A Debt Paid in Passion

“You lived with a man for two years. That’s not nothing, Sirena. Did you talk about marriage?”

“I—” She didn’t want to go there, still feeling awful about it. Crossing her arms, she admitted, “He proposed. It didn’t work out.” There, that was vague enough to keep her from looking as bad as she felt.

“You were engaged—”

“Shh! You’re going to wake Lucy,” she hissed. “Why are you yelling? I’m sorry I said anything.” She looked for her watch, but she’d removed it because it didn’t go with this outfit. “David should be here with the meals soon, shouldn’t he?”

Raoul could barely compute what he was hearing. Another man had been that close to locking Sirena into marriage forever. How could he not have known?

“Did working for me cause the breakup?” he asked with a swift need to know.

“No.” She sounded annoyed.

“What then?” For some reason this was important. He needed to know she’d severed all ties with this other man, irrevocably. “Do you still have feelings for him?”

“I’ll always love him,” she said with a self-conscious shrug.

The words rocked him onto his heels, like the back draft from a semitruck that nearly flattened him.

“In a friend way. That’s all it ever was. A friend thing. Do you really need all the gory details?”

“I do, yes,” he said through lips that felt stiff and cold. He wondered how he’d kept his wine from spilling, because he’d forgotten he held the glass. He moved to set it on an end table before giving Sirena his full attention, still reeling with shock when really, it wasn’t as if people living together was a scandal. He just hadn’t realized she had been so deeply involved with anyone. Ever.

When he lifted his gaze to prompt her into continuing, a shadow of persecution clouded her expression.

“It was a lonely time in my life. Amber was in Canada, my family had left for Australia. Stephan was the first boy who’d ever noticed me—”

“I find that hard to believe,” Raoul interjected.

“The first boy I’d ever noticed had noticed me, then. Maybe there were crushes before that, but I wasn’t allowed to go out when I was living at home—not even to spend the night at Amber’s, in case we snuck out to a party. My stepmother wasn’t having a pregnant teenager on her watch, so there were chores and a curfew and a little sister to babysit. When I enrolled at college, Stephan was the first boy I had the opportunity to spend time with. He was nice and I was romantic enough to spin it into more than it was.” She shrugged again, looking as though she wanted to end there.

“It was obviously more if he proposed.”

“That was impulse on his part. I decided to quit my degree and go with the business certificate so I could start earning proper money, rather than temping and doing transcription around my courses. He was afraid I’d meet someone else and I realized I wanted to, so we broke up.”

Raoul felt a shred of pity for the man’s desperate measure that hadn’t paid off. At the same time, he was relieved, which unsettled him. He saw nothing but misery and remorse in her, though. “A puppy love relationship isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Why do you feel guilty?” he asked.

“Because I hurt him. Part of me wonders if I wasn’t using him because I was broke and didn’t have anywhere else to turn. I didn’t mean to lead him on, but I did.”

The buzzer announced David with their meals.

Raoul turned to let him up, but all he could think was, You used me. Do you feel bad about that?

CHAPTER SEVEN

TYPICAL OF ANGELO’S welcoming charm as a restaurateur, he had sent along a single white rose with a silk ribbon tied to the stem. We’ve missed you, the tag read.

Sirena stifled a pang of wistfulness as she picked up the budding flower from where it sat next to her plate and searched for a hint of scent in the tightly closed petals.

David had brought the basket of chinaware and scrumptious smells to the table beside the pool, setting it out in a way she imagined he’d done for countless of Raoul’s paramours. Everything glittered, from the silver to the candles flames to the stars and city lights winking in the warm night air. Raoul set relaxing acoustic guitar music to come through the outdoor speakers and arrived with their glasses.

His brows went up with silent inquiry.

“Fast asleep,” Sirena answered. She had known Lucy would be, but checking on her had been a timely excuse to leave Raoul’s intense presence. She wasn’t sure she was ready to face him again.

A distant beep sounded, signaling that David had left the apartment. They were alone again. Round two, she thought and reached for the wine Raoul set above her knife tip. He had topped up her glass, bringing the temperature of the pinot grigio down a degree so it soothed her throat as she drank.

She hesitated to start eating, even though the food was Angelo’s typical appetizing fare of creamy pasta, bright peppers and fragrant basil. This wasn’t like all those other times when she and Raoul had a tablet or laptop between them and she had chewed between typing and answering calls. They’d never stood on ceremony while working, but this was anything but casual. More than ever, she was aware of Raoul’s potent masculinity, his quiet habits of sharp observation, his undeniable air of command.

And she was hyperaware of her dolled-up attire, the way even Angelo seemed to know this was different and had added the extra touch of silver and china.

This felt like a date.

“Problem?” Raoul asked.

She shook her head, chastising herself for falling into old fantasies of romance. “Just thinking I should put this in water,” she said, gesturing to the rose.

“It can wait until we’ve eaten,” he said.

He seemed to be waiting for her to start and that made her nervous. She searched for a neutral topic to break what felt like a tense silence. He spoke first.

“Why didn’t you go to Australia with your family?”

Oh, hell, they were going there, were they? It wasn’t enough to pry open the oyster, making her feel as though her protective shell was snapped in half and left with jagged edges. No, he wanted to poke a finger into her vulnerable center and see if there was a pearl in there, one glossed over for years, but gritty as obsidian at its heart.

She licked sauce from the corner of her mouth, stating plainly, “I wasn’t invited.”

He lowered his fork as his brilliant mind absorbed what was a logical and sensible answer, yet didn’t make sense at all. He frowned. “Why weren’t you invited?”

She held back a rude snort at a question she’d never been able to answer. Picking up the napkin off her lap, she dried her lips, wondering if she’d be able to get through this plate of food when her appetite was fading so quickly.

“I had just started school,” she said, offering the excuse Faye, her stepmother, had used. “My father had given me some money toward tuition, about the same amount as airfare. It didn’t make sense to throw it away.”

“So you were given a choice between school and going with them?”

“No.” She couldn’t help the bluster of resentment that hardened the word. Old, angry tension started clenching up her insides and she had to make a conscious effort not to let it take her over. Picking up her fork, she deflected the subject a little.

“This is why I was looking forward to dinner with Amber. She knows my history with my stepmother and lets me vent about whatever is bothering me, without my having to lay the groundwork and examine how much is my fault and whether I’m being paranoid. Amber takes my side, which is refreshing, whereas if I try to explain it all to you—” she waved a hand toward him, feeling herself getting worked up, but unable to stop it “—you’ll be like Stephan and say maybe Faye didn’t mean it that way, that I’m being oversensitive and her reasons make sense and I’m misinterpreting. Her reasons always make sense, Raoul. That’s the beauty of her dictatorship.”

Oh, God, shut up, Sirena.

She clenched her teeth, intending to drop the subject, but she couldn’t hide the way her hand trembled as she tried to twirl noodles onto the tines of her fork.

“Why don’t you give me an example,” he suggested in a tone that echoed with reasonability, as though he were trying to talk a crazy person off a window ledge.

Sirena crammed too big a bite into her mouth, but he waited her out, saying nothing as she chewed and swallowed. The pasta went down like a lump of coal, acrid and coarse.

“For instance,” she said tightly, “when I was so pregnant and swollen I could hardly get myself out of bed, worried I would die, I asked if my sister could come and was told that my father’s plumbing business had fallen off and Ali had exams and the doctors were keeping an eye on Faye’s thyroid so the timing really didn’t work.”

She glanced up to see a frozen expression on his face. “You should have called me.”

A pang of anguish struck. She’d been tempted a million times, but replied, “The people who were supposed to love and care about me wouldn’t come. What was the point in asking you?”

He jerked back as if she’d thrown her pasta in his face.