“All I’m asking is if it’s occurred to you that maybe you chose a totally worthless ho to date so that you wouldn’t have to face actually marrying her and starting a family? So that you wouldn’t have to risk losing a woman you loved, the mother of your children, like your mother lost your father? You know, so you could use your ex as the reason to hide from love?” She shrugged, tried to act nonchalant. “Heck, that’s probably why you chose me, too. Because it’s easier to sleep with a totally inappropriate singer there is absolutely no chance of having a future with.”
The silence was thick, almost cold, after she finished her point-by-point analysis of his life. Suddenly, she realized she’d never seen Marcus look at her like this before.
He was angry.
Angry with her for having told him what she thought.
Finally, he said, “What about you?” His eyes were narrowed, his jaw tight. “You could have anyone, Nicola. So why did you date a worthless liar that you probably knew would end up hurting you? Is it the same reason you think you need to fill some sexy image? The same reason you hide behind your body and your pretty face rather than letting people see how smart you are? And isn’t that why you chose me, too, because I’m fun for a couple of nights, but we both know you’d never consider sticking it out with a boring old guy in a suit in a million years?"
She hadn’t expected him to come back at her with that, with any of it, and she tried to take her hands from his, but he held them fast.
“You have no right to say those things to me.”
“Don’t throw stones if your own damn house can’t take it, kitten.”
Oh God, she hated hearing him use that endearment now, when he was angry with her.
“Seems to me you’re the expert on hiding,” he told her in a low, hard voice. “Hiding from the press. Hiding how smart and talented you really are. Even in the bedroom, the last place in the world you should have been trying to hide yourself from your lover, I have to push every one of your buttons to get you to drop your walls for a split-second.”
She understood that she’d upset him with what she’d said, so much that he was actively trying to push her away. But that knowledge did nothing to douse her pain. If anything, it only made it worse.
Because she’d stupidly trusted him not to hurt her.
She yanked her hands from his grip and got to her feet in the sand. “Fine! You don’t want me to hide anymore, then how about I stop right now?"
He stood up, too, facing her. “I dare you to try.”
As the gauntlet crash down between them, she blurted, “How about I face up to the fact that I’m still the world’s biggest idiot for believing that we could actually do this with no strings. How about I tell you that I knew better than to start falling in love with a guy who would never want me for anything more than a couple of days of hot sex.” Her breath was coming too fast and her vision was blurring with tears as she yelled, “How’s that for smart?"
She had to turn away from him, couldn’t bear to let him see her cry. Not now that everything was ruined and her perfect day had been crushed to smithereens.
And not after she’d actually gone and confessed her stupid feelings to him in the perfect way to make sure that he would never, ever return them.
Not, she knew, that he would have anyway.
“I need to go,” she told him in a tight voice that she willed not to break. “My crew is going to be expecting me at the venue for sound check soon. I can’t be late again like I was yesterday.”
She headed toward the path between the pine trees that would take her back to his car. In the surf when he’d been holding her in his arms, despite how cold the water swirling around them had been, she’d felt so warm.
But now, even with the warm sun beating down on her back, she’d never felt colder.
* * *
It wasn’t just the shock of knowing how deep her emotions for him ran that had Marcus reeling.
It was the fact that here he’d been going on about her needing to treat herself as more than a sex object, when that’s the way he’d been treating her all along. Because when she actually turned that big brain on his life, to analyze the decisions he’d made, he’d lost it on her.
Throwing everything into the picnic bag, he moved quickly through the trees to find her waiting in his car. Her back was straight, her hands were on her lap, and she was staring straight ahead as he got in behind the wheel.
“I’m sorry."
He wanted to reach for her hand, but he knew how she’d react, that the last thing she wanted was for him to touch her. The irony wasn’t lost on him that the very thing she didn’t want was now what he needed most—to reconnect with her even in that one small way.
“I’m sorry, too."
Marcus was surprised to hear her say those words to him. He’d been planning to say so much more, needed to let her know how wrong he’d been to hurt her like that, that he hadn’t realized what a sensitive topic his father’s death was.
But when her eyes met his, flat and empty, he knew he was too late.
“I shouldn’t have pressured you for these extra days together."
He thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes, but when he looked again they were clear. And still so flat his gut clenched at the memory of the passion, the joy that had been there just minutes before.
“You were right to want to end things after that first night.” Her mouth moved up at the corners, into something no one would ever call a smile. “Lesson learned. One-night stands should stick to the number in their name.”