'I liked him.' She shrugged. 'We'd been working together for a long time. And he caught me at a vulnerable moment.'
'Vulnerable in what way?'
'I. ..I'd been over to the house to visit your mother the day before. I don't know if you recall the occasion, but you., .you looked up at me when I came in—you were having lunch at the time—and you didn't say a single word. You just put down your serviette, stood up and left. I know why you acted that way now, but I didn't then, and it... it was my birthday, Alan,' she choked out. 'My twentieth birthday...'
His groan was full of pain. 'Your birthdays have really been disaster days where I'm concerned, haven't they? God, Ebony, I'm sorry... for everything. I've really made a mess of things, haven't I?'
'No more than I. We have to learn to forgive ourselves, Alan, and appreciate the favour fate did us by throwing us together. I know you still think you're too old for me, but you're not. You're perfect for me.'
His smile was wry. 'You have a penchant for older men?'
'I think I do,' she replied quite seriously. 'After watching my father's womanising for years, I needed a strong, stable man who would make me feel totally secure in his love. Could a man of my own age do that? I doubt it. And you know what? I think one of the reasons you fell in love with me was my age. I think you responded to my youth because it revived in you what circumstances forced you to miss—your youth, with all its lust and passion. I
brought you alive, Alan, as no older woman could bring you alive.
'Even Adrianna,' she finished with a tight squeezing of her chest. Lord, would she never get rid of her jealousy over that woman? Would it always hurt that he had loved her first, loved her better? Oh, it wasn't the sex part. She could cope with that. It was Alan's heart she coveted, his soul. She needed to feel he was all hers, not just his body. She'd meant it when she'd said she didn't want a ghost in bed with them.
'Adrianna,' he repeated with a dark frown, and Ebony felt a stab of something akin to real panic. What was he thinking about to make him look so worried, so...guilty?
Ebony didn't feel she could let the moment go. She had to know. Had to!
'What is it?' she asked quite sharply. 'What haven't you told me about you and Adrianna?'
His glance was more than worried now. 'I have something I must tell you which I hope you'll understand.'
'What?' she managed to ask in a strangled tone.
'Last night, I—er—well, the truth is that—um...'
Ebony didn't need him to say it. The truth—for want of a better word— jumped into her brain with crystal-clear clarity. The businessman Alan had had dinner with had not been a man at all. The ghost who walked had walked back into their lives.
'You had dinner with Adrianna,' she said flatly. 'It wasn't a business dinner at all...'
His face told so much. 'Don't jump to conclusions, for God's sake.'
Don't jump to conclusions? What kind of conclusions? That he'd slept with her? It was hard to think he'd slept with her in a restaurant. Unless...
Various pieces of the puzzle of last night began to slide into place. Ebony's eyes widened with horror and understanding. 'She was staying at the Ramada, wasn't she?' she accused. 'You brought her back to the hotel after dinner, didn't you? That's how you came to be there to see me with Gary.'
'Ebony, don't do this. Remember the false conclusions I jumped to with Gary. You'll be just as wrong if you start thinking anything happened between Adrianna and me last night. She's a happily married woman. She's six months pregnant. I did not sleep with her or do anything wrong. I gave her a goodnight peck on the cheek, that's all.'
Emotion impelled Ebony on to her feet, her black eyes blazing down at him. 'I don't believe you!' she flung at him heatedly. 'You kissed her, you bastard. You went through the roof about Gary and me, when all the time you'd been in that woman's arms yourself. You do still love her. You'll always love her. Stop denying it!'
The pain behind her accusation became a scream in her head and she couldn't bear it any more. Scrambling out from behind the table, she fled for the gangway in a blind rush, unsure of where she was going or what she was about to do. He reaction when Alan grabbed her ankle from 'behind before she could reach the top of the narrow staircase was both violent and wild. Swinging round, she kicked out at him, but he side-stepped and somehow scooped her unbalanced self up off the steps and into his steely arms.