Rival's Challenge

Antonio went very still and said nothing for a long moment. His eyes burned so fiercely that they seemed like black coals in his face.

In a hoarse voice he said, ‘I didn’t know.’

Ice filled Orla’s veins. ‘Didn’t know what?’ she spat out, the anger rising again for allowing herself to fall apart so spectacularly. At Antonio’s stunned expression. At the confirmation that he’d felt nothing. ‘Didn’t know that I could be capable of changing? That within the space of a few days, I’d find myself wanting more?’

Orla wanted to look away but she couldn’t. He shook his head. ‘I don’t …’ He stopped and when he spoke again he sounded tortured. ‘I can’t.’

And suddenly Orla just felt incredibly bereft. Even as something else slid into place inside her—some very revelatory acceptance that she had changed on a deep level, and perhaps her priorities were different now, but that was OK.

‘I’ve seen things, Orla … things that no human being should ever see. I’ve witnessed things. I’ve killed people, all in the name of fighting the good fight. And I have a family that don’t even know me.’

She reached out and touched Antonio’s cheek with a trembling hand. ‘I know.’

He laughed but it was bitter. ‘You know me better than they do.’

But Orla took no comfort in that right now. She could see Antonio retreating to some place she couldn’t reach. She’d fallen for a man who wasn’t ready to be fallen for. And the pain was excruciating. She wanted to try and plead with him to let her in, to let her show him that she could help him. But she was too scared. She’d already exposed herself more than she could bear without actually telling him she loved him.

The pilot announced that they were beginning their descent into London and Orla’s heart broke in two. Antonio, still at her feet, just looked at her with a wealth of unfathomable pain in his eyes and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

All she could say was a quiet ‘Me too.’

And then Antonio got up and sat back down and buckled his belt and Orla flinched at the sound. She felt wrung out and empty.

When they emerged from the plane, Orla sent up silent thanks that she’d had the foresight to ask her assistant, Susan, to arrange a car for her.

She put her bag in the back and turned to see Antonio standing feet away, just watching her. He walked over to her and with every step Orla’s heart pumped harder. Maybe, just maybe—

He slid his hand under her hair, around the back of her neck. Her entire body prickled. Waiting. And then he just said in a rough voice, ‘Goodbye, Orla.’

And then he took his hand away and he was turning, striding, disappearing into the back of his own car. And then, gone.

Orla wanted to run after his car, screaming and shouting. Banging on the window for him to stop. For him to not be such a coward. Him! She could appreciate the irony. A man who had endured torture.

And perhaps she had to realise he wasn’t being a coward at all. He just didn’t feel as deeply as she did. And that nearly hurt more than anything.

As Antonio drove away from Orla, all he could see was her beautiful tear-stained face and hear her rough entreaty: us. It scored at his insides like a hot knife. With a pain worse than any torture he’d experienced.

He’d lied back in France. He’d been so incensed that she appeared to be cool and collected about going home that he’d told her he’d never lost sight of why they were there. But he had. Completely. For the first time in his life he’d lost his focus. He’d found himself on the shimmering edges of a dream that was so seductive … a dream he’d never allowed himself to come close to before.

Orla’s tears had opened up a million wounds inside Antonio. Wounds that he’d spent painstaking time covering up, healing over. He felt held together by a patchwork of scars as it was.

That one word, us, had gone off like a bomb inside him. Threatening everything in its wake. He didn’t know if he could be torn apart and built up again. It had happened already and he’d almost died.

Antonio felt a sense of desolation rise through him, the like of which he’d never experienced, not even when their mother had left them all those years ago. He felt tainted, bruised. Warped. Damaged. How could he seize a dream when he’d turned his back on it so long ago?

CHAPTER NINE

‘LUCILLA? Dammit.’ Antonio cursed and cut off the connection again when the automated voice came back: The person you are trying to reach may be out of coverage or have their phone powered off.

What was going on with his sister anyway? Antonio had only had the briefest and most cryptic of messages from her saying something garbled about having to leave England for a few days and that he should do whatever he thought best with regards to the hotel takeover.

Whatever was best? Antonio’s mouth twisted. Whatever was best for him was to walk away and forget he had ever heard the name Kennedy. And in particular, Orla Kennedy. The past week had seen Antonio grow progressively more and more irritated. Snarling at anything that moved near him. His car was stuck in horn-beeping London traffic and it was starting to rain. Matching his mood perfectly.

He’d not slept all week. His nights interspersed with torrid dreams and worse, nightmares of his time in the Legion. Nightmares he hadn’t had to battle with for over a year. It was as if he was sliding backwards into a morass of darkness.

It didn’t help to acknowledge the small voice that reminded him that when Orla had shared his bed, he’d slept better than he could ever remember sleeping. After one particularly vivid nightmare only last night, A

ntonio had slept fitfully again only to have a tantalising dream of Orla taking him by the hand and feeling a sense of peace so profound steal over him that when he’d woken in his anonymous Chatsfield suite, he’d felt possibly lonelier than he’d ever felt in his life.