control over you.” She drew in a shaky breath, her stomach tightening. “Everything seemed so perfect when I met him. I’d never met a man that I really wanted before. But everything he said sounded so nice, and everything he did felt so good. For a girl who had held on to her virginity for as long as I did, I think his seduction time was record breaking. For a few stolen weekends it was great. Gabriel was—is—a political ambassador that my family was working quite closely with at the time. Every time he came to the palace I would sneak out of my room to be with him.”
“Carlotta, if you think you’re the first girl to be seduced by the kind of man that makes promises but only wants sex, you’re wrong. There are a lot of men gifted in saying just the right things, or the wrong things, to get a woman into bed. But that’s his sin, not yours.”
She laughed. “If that were the whole story, sure. I might believe you. I asked him one night, could we take things public. I was ready. Ready to marry him, or just live with him, whatever he would give me. But I wanted to spend the whole night with him, not sneak back to my room after he was finished with me. And that was when I found out about Kristen. She’s Gabriel’s wife of fifteen years. They have four children. And when he was away on important business trips, supposedly working, he was sleeping with me.” Her voice broke.
“Carlotta …” he said, taking a step toward her.
“Don’t. You have to hear the rest. I was … utterly heartbroken. Completely. And that was when I … This is what I can’t forgive myself for, Rodriguez. I can’t.” For a moment, she couldn’t speak, her voice buried beneath the pressure in her chest, the shame, the guilt. She was sick with it, heavy. She felt too tired to go on, and yet, she couldn’t stop. She had to tell him. Had to let it out.
She swallowed hard. “He … he wanted me again. He wanted to still be with me.” Her voice shook but she continued anyway. “He told me he loved me. And I believed him. And that night, I let myself forget about Kristen, just for a few moments. I let him have me one more time. Because I wasn’t ready to let him go. Because for one, stupid moment, I believed him when he said we could find a way to make it work.”
She choked on the admission, her skin crawling even as she confessed it out loud. “I can’t scrub that night off my skin, Rodriguez. Not after six years.” A sob assaulted her. “And tonight I proved that I haven’t changed.”
That was the part that no one knew. Something she’d never been able to speak out loud. The part that made it impossible to let it all go. She had been stupid enough, going into a clandestine, purely sexual affair with a man that she didn’t really know. But trying to block out the full horror of reality when she’d heard it from his own lips? When she’d known, known his wife was at home, in their bed alone, and he was with Carlotta.
That was something she hated herself for. That she hadn’t been able to stop loving him in that instant. That she had given in when she’d had a chance to turn back.
“The only real consolation of that is, by my dates, I was already pregnant. At least that last time … and it’s hard to even talk about because the one thing, the only thing, I don’t regret from that affair was Luca. But if I had gotten pregnant from that time, when I knew he was married … that would have been much harder to handle.”
Rodriguez didn’t speak, he only looked at her, his eyes unreadable, black bottomless pools, in the dim lamplight of the sitting area. He stood frozen and for one, horrible moment she was afraid he was just going to turn around and leave her there.
Then he moved to her, crouching down in front of her, clasping her hands in his.
“That man was a bastard. He took advantage of you, of the fact that you loved him. He cheated both you, and his wife. All of his children. He should carry the shame of this, and I’m willing to bet that he doesn’t.”
She forced a laugh. “I’m sure he doesn’t. I’m sure he doesn’t care enough about either of us.”
He moved his thumb over the back of her hand. “What happened? After he told you, after the last time you were together?”
He kept holding on to her, offering her strength. She looked down at their hands, joined together in her lap. “I had to find my clothes. I gathered them up, and I went into the bathroom. Then I threw up.”
It had been awful, her entire body shaking and then, with Gabriel watching from the bed, she’d had to stumble from the room, be sick right in bathroom, where he could hear. Where he would know just how much pain she was in.
“And then I got dressed, and I walked out. I avoided him the next day and prayed he wouldn’t come back again. I started feeling sick soon after that and then I realized … and I had to tell my father. Everything. He made me tell Gabriel. And then he paid Gabriel a lot of money. To never come back. To keep quiet when the media discovered I was pregnant.”
She breathed in deeply. “It wasn’t like in movies where a woman finds out she’s pregnant and it’s somehow this wonderful moment. I was horrified. Numb. I had to go to the doctor and get tested for every STD under the sun because clearly our birth control efforts had failed, and there was no telling who else he’d been sleeping with. What he might have given me. And I just sort of existed for the next few months. I didn’t want to feel the baby kick. It made it too real. But when Luca was born … that was like the movies. He was just so tiny and vulnerable. And he needed me. But I realized then how much I needed him too. He gave me purpose. He made me want to be better.”
“And better is denying you have sexual desire?” he asked, his voice soft.
“That’s what it’s meant since Gabriel, yes. But it’s not just that. It’s everything. Things that feel good can be wrong. You have to trust in something more than feelings.”
“He was a bastard.”
“For cheating on his wife? Don’t you plan on cheating on me?”
Rodriguez looked down at Carlotta, at her face, streaked with tears he wasn’t even certain she’d noticed. The confession had cost her, and he could well understand why. And now, faced with her question, he felt like he’d been eviscerated by her words.
Yes. He had been planning on carrying on as he’d always done. But he had promised honesty. Surely that changed things? Now though, he didn’t feel like it did.
“I promised you honesty,” he said, his voice rough.
She nodded. “I know.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
“Rodriguez …”
“I am not the same as he is.” He said it to convince himself, and the sad part was, he didn’t feel convinced. Not even remotely. He felt like he was deserving of every ounce of scorn he was ready to heap onto the man who had dared play with Carlotta in that way. Who had taken a young woman’s fragile emotions and used them so he could find satisfaction in her body.
And for the first time he wondered how he was different than a man like that. Because he had always assumed his behavior was fine. He always parted with his partners on good terms. They had fun, in bed and out, he bought them gifts, he made them feel good about themselves. He’d never considered it wrong, not for a moment.
Now he wondered if he had ever left a woman feeling like that. If he’d truly only used his lovers.
No, he’d never been guilty of quite what Gabriel had. No children, no cheating.
But he had been planning on doing that. To Carlotta. To Luca. It would have been in the tabloids. Luca would be able to see it.
“I won’t cheat,” he said, the words falling from his lips before he had a chance to think them through.
“What?”
“I will stay faithful to you. If you will do the same for me.”
“Forever?”
“Forever. I can’t promise any deep, abiding emotion I … I can’t.” It was the honest truth, a limitation of his that he had accepted long ago. Embraced. “I just don’t have that. But I can control my actions, and I never want to put you in the position of being hurt or humiliated again. I will never do to you what Gabriel did to his wife. And I don’t want Luca seeing tabloid photos of me out with other women.”
He had never believed he had it in him to be a good father. He still didn’t. He knew nothing about it. The mere thought of his own father made him feel ill. But he wouldn’t flaunt any kind of disrespect for Luca’s mother. Wouldn’t have Luca seeing evidence of infidelity in their marriage.
If Rodriguez had had a mother he could remember, he would have wanted the same.
And he didn’t want to be anything like the man who was Luca’s father in genes only.
She looked up at him, her green eyes rimmed in red from crying. “I promise to be faithful to you too.”
He felt like they were taking vows now. Like everything spoken between them in this room would be binding.
“I need you to promise something else too,” he said.
“What’s that?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“Gabriel’s not invited into our bed.”
She grimaced. “No problem.”
“I don’t mean literally, and I don’t mean in the sense that I think you might fantasize about him or something. I mean any hang-ups he’s left you with. The guilt. You loved him. It didn’t just go away when he admitted he’d lied to you. I’ve never loved anyone, Carlotta. I know it makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do. And I just want you.”
She drew in a shaking breath. “I don’t know if I can, Rodriguez. What I did was … I can’t forgive myself for it.”
“How long did your affair with him last?”
“Every weekend for about eight weeks.”
“And you fell in love with him?”
“I was a twenty-three-year-old virgin. I thought I was in love with him the moment I went to bed with him, the night that I met him. I saw white dresses and diamond rings and forever.”
“And if you had known he was married when you met, what would you have done?”
“I never would have let him touch me.”
“He waited to tell you until he knew he had you wrapped around his finger. He’s the one who should be ashamed. Deeply. He deceived you. He manipulated you.”
“I still did the wrong thing,” she insisted.
“And I am in no position to throw stones. I’ve made mistakes. That’s another thing I’ll never ask of you. I’ll never ask you to be perfect, because I know I never will be.”
“I think I can do that,” she said, her voice trembling, a small laugh escaping.
“I know this isn’t what either of us expected, but I think we can make it work.” He moved his thumb over her smooth, creamy skin. His body responding to the silken texture, to her scent. Even now, he could remember how it had been to caress the even softer skin of her breasts. A tremor of lust rocked him.
“And you’ll always tell the truth?”
“I will,” he said.
“What are you thinking right now?”
He gritted his teeth. “I’m thinking about how much I want to continue what we started on the beach. How beautiful your breasts are. How much I want to taste them again.”
Her cheeks flushed deep rose, her full lips curving up slightly. “Not exactly what I was expecting.”
“But honest,” he said.
“I want you too, but …”
“Forget everything right now. What do you want?”
“You,” she said. “I want to make love with you. But …”
He leaned in and kissed her. Carlotta closed her eyes and let the touch of Rodriguez’s mouth on her wash everything away. The guilt. The hurt. His kiss cleansed her, left her empty, wanting, then filled her again with desire, need.
She’d told him the truth and he still wanted her. Maybe she could do this after all. Want it. Want him.
