The Man Who Risked It All

‘When I think of all those months of marriage when we did not indulge in sex at all, it feels like a hell of a waste now.’

‘Well, if you must think in those terms I suppose those months must have been a waste to you. But for me …’ She started picking up clothes again—snatching them up, actually, because if she didn’t she might—’Talking like that makes me feel like just another sexual affair to you.’

An uneasy silence ensued for a few seconds before he said, ‘I think you had better explain that.’

She turned to look at him lying there sprawled in all his naked glory like a beautifully tooled bronze sculpture even his bruising couldn’t spoil. Arrogant, she thought. Conceitedly sure of his own masculine beauty. Even the sleepy weight of his eyelids and the kiss warmed shape of his mouth made statements of lazy self-assurance about the deeply sensual man that he was.

And why not? He’d sent her wildly out of control only two seconds after their skins met. When had she not responded like that?

‘We had a fabulous summer affair and a lousy winter marriage.’ She looked away again. ‘One steaming hot—the other freezing cold. When I left here I don’t think you even noticed.’

‘I noticed,’ he murmured.

‘In passing? On your way back to your old life? Tell me.’ Clutching the clothes to her front, Lexi made herself face him again. ‘How long did you wait before you consoled yourself by taking another woman to your bed?’

His eyes hooded altogether. For a brief moment she thought she saw that grey veil attempt to shutter his grim fa

ce. ‘I don’t think this topic of conversation is appropriate.’

‘Appropriate for what?’

‘We are trying to heal the past.’

Well, Lexi didn’t feel healed—she felt hurt. Wounded, in fact, by that shuttered expression. She wanted denials. Hot, offended denials. Not—

‘Is this yet another subject on your banned list, Franco?’ she goaded. ‘Are we not to talk about the newspaper reports that put the first woman in your bed at the Lisbon powerboat convention a short month after I left?’ She tugged in a short breath. ‘Of course that was the first woman the press got wind of—that does not automatically mean she was the first one to grace your bed. Perhaps you had enough sensitivity to be more discreet about the preceding lovers—’

‘And you moved straight in with Dayton,’ he countered. ‘You tell me, Lexi.’ Despite the obvious aches of his body he climbed off the bed and moved towards her—prowled, actually, like a sleek hunter scenting a hearty meal he relished tearing to bits. ‘How long did it take him to coax you into his bed? Did he use the Let me hold you while you grieve for your baby excuse to get you there? Did you curl up against him and weep your broken heart out all over him while he subtly moved things onto something much more satisfying and intimate?’

CHAPTER NINE

GONE sickly pale now, she whispered, ‘That’s a disgusting thing to throw at me.’

‘You think so?’ Grim contempt scored lines across his handsome face. ‘So did I when the bastard relayed those bald facts to me the day I was stupid enough to go to his apartment to see you.’

‘That’s a lie!’ Lexi protested.

‘Is it?’ Reaching out, Franco yanked the clothes out of her nerveless fingers, separated his things, then stuffed her nightie back into her hands. ‘Go to bed,’ he snapped, and turned his back on her to head for the bathroom. ‘Your own damn bed.’

But she couldn’t move a single muscle. A cold, sickening chill of a tremor had frozen her where she stood. ‘Bruce just would not lie like that … Why should he when it never happened?’

‘That’s right,’ he derided. ‘Trust loyal Bruce to always act in your best interests.’ He stilled in the bathroom doorway. ‘He showed me the evidence.’

‘He what—?’

‘He tried to fob me off with a verbal description first, then when I refused to accept it—’ his big shoulders flexed in a ripple of tense glossy muscle ‘—he showed me the evidence.’

‘But he can’t have shown you any evidence when it didn’t happen!’

The way she cried out that denial swung Franco round. His face looked as if it had been carved out of rock. ‘Your things littered all over the place.’ He speared a glance at the nightie she held crushed in her taut fingers. ‘You always were the untidiest woman I ever met. When we lived our fantastic hot affair that summer you drove me crazy because you never picked up after yourself. On the boat. At the villa we rented in San Remo—’

San Remo … where everything had turned bad for them.

‘He picked your bra up off the floor while I watched him,’ he went on harshly. ‘He dared …’ In some distant part of her Lexi felt the emotional throb of his voice. ‘He dared to send me a look, as if we were good old friends enjoying a moment of mutual understanding, as he tossed the damn bra onto a chair loaded down with your clothes.’

‘This never happened.’ Lexi took a step towards him, but he stiffened up so violently she pulled to a stop again.

‘Don’t tell me it didn’t happen when I was there,’ he ground out. ‘I saw the damn frog sitting on your pillow!’