‘You’re so black and white.’
‘Like I said, I’ve seen what misplaced emotion can do. I stick to what I know. It makes life a damned sight less complicated.’
‘What...what was that girl like?’
She hadn’t been aware that she was going to ask that question until it left her mouth and Sergio, caught on the back foot, raised his eyebrows in a perplexed, impatient frown.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You once said that you’re the way you are because you had a learning curve... Who was the woman who provided the learning curve?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘None. And if you don’t want to talk about it, then forget I asked.’
She shrugged, started making for the kitchen door of the house, which she knew would lead to the spacious ground floor and eventually the front door and her way out—although how she was getting home she had no idea. Her ride, in the form of her parents and Alex, had gone an hour and a half ago. It would have to be another taxi.
‘Where are you staying?’
‘Bed and breakfast. It’s in the village. A bunch of us are booked in there.’
‘And I,’ he said smoothly, ‘am booked into the one and only five-star hotel ten miles away.’
‘I’d rather not come with you...’
‘Sure about that?’
And he swooped to kiss her, his tongue probing into her mouth, enveloping her in a swirl of heated responses that shook her to the core.
He did this every time. She needed to think...not say goodbye to all her thought processes and cling to him like a vine.
Yet of their own volition her arms curled round his neck and she found herself gently but efficiently propelled back until she was pressed against the wall in the deserted hallway.
‘We can’t... Not here...’
‘Then I guess that means you’ll be coming back with me...’
CHAPTER SIX
‘HER NAME WAS Dominique Duval. Still is, for all I know—although who can be sure? She might have moved on to marriage number two...or three...or four by now. It’s been a few years, and no one could ever accuse Dominique of being anything other than a fast worker. I met her in a club.’
‘You know, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to...’
Was she really ready to hear a story of thwarted passion? Was she ready to learn all about his one and only true love and how she’d let him down? Left him to marry someone else?
‘You asked, and after more time together than I’d anticipated it’s only fair that you understand why me and commitment will never have anything more than a passing acquaintance.’
‘When you fall in love with someone it can be brutal when things go pear-shaped—especially if you’ve pinned your hopes on it working out.’
She heard a certain wistfulness in her voice and pulled herself up sharply, because the last thing she wanted was for him to guess at the depth of her feelings for him. When she told him that she was pregnant she would do so as a calm, collected adult whose only priority was to discuss technicalities and to reassure him that he could take as much or as little interest as he wanted.
‘Or so I would imagine,’ she added.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Sergio informed her. ‘I was never in love with that woman. It’s true she made a pass at me the first time we met, but I was involved with someone else at the time, and having fun with two women at the same time has never been my style.’
‘You were never in love with her? But I thought...’
‘You assumed—from a couple of throwaway remarks.’
‘How can you have a learning curve from someone you met in a club when you never had a relationship with her? Did she try and pickpocket you?’
‘My hotel. We’re here.’
Susie followed the direction of his finger to see a grand country house that was lit from top to bottom. Two uniformed men stood outside, as if guarding the entrance. She knew her aunt and uncle came to this hotel on a regular basis with friends. Apparently it did a very good dinner.
‘And, no...pickpockets don’t engender learning curves. Dominique Duval was a nurse, and she made a pass at me because she knew who I was. I was young at the time—barely out of my teens—and from a wealthy family. My mother had died years before and my father had never remarried. I was in line to inherit his fortune, but I think she knew from the get-go that a fortune in the future was a lot less enticing than a fortune she could lay her hands on immediately. Maybe if I’d been interested she would have climbed into bed with me for the fun of it, but she had set her sights higher.’