An evening meal was served in the dining room. Although the table was set for two and she waited and the steward hovered in readiness, Sergio didn’t appear. She ate hardly anything and at her request was shown to a huge stateroom. Desperate to fill the time, she ran a bath in the amazing splendour of the marble bathroom. She had only lowered herself into the warm scented water when the door she had forgotten to shut opened wider to disclose Sergio.
A dark shadow of stubble roughening his hard jaw line, black hair tousled, his shirt hanging loose from his jeans, he had so much raw bad-boy appeal he made her heart bounce like a ball inside her chest. As she sat up in haste, hugging her knees to her breasts, he regarded her in nerve-racking silence.
‘I’m sorry…’ he said grittily.
Those two words were like the blade of a knife slicing between her ribs, as she didn’t know what was coming next. Even worse where he was concerned, she was in negative mode and expecting bad news. What was he sorry for? An inability to live with a woman publicly branded a thief?
Sergio shrugged a broad shoulder. His gorgeous tawny eyes were strained. ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’
Kathy was frozen there in the bath like an ice statue, the gooseflesh of fear breaking out on her skin and a clammy sensation in her tummy.
‘You see it was your fatal flaw,’ he added incomprehensibly.
‘What was?’
‘I’ve always had this theory that everyone has a fatal flaw. Yours was a criminal record,’ he shared. ‘It all connected, it made sense—’
‘What made sense?’ Kathy was hanging on his every word and wishing they would connect in an understandable way.
‘You were beautiful, clever and sexy, but you were working in a menial position for low pay. Why? You had a criminal record.’ Sergio flattened his strong, sensual mouth. ‘I’m a cynic. I always look on the dark side. It never occurred to me to doubt that you were a thief.’
‘I know,’ she agreed heavily.
‘And for months I didn’t think about it because when I thought about it I got annoyed,’ he breathed almost roughly. ‘When I found you again and Ella was born, I let that knowledge go—I buried it.’
Her green eyes only accentuated her pallor. Her supposed guilt had been buried like a body because that was the only way he could live with it and her.
Sergio shifted an eloquent brown hand to signify his regret and then said something that disconcerted her entirely. ‘But although a jury found you guilty and you went to prison you are not a thief.’
Her smooth brow indented. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I believe you. You’ve convinced me, dolcezza mia.’
Kathy continued to stare at him in wordless disorientation, for that change of heart and opinion knocked her sideways.
‘You’re innocent. You’ve got to be. It doesn’t make sense any other way. I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re willing to listen now,’ she admitted unevenly.
‘I weighed up the crime with everything I know about you and all of a sudden it was clear to me that you had to be telling me the truth.’
‘Have you been talking to Renzo, by any chance?’
‘No. Why?’
Sergio had no idea that his security chief had been looking into her case, acquainting himself with the facts and chasing up every possible lead. When Kathy explained, his lean powerful face shadowed. ‘So, even Renzo believed you when I didn’t.’
‘I imagine Bridget wouldn’t have given him any choice in the matter.’ The relief of knowing that Sergio finally had faith in her brought a tidal wave of tears to the back of her eyes. She studied the water fixedly and blinked like mad. ‘Let me finish my bath. I’ll be out in five minutes.’
Sergio frowned. ‘Are you going to cry?’
Kathy raised a delicate brow, her eyes bright as jewels. ‘What do you think?’
‘I need to know what happened to you four years ago. Your arrest, the whole story.’
‘It’s not likely to make you feel any better.’
‘Do you think I deserve to feel better?’