Once she was sitting down he walked across to Drew’s desk and perched on the side of it, his masculinity suddenly dwarfing the room as he looked at her with brooding eyes. ‘You were right, you know.’ It was husky, his accent strong for once.
‘What?’ She stared at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Those things you said back at my house. I don’t like emotion; in fact it scares the hell out of me. Emotion makes you vulnerable, open to attack, as accessible as the next man. And the most powerful emotion of them all is love. I was taught by an expert that if you love you are at your weakest, and that when the object of your love is destroyed or leaves you the pain is always with you.’
He was talking about Mitch dying, his father’s gradual demise. Robyn stared at him as he looked into her eyes with an almost hypnotic intensity.
‘Because I was weak, many years ago, I ran away from love into a hell of my own making,’ he continued softly. ‘I could have had heaven but I wasn’t strong enough to reach out for it, and so for years I lied to myself. I told myself that all women were the same deep down, that betrayal and lies and heartache were the core of any relationship once you were foolish enough to trust, to love. I let someone down very badly and then I got Laura, and so to convince myself I hadn’t got what I deserved I built up an armour of lies. Not a pretty picture, is it?’
He had loved a woman once? Ridiculously she felt a stab of jealousy, the force of which tightened her hands into small fists. But why was he telling her all this? What difference did it make to them now? It was just torturing her if he did but know it.
‘Robyn, do you understand what I’m saying?’ His voice was low and smoky, and as she shook her head in bewilderment he rose abruptly, pacing up and down in front of her for a moment or two before he said, the words a groan, ‘I’d promised myself I wouldn’t touch you until I’d said it all but this is killing me.’
She gazed at him, utterly at a loss as to what was going on and then he stopped in front of her, pulling her to her feet and into his arms as he drew a long, steadying breath and ground out, ‘I love you, Robyn. I’ve loved you for years. Loved and desired and wanted you since you were sixteen and quivered and moaned in my arms that night at the lake. There was never anyone before and there’s never been anyone since, not here, in my heart.’ He hit his chest with his fist.
Robyn felt the disbelief shudder through her and her face must have expressed what she was feeling because he shook her gently, his eyes wretched, before he said, ‘That night at the hospital when you thought I was asleep? I heard what you said. It…it crucified me, I can’t tell you.’
He had heard her? She let out a low moan of protest, of humiliation, but he crushed her against him, taking her lips in an agonised kiss as he murmured, ‘Don’t, oh, please, don’t. It’s all right; I swear I’ll make it all right.’
‘You…you’re feeling sorry for me.’ She could barely get the words out through the sobs that were shaking her. ‘You don’t love me, you told me you can’t love.’
‘Why do you think I’ve kept in touch with Guy all these years? Even after the twins were born and they reminded me of Mitch and I?’
The pain in his voice stilled her struggling but she still didn’t dare let herself believe what he was saying. ‘I had to know what you were doing, where you were; I couldn’t get you out of my mind, Robyn. Half the time I was torturing myself with jealousy, imagining you with other men, but I still couldn’t let go. That night at the lake, I would have been the first, wouldn’t I? You meant what you said, about loving me?’
She nodded, unable to speak.
‘I knew it deep down, even that night when I said those lies that sent you flying away from me as though I was the devil incarnate. Maybe I was,’ he ground out wretchedly.
No, he hadn’t been the devil, merely a terribly hurt, confused young man who hadn’t dared to believe and reach out for what had seemed too good to be true to him at the time. Suddenly she understood. And because of that there had been too many wasted years, broken dreams, heartaches and vain strivings. And she had been too young herself, too much in love and too fragile to believe in herself enough to stay and talk it through.
‘When I went back to the States after Cassie and Guy’s wedding I was in a hell of a state,’ he continued painfully, his hands stroking restlessly up and down the smooth silky skin of her arms. ‘I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep; I knew then I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. The way you looked at me in those few seconds before you ran… It was eating me up inside. And so I tried to break it off with Laura.’
More things fitted into place in Robyn’s whirling mind. Margo had said the state he’d been in the last few days had been mirrored once, years before, and she remembered Clay himself telling her he had tried to finish his relationship with Laura once but that she had threatened to kill herself if he didn’t go through with the marriage. ‘But she used emotional blackmail,’ she murmured softly. ‘You thought she was an innocent, shy girl who would break her heart if you let her down and broke off the engagement.’
He nodded grimly. ‘But that doesn’t excuse what I did to you.’ Robyn could feel the turmoil shuddering through him and wondered how she could ever have considered him cold and unfeeling as she read the self-contempt and agony in his eyes.
She wanted to reach up to him, wanted to kiss away the despair in his face but all the years of suffering, the recent, raw rejection and pain, still made her just the tiniest bit unsure. She had to ask the question that was burning on her lips. ‘But why, after Laura had died, didn’t you come for me if you felt like that?’ she asked softly, the tears still running down her face. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘How could I?’ he said harshly. ‘You know the sort of man I am; how could I inflict all my hang-ups on a young, carefree girl who had the right to meet someone who could love her as she should be loved? Someone young, unsoured, someone who believed in happy ever after. But I thought of you all the time, Robyn, no matter how I tried to get you out of my mind. And I did try,’ he said cynically. ‘But none of them had eyes the colour of warm melted chocolate that looked at me as though I was the most wonderful thing on earth. And so I continued torturing myself, picturing you with other men, dating them, maybe loving them. And all the time living in limbo and waiting. And then Cassie called and said they were a man short for Guy’s birthday party and I knew it was the moment. You deserved someone better, but it was my moment.’
‘You…you said you wanted an affair for just a limited time,’ she reminded him dazedly. ‘Right at the start you said that.’
‘I told you I was a coward. You terrify me, Robyn, or rather how I feel about you terrifies me. I can’t handle it. And you made it clear you were seeing me on sufferance.’
As she went to interrupt he shook her gently, saying quickly, ‘Oh, I deserved it, I knew I deserved it, but from the moment I saw you again I knew I couldn’t let you go, and there you were—so icy cold, looking at me as though I was something you’d found under a stone. But Cassie had given me the perfect excuse to stay in your life and I intended to use it.’
‘The sleeping partner.’ Oh, Cass, Cass.
‘And I thought, okay, so that night all those years ago meant nothing to you now and you were never going to love me like I knew I loved you, but you did want me, physically. It was something.’
‘And so the self-protection of a lifetime came into place,’ she murmured softly. ‘Oh, Clay.’
‘But you were strong, so strong: giving out the dictates, setting out the rules. Hell, no one had ever done that to me before.’ His voice carried a note of absolute amazement. ‘And so I told myself I’d wear you down and then for however long you stayed with me we’d enjoy each other. But each day I loved you more and whatever I did or said you held me at arm’s length. Your power over me scared me to death. You seemed to read my mind, know exactly what made me tick.’
‘But I felt that about you.’ She was gazing at him in amazed wonder. ‘All along I thought you were doing that.’
‘You destroyed me that night at the house before we went to the hospital,’ he said slowly, ‘and then, when you came to stand at the side of me and said what you did…I couldn’t take it in at first. I can’t remember hardly anything after that, even the baby.’