The Legend of de Marco

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Confusion warred alongside the panic within Gracie. She didn’t know what Rocco was trying to do to her. He was looking at her so intensely. ‘Stop saying that. You’re not sorry at all.’

Tears were blurring her vision again, and Gracie fought not to let them fall, blinking rapidly. He’d reduced her to a snivelling wreck—why wasn’t he walking away? Anger at her response, and at him for precipitating it, made her lash out as she tried to extricate her arm from his grip.

‘Do you know what it’s like to be looked through? As if you don’t exist? Do you have any idea how that feels? I am someone, Rocco. I am a person with hopes and dreams and feelings. I’m not a bad person, despite what you might think. When someone looks through you like you’re invisible—’

‘Gracie …’

Rocco had taken both her arms in his hands now. He was standing right in front of her, gripping her tight. She sucked in a shaky breath.

He spoke again. ‘I know … I know what it’s like.’

Faint scorn laced Gracie’s voice. ‘How can you know? You have no idea what I’m talking about.’

His hands gripped tighter. There was a white line of tension around his mouth and his eyes were blazing. ‘I know.’

His hands gentled then, and Gracie stared up, dumbfounded. One hand came up to her chin and with his thumb and forefinger he tipped her face up higher, so she couldn’t escape his gaze.

‘I see you.’

Emotions were roiling in Gracie’s belly. She felt hot all over. Confusion warred with the anger inside her, and she shook her head. ‘You don’t … You can’t. I’m nothing to you.’

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Fiercely, he shook his head. ‘No. You are not nothing.’

Gracie was dimly aware that in their backward-forward dance they had now moved into a more dimly lit corner of the kitchen by the window seat. She could feel her hair unravelling. The entire world might have stopped turning in that moment and she wouldn’t have noticed. All she could see were the black depths of Rocco’s eyes and she was drowning. She had to fight the pull of the strongest tide she’d ever felt.

‘Rocco …’ Her voice was shaky. ‘What are you doing? Why are you here?’

Her lower arms were between them, as if she was still valiantly making the effort to pull free from Rocco’s hands. But his hands had gentled, and yet Gracie couldn’t move back or break free. Some fatal lethargy had invaded her bones and her blood. He pulled her in closer.

He didn’t speak for a long moment, and then it was as if the words were being pulled out from deep inside him. ‘I want you. I am here because I want you. This whole evening, this past week, ever since I met you … I’ve wanted you. Not her. She guessed how I felt. That’s why she was so cruel.’

Gracie shook her head even as molten heat seemed to bloom down low between her legs. She’d never felt so hot. And so out of her depth. She’d truly believed that her guilty little secret of obsessing about Rocco would never be noticed. Or reciprocated.

Gracie shook her head again, more forcefully this time. ‘No. You’re bored … or trying to make her jealous or something. I’m just convenient.’

Rocco grimaced then. ‘You’re definitely not convenient. And I am not bored. I don’t care if she is jealous, because it’s over and I’m never going to see her again.’

Gracie reeled. The full magnitude of what he was saying started to sink in. He’d had a fight with his fiancée over her? And he’d chosen her?

‘But … you had a relationship. You were going to marry her.’

Rocco went still for a second as the enormity of her words sank in. He had just ended his relationship with Honora Winthrop, and in doing so his grand plans to marry her. He’d done it because he wanted to sleep with Gracie O’Brien more urgently than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. More than the social acceptance he’d hungered for for so long? He didn’t even want to answer that.

In some rational part of his brain that was still functioning Rocco knew very well that if he ran after Honora Winthrop and caught her just as she reached home he might salvage something.

And like a slow-dawning yet cataclysmic realisation he knew he didn’t want to. The feeling of claustrophobia that had been dogging him for weeks had lifted.

Rocco shook his head. ‘We didn’t have a relationship—not really. What we had was an understanding that a more permanent relationship would be mutually beneficial on many levels.’

‘But that’s … so cold.’

Rocco shrugged and said cynically, ‘That’s life. I hadn’t yet asked her to marry me, and I haven’t been sleeping with her.’

Gracie was trying to take it all in. She knew that Rocco wouldn’t feel he had to hand her platitudes to get her into bed. She believed that he hadn’t cared for that woman, and that he hadn’t slept with her. He was too powerful to care about lying. She knew he wouldn’t shy away from hurting her with the truth if he had slept with that woman.