He owed everything to her, he had confided the last time she had telephoned him and brought it up.
She would give him back the cash, she decided, just as soon as he was back in London, which would be in five days’ time.
Face to face, he would have to cave because she would just refuse to leave him alone until he did.
Looking back on everything, she understood why she had agreed to the arrangement and yet, somehow, when she thought of that cash, she was overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt and unease.
She knew that she was enjoying life with a desperation that could only end in tears, so when, the day before Alejandro was due to arrive back in London, she glanced up from the kitchen table where she was meticulously looking at a series of photos she had taken two days previously, to see Dante framed in the doorway to the kitchen, she was almost resigned to the axe about to fall.
It was there in his expression. She realised that she had become accustomed to him strolling in to greet her with a smile that was part pleasure, part desire. Without even consciously thinking about it, she had been lulled into a state of security that had always been fragile at the very best. God, she was in his kitchen, as comfortable as though it were her own! She had fallen into the trap of thinking that she could tame a tiger.
Even in the depths of passion he had never, not once, offered anything other than what had been put on the table from the very start. Impermanence. Passing enjoyment. Lust.
His expression was cool. He stared at her until she fidgeted, angry with him for his silence and with herself for the fear that was filling up inside her.
‘Too good to be true,’ he rasped stonily, ‘is what comes to mind when I look at you.’
He clenched his jaw and for a moment he was catapulted back to Luisa, her unexpected knock on his office door less than an hour and a half ago. He hadn’t welcomed her in. In fact, he had risen to his feet to escort her out but as he had moved impatiently towards her, she had extended her hand with a piece of paper grasped in her fingers.
‘Before you throw me out—’ she had halted him in his tracks ‘—you need to have a look at this.’
‘You need to leave my office, Luisa.’ But his eyes had already been drawn to the single piece of paper and he had snatched it because it had seemed the fastest way of getting rid of the woman. He had listened to Caitlin’s intermittent noises about Luisa and had played them down, omitting to tell her that he had fended off an unpleasant phone call from the other woman shortly after he had arrived in London. Why open a can of worms? The minute Luisa had accosted him in his office, he had assumed that she was going to pursue her plea to think about their long family connection and the value of resurrecting their defunct relationship.
This time, he’d thought, he wasn’t going to bother with politeness.
He had half looked at that damning sheet of paper and then had looked more carefully.
Now, standing in his kitchen, he could still feel the cold fury that had swept through him when he had registered what was written.
But before the fury...
The devastation of realising that, once again, he had been sucked into a relationship with a woman who had not been what she had seemed.
Worse, he had realised, with shock, that there was something beyond devastation, beyond rage at his lack of judgement.
There had been the raw pain of knowing that what he’d felt for Caitlin had been far deeper than he could possibly have imagined, and on the back of that pain had come icy rage.
The self-discipline that was so much a part of his personality had masked all emotion as he had politely frozen Luisa out of the satisfaction of engineering the outcome she had anticipated, but his rage had not abated.
And now...standing here...
‘Where did you get this?’ Colour drained away from her face and her hand was shaking.
If ever there was a picture of guilt, he thought bitterly. What had he expected? Really? Some crazy explanation that might make sense?
Unfortunately, he knew exactly what he had expected. He had expected her to be different. When he looked back, he knew that he had thought her different from the very first moment he had clashed with her as she had skulked up the long avenue that led to his mansion. She had intrigued him, and she had continued to intrigue him, and when everything had come out in the wash about his brother he had done the unthinkable. He had dropped his guard and given her the benefit of the doubt.
For the first time in his life he had begun to play with the crazy notion of longevity.
He should have stuck to the brief and he was paying for straying from it now.
‘Where?’ she repeated. The beautiful lean lines of his face were unforgiving and she could understand why. She had come to know this man in many little ways, and for him to have proof positive that there had been more to her relationship with Alejandro than an altruistic desire to help him in his hour of need by pretending to be his fiancée would signal the death knell to whatever he might have felt for her. Not love, no. But affection, yes, and certainly desire.
The email to the bank was brief, simply giving Alejandro’s private banker instructions to transfer a hefty amount of money to her account.
‘Does it matter?’ Dante asked with glacial indifference.
Naturally it would have made zero difference if she had tried to blag her way out of this, but he was still enraged that she was making no effort to even try, and angry with himself for caring one way or the other.
The game was up and she was showing her true colours. No more eager desire to please.
‘I don’t suppose it does,’ Caitlin said in a low voice. She couldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t bear the cold accusation there, the disappointment.
‘Is that all you have to say?’ Dante gritted. ‘“I don’t suppose it does”? For the record, Luisa came by it and very thoughtfully decided to hand it over.’
‘Of course she did,’ Caitlin said wearily.
‘Luisa may be many things but her faults have always been out in the open. She happened to be helping my brother pack his things and when he was out of the room, she accidentally refreshed his computer when she went to pick it up and curiosity got the better of her when your name popped up on the heading along with an account number. Quite a substantial sum of money, I must say. A good day at the office, wouldn’t you agree?’ He breathed in deeply and watched as colour suffused her. ‘What were your plans for the money? Well-deserved spending spree? And did you decide that I might have been a more lucrative bet than my brother because if you managed to hook me, you might just have yourself a permanent passport to wealth instead of a one-off? Did you start as a fake fiancée only to imagine that you could become a real one but with the other heir to the throne?’
‘How could you say that?’ This time she did look at him, and with distress. ‘Don’t you know me at all?’
‘It would seem not,’ Dante grated harshly.
The truth was that he’d felt as though he did know her and even now, with the evidence of his own stupidity right in front of him, he still felt as if he did. It was an act of wilful self-delusion that enraged him further.
‘Would you even make an effort to believe me if I told you that...’ she sighed and blinked away a rush of miserable tears ‘...that it’s not what you think, despite what it looks like?’
‘It looks like you had a financial arrangement with my brother to cover your agreement to pose as his fiancée for the benefit of friends and family and to get our parents off his back on the business of marrying him off. How am I doing so far?’
Caitlin stared at him mutely.
‘I’m gathering from your silence that I’m doing pretty good. Except you got here, and things didn’t quite go according to plan. I should have paid a bit more attention to your striking lack of luggage when you arrived. I’m assuming the jaunt was supposed t
o be short-lived? A one-night charade then back to normal with a much-inflated bank account?’
‘You’re seeing it all in black and white...’ But actually, every single word was spot-on and there was nothing she could do to defend herself. Her own sense of guilt would have stopped her anyway.
‘No wonder you were so panicked at the thought of hanging around. Until, that is, you discovered that a little hanging around might work in your favour.’
‘You know that’s not true. You’re making it out like I’m some sort of...of...tramp...some sort of...sexual predator...’ She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘You were my first, Dante.’
Dante had the grace to flush but then he aggressively told himself that that counted for very little when hard evidence of her mercenary nature was in front of him.
‘Why are you still continuing with...’ he waved his hand at the pile of photos spread across her side of the kitchen table ‘...that?’ He vaulted forward, too restless to stay still any longer, and prowled the room before coming to stand in front of her, a towering and intimidating figure. ‘And why are you still living in that dump? What was the money for, Caitlin? Debts?’
‘Something like that.’
‘What debts?’ Dante didn’t understand and he didn’t like the feeling. ‘Forget it,’ he snapped, slashing the air with his hand in a gesture of conclusion. ‘I’m going to go out for an hour. In that time, I want you to pack whatever things you might have here and leave. Put it this way, when I get back I don’t want to find you still here.’
Dante was never going to listen to what she had to say, Caitlin realised. He had made his mind up. The only way he would ever have entertained hearing her out would have been if he had loved her, because if he had he would see what she saw, that it wasn’t black and white but a thousand shades of grey, and he would have understood.
She was realising now what the fundamental difference between lust and love was.
Lust was essentially self-centred. It went so far when it came to seeing the bigger picture, to listening and forgiving, and no further.
Love was what bridged the gap, jumped over the chasm, having faith that you would reach the other side and being willing to take the risk.
She loved Dante and she knew that, had the shoe been on the other foot, she would have listened because she would have known, in her gut, that there was no way he could be the person circumstances were portraying him to be, that there would be another explanation, however things might look on the surface.
Well, there was no point hanging around and hoping for the impossible.
She nodded quietly. ‘I’ll be gone by the time you get back.’
CHAPTER TEN
IN THE EVENT it was two days before Dante returned to the penthouse apartment.
One hour? There was no way he intended to risk returning to find her still there, hunting around for the last of her things and, frankly, considering the fact that she had refused to move in with him, she had managed to find homes for a lot of her personal possessions. A couple of photography books here and there...spare bedroom slippers because she had to have something on her feet when she walked around...a selection of novels, all started and not one finished because she always lost interest somewhere between Chapter Three and Chapter Four...
He hadn’t wanted to head back even after a day just in case she had forgotten something and had decided to return to collect it. He had forgotten to ask her to hand over the spare key he had insisted she have. She might have kept it. Who knew? She would leave it behind her in the apartment. He knew that without having to ask himself how.
So Dante had gone off grid for the first time in his life, dumping London altogether and heading to the coast for a couple of days to clear his head.
She was gone. She’d pulled the wool over his eyes and she was gone. End of story.
He would pick up where he had left off because the world was full of beautiful women and he knew, without a trace of vanity, that he could have any of them.
Including Luisa, should he so choose, but the very thought of her made his teeth grind together. Like the messenger carrying a poisonous communication, she had been sliced out of his life for good, whatever the long-standing family connections. What she had done had been done with the worst of self-serving motives. He would wait until she tried to get in touch, which she inevitably would, to tell her exactly what he thought, but right now he just couldn’t be bothered.
He couldn’t be bothered with anyone or anything. He escaped London thinking that he would escape Caitlin. It had been a remarkable failure on that front.
Dante spent the first night drinking way too much at the Michelin-starred restaurant in the hotel where he had booked for the two nights.
Then he spent the second night wondering what the hell he was going to do because things seemed as clear as mud.
But by the time he began the journey back to London, clarity was imposing itself.
Without the benefit of distractions, he could think, and in the confines of his Maserati, as he drove back to London, he finally began to see what had been lurking on the sidelines of his mind for so long now. Like wisps of smoke, warning him of a conflagration. He should have paid attention.
The warning bells should have started sounding the very second he’d decided to cross that ocean and meet her again. Then he had entered a comfort zone without even realising it. He had become accustomed to the way she laughed and looked at him, to the comfortable silences between them.
He hadn’t been fazed by the sight of her toothbrush next to his or her photos spread across his kitchen table, as they had been when he had confronted her about that damned email.
Dante began joining all the dots on his way back to London and by the time he hit the crowded outskirts of the city, he was frantic to do what he should have done a long time ago. He had to be honest. He had to stop pretending that he was an island.
He had to move on from hard and fast notions that had dominated his life and kept his emotions under lock and key.
But first and foremost, he had to convince her to hear him out. He stopped at his apartment only to dump his bag and have a rushed shower.
All evidence of her had been carefully removed.
The place was immaculate, wiped clean of her presence. Not even the faintest of smells lingered. That flowery, clean smell that followed her wherever she went? Gone.
He knew the way to her apartment like the back of his hand, even though he had, very quickly, refused to go there, preferring the comfort of his penthouse.
At a little after midday, there were signs of life, with kids out and about in front of the block of flats, aimlessly cycling around. He headed up to hers, nodding a greeting to some elderly lady with whom Caitlin had developed a firm friendship.
‘She’s not there.’
Dante stopped dead in his tracks. ‘I have a key. I’ll wait.’
Shared keys...something else that should have set those bells ringing in his head. Since when had he ever come close to handing a key to his place over to any woman, far less having a key for hers?
‘You’ll be waiting a long time, son.’
‘Why?’ Panic gripped him, like a vice.
‘She’s gone to her parents’. Told me to keep an eye on her place because she might be a while.’
‘Her parents’?’ He realised that, despite his knowing so much about her, she had singularly failed to talk to him about her parents. She had told him about her ex, about where she had grown up, had passed occasional remarks about her childhood, but her parents...? No, she hadn’t mentioned them and suddenly that failing felt significant. ‘Would you happen to have their address?’
She did. She handed it over. There were a lot of questions, most of which Dante answered as honestly as he could and to the best of his ability, given that he was inept when it came to disclosing how he fe
lt about anything with a complete stranger.
But he realised that he would, frankly, have done whatever it took to know how he could find the woman he had fallen hopelessly in love with.
He would climb a thousand mountains and walk a thousand miles, but on a more pressing level there was, he now realised, just one more thing he had to do first...
Caitlin heard the buzz of the doorbell. It was irritating, really, because this was the sixth night at her parents’ house and the first evening she had had in on her own. The previous nights had been spent doing the rounds, as she had had to do the minute she’d appeared, unannounced, on her parents’ doorstep.
It was a small village and people would have been offended if she hadn’t immediately dropped by. Where her parents lived, being a recluse was practically a punishable offence, and it had been pretty reassuring visiting a couple of her parents’ friends, knowing that they knew about the dire situation and were supportive.
The local vicar, another on the list of people she had seen and the first person who had shown up within hours of her arrival, was also fully in the know and very sympathetic.
They were all trying to keep spirits upbeat.
Everyone was rallying around.
Notwithstanding, that still left the matter of the finances that needed sorting out and this was her first evening in when she could really get down to seeing what was going on.
Her parents were out for the evening, dinner at friends’.
So the buzz of the doorbell, which she knew heralded another well-intentioned visitor, was...irritating.
She took her time getting to the door. She hoped that whoever was there might slink off, thinking that the house was empty.
But there was another buzz and so she pulled open the door and...
Déjà vu.
Hadn’t she been here before? Staring at muscular legs encased in faded black jeans? At a body she had touched a million times? A face whose lines she knew from memory?
The Forbidden Cabrera Brother (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 15