‘That wasn’t all,’ she said now in a quiet voice.
‘What do you mean?’ Cesar moved, sitting up too.
She looked at him. ‘The rape resulted in me becoming pregnant.’
He frowned. ‘Pregnant? You had a baby?’
Lexie nodded, suppressing the inevitable spasm of emotion. ‘A baby boy. I named him Connor.’
Cesar shook his head, clearly finding this hard to digest. ‘But...you don’t... Where is he now?’
‘I had just turned fifteen when I had him. My family sent me away to a distant relative down the country for the duration of the pregnancy, where I was pretty much kept a prisoner for nine months. He was adopted two days after the birth, and is growing up somewhere in the greater Dublin area—that’s all I know. And that they kept Connor as his middle name.’
Lexie watched as Cesar, looking slightly stunned, blindly pushed back the covers and got out of the bed. A sinking feeling gripped her. This was it. Her ugly truth bared. She’d known on some deep level that it would be too much to take in. This relationship was about a flirty affair while they were filming—not about dark secrets.
She knew with a sick feeling that she had just ended it.
CHAPTER TEN
CESAR PULLED ON his jeans and then he faced Lexie again. She looked impossibly young against the sheets, eyes huge. He was literally speechless. Didn’t know what to say. The knowledge of what she’d been through was...enormous. And it was making all of his own dark demons rear their ugly heads.
He felt tight inside. As if a hand was closing around his chest and heart and squeezing with remorseless pressure. He thought of her reaction when he’d first presented her with the option of staying in the castillo for the duration of the shoot. No wonder she’d looked panicked.
Lexie was a mother. She’d had to give up her baby. He knew rationally that she’d had no choice, but it impacted on him in a deeply raw place. He couldn’t breathe.
‘Why did you tell me this?’
Lexie’s eyes widened. Her face paled. And then something in her features hardened, as if in response to Cesar’s stoniness.
‘I told you because I felt I could... But I can see I shouldn’t have.’
Cesar watched as if slightly removed from his own body as Lexie reached for her robe and pulled it on, getting out of bed too. Belting the robe tightly around her.
So many different emotions were impacting on him that it was almost overwhelming. Among them was anger—which he knew was directed at himself, for his less than coherent response, and at Lexie for bringing him face to face with things he didn’t want to look at in himself.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’
Lexie stared at him, her hair tumbled around her shoulders. Right then she seemed like a tiny warrior queen. Majestic.
‘You don’t have to say anything, Cesar. I’m not looking for therapy. I had years of that. I told you...’
She stopped for a second and that tightening sensation in Cesar’s chest grew stronger. He almost put a hand there, as if that could alleviate the pain.
‘I told you because I’ve never been with another man.’
Cesar stepped back. Stunned. ‘Since you were...?’
Lexie snapped. ‘Since I was raped, yes. You were my first lover.’
Faintly, Cesar said, ‘Why me?’
She crossed her arms. ‘You were the first man I desired.’
* * *
Lexie had never regretted anything more than opening her mouth to Cesar. Self-disgust ripped her insides to shreds. She’d truly learnt nothing. For a long time she’d felt ashamed, dirty. That she was some kind of damaged goods. And then therapy had helped her make sense of what had happened and she’d begun the long process of healing and forgiving herself.
Healing. The physical process of that, which had started with Cesar’s incendiary kiss in the stable, mocked her now. She’d confused physical intimacy with something deeper. Clearly it had never been about anything else for him.