‘You know very well how,’ she retorted. ‘Because I never made love to a man before. I think you mean why.’
‘Don’t play word-games with me at a time like this, kitten!’ he pleaded.
She thought of asking him which games he did want to play at a time like this, but something in the way he was looking at her made her realise how much it meant to him.
And to her.
‘Marco was… No, let me start again… Marco is…’
‘For heaven’s sake, Shelley, don’t keep me in suspense, just say it!’
‘Gay.’
‘Gay?’
‘That’s right. He isn’t interested in women—he never has been. That stupid kiss in the car was a thank-you kiss which went on longer than it should have done. It was always more about my fantasy than his. We lived together like brother and sister, until eventually he fell in love.’ She examined his face. ‘Are you shocked?’
‘Shocked?’ He gave a slow, easy smile. ‘Shocked? Kitten, I’m ecstatic, if you want the truth.’ He turned onto his back and looked up at the bare ceiling with the wonder of a man who was gazing on the interior of the Sistine Chapel. ‘Ecstatic! More than ecstatic! Good old Marco!’
He turned over to face her again and placed a possessive hand on her hip and frowned. ‘So what was in it for him?’
Shelley smiled. ‘He was a gorgeous, attractive, eligible and fabulously rich man and he used to get so many come-ons, you wouldn’t believe it. Well, maybe you would! But he was adamantly opposed to sex without love. I scared people away for him, if you like. Men and women. He always said he would find true love one day, and now he has.’
‘And if he hadn’t—how much longer would you have stayed there?’
Shelley shrugged, realising now the danger in her apathy. ‘I kept putting off having to make a decision. This was the only place I wanted to come back to, but I knew how impossible it would be if you’d found someone else.’
‘Well, I hadn’t.’ He sighed. ‘A virgin! Shelley, sweetest—you still could have told me first—I would have been a damn sight more gentle with you.’
‘But I didn’t want you to be gentle with me,’ she said demurely. ‘And neither did I want you to know I was a virgin before we made love. I needed to know that you would still want me even if I had had a lover before. As you’ve had lovers—’
‘Not as many as you seem to imagine. In fact, the actual number—’
But she shook her head. ‘The number isn’t important, Drew. What is important is that you treat me as your equal. If you’d known I was a virgin, I’d have been back up there on that pedestal—and it got kind of lonely up there.’
‘And did I? Treat you equally?’
‘You know you did,’ she said softly.
‘Well, then, now it’s your turn to hear me out. And on the question of lovers—’
‘Drew!’ she warned. ‘I don’t want to hear!’
‘Well, you’re going to! I may have had affairs in my life, but there has been no one—’ he saw her incredulous face as she anticipated his words ‘—I repeat, no one—not since you went away to Italy.’
‘What?’
‘It’s true.’ He gave a long, lazy smile as he stroked a fingertip along the curve of her waist. ‘I was so busy building up the business that I used to just fall into bed every night—alone! But more than that—’ he smiled at the question in her eyes ‘—the simple truth is that there was no one I fancied as much as you, kitten. Not before and certainly not since.’
But despite the wonder of his words a sudden rush of melancholy swamped her. ‘Oh, Drew—when I think of how much time we’ve wasted.’
‘No.’ His blue gaze was very intense as he smoothed the damp hair back from her face. ‘We mustn’t look on it as time spent wasted, but time spent growing. Neither of us was ready. I shouldn’t have teased you and tried to control you, not when you were ripe with need and in love with me. I shouldn’t have tried to control the inevitable. To fight fate. Even though I told myself that my intentions were purely honourable.’
‘And I shouldn’t have been so impatient!’
The gaze which flickered over her moon-washed body was rueful. ‘You were an awesome responsibility when you were younger, you know, Miss Turner. Your mother was terrified of history repeating itself.’
‘Was that why you…why we…?’
He sighed. ‘She trusted me to take care of you, and I didn’t want to abuse that trust. She once asked me not to take advantage of the crush you had on me, you know.’