Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Sparkling Christmas Collection - Kate Hardy - Страница 43

CHAPTER TWELVE

TILLY’S HEART BROKE as she stood there, knee deep in deception. She had to be strong, had to keep her emotions under control, anything that would stop her going to him, throwing her arms around his neck and herself at the mercy of the love she had for him. Love that had overshadowed every other emotion she’d experienced in those few days at the manor.

What had happened over the New Year had been deeper than the passion, more addictive than the sensual feel of his touch. It had also happened with such speed it seemed impossible, but there was no doubt. Not any more. She’d fallen in love with a man who’d been looking for nothing more than a distraction to while away the hours of being snowbound at New Year.

‘There isn’t a future for us, Xavier, there never was.’ She kept her voice devoid of emotion as his eyes narrowed. He was watching every move she made. Did he suspect she wasn’t telling him the truth?

‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that?’ He moved towards her, his voice heavily accented and becoming softer. ‘When you were a virgin?’

Stunned, she could only look at him, knowing the truth of his words. She’d given herself to him, believing, even though they didn’t have a future, there wasn’t anyone else in their lives. It had meant so little to him he’d gone straight to the arms of another woman.

‘Believe what you like. There isn’t a future for us. You never wanted what we shared to continue. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave.’

She moved towards the front door, desperate for him to leave. All she wanted to do was give in to her grief. The man she loved would never love her. She’d been nothing more than entertainment on a cold winter night. If his family had arrived as planned there was no way she and Xavier would have spent the night together.

‘No, Natalie.’ He spoke firmly but still managed to caress her name, taunting her with the use of it. She closed her eyes against the memories that soft and seductive tone released. She couldn’t remember now. She had to be brave and strong. ‘Lo non lascio.’

Tilly’s heart sank. Did he have to use his first language? She tried to think through the fog of confusion, trying to recall her childhood Italian. He wasn’t leaving. Well, she wasn’t going to stand here and be tormented by him.

‘You will leave. Right now.’ She folded her arms, whether to protect her heart or stop herself from reaching for him she wasn’t sure.

Xavier moved towards her, his dark eyes intense. They made her feel as if she was the only woman in the world he wanted. But she knew that wasn’t true. ‘I don’t want to leave you, Tilly.’

Please, she wanted to shout as he spoke again in Italian. It sounded so romantic, so seductive, but she knew it wouldn’t mean what she wanted it to—that he wanted her, loved her.

She was so distraught by his presence that she couldn’t fathom the fast-flowing words, couldn’t decide what he’d been saying. All she knew was that he had to leave. Right now.

‘Just go, Xavier. I don’t want to hear what you have to say, no matter what language you use.’ She turned her back on him and strode to the window, looking out over the grey London street.

* * *

Xavier walked to the door of Tilly’s flat, total desolation filling him. He’d almost poured his heart out. Unable to think in English, he’d told her in Italian, which he knew she could understand, that he was not going to walk away from the woman he loved. But her insistence that he leave had numbed him, making speaking in any language impossible. She’d even turned her back on him.

He couldn’t go. He couldn’t leave her. Sofia’s advice drove him on and he strode over to where she stood, resolutely staring out. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Natalie, not without saying what I have to say about us.’

She turned to look at him, her face upturned and the blue of her eyes so vivid it was like being at sea on a summer day. ‘There is no us. Never has been and never will be. I was your hired help. We should never have done what we did. It was wrong. Wrong on every level.’

‘Not after the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, you weren’t my hired help. And what is so wrong with passion?’

‘Nothing.’

He narrowed his eyes as she looked up at him, defiance in every breath she took. She was so beautiful he wanted to lower his head and claim her lips once more, to bring that passion back to life until it consumed them completely.

‘Then why hide from it? Why don’t you allow it into your life? What are you afraid of, Tilly?’

He touched her arm in a gesture of concern but she flinched and stepped back from him. He was losing her—and he couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t lose the only woman he had ever loved. The only woman he would ever love.

‘You are the one hiding, not me,’ she said calmly, and frustration zipped around his body. He’d never thought telling a woman he loved her would be so difficult.

Her words were true. He was hiding, or rather avoiding the issue. He knew he was sidestepping the moment he had to put his heart on the line and tell her he loved her, that he couldn’t live without her. He would be exposing all his vulnerabilities, exposing himself to her rejection. Was that why he couldn’t form the words in English? Because he knew for certain she would understand?

‘I’m not hiding from anything.’

‘All the time you were at the manor you hated the Christmas tree and everything it represented. If I’m hiding from passion then you too are hiding from something.’

‘You are right,’ he said, and let out a deep breath. She had to know everything, from the nightmares that haunted his sleep to the love he felt for her. He had to tell her now, because he sensed this was the last time he would ever see her, that if he didn’t say something now she would shut him out of her life completely—and he wasn’t about to stand by and allow that. ‘Maybe we should talk over dinner?’

‘No.’ She shook her head determinedly.

‘Ottimo. We shall talk now.’

She didn’t move away from the window and when she returned her attention to the rainy street his heart sank. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

‘It’s time for me to move on, to start living my life again.’ The fact that he could do that was all down to her, but he couldn’t do it without her.

She looked earnestly into his face, her blue eyes searching his. ‘You’re right. You bear the scars, both physically and emotionally. You’ve lost a friend, but he wouldn’t want you to put your life on hold.’

He frowned at her as she said almost the same as Sofia had. ‘No, he wouldn’t.’

‘Would you want that if the roles were reversed? Would you want him to live with guilt eating at him for the rest of his life?’

‘That is what Sofia, his widow, has just told me. She doesn’t blame me and said Paulo would be angry if he knew I was.’ Images of his friend rushed through his mind.

‘So now you can stop punishing yourself.’

‘The way I handled those days at the manor was wrong, but I can’t lose you, Tilly.’ He put himself on the line as he said the words. She didn’t move. It looked as if his words had frozen her. ‘Not when I love you.’

He’d finally said it. He’d given life to the emotion that had been burning deep inside him since the moment he’d met Tilly. The silence that filled the room was so loud it almost deafened him.

* * *

Tilly’s head spun and her heart thumped harder in her chest. She looked into Xavier’s eyes, hoping to see love, but saw only hard determination. How could he say he loved her when he had just returned from another woman’s side?

‘You don’t mean that.’ She shook her head in denial and returned her gaze to the growing darkness of the street outside, wishing he would stop torturing her. He’d been photographed with another woman—hours after leaving her.

He took hold of her arms and spun her round to look at him. She wanted to avert her gaze, but with the heat of his touch burning through her jumper she couldn’t. ‘I mean every word of it, Tilly. I have thought of nothing else but you since the moment we met.’

She lowered her gaze, trying to resist the urge to babble out whatever words came into her head, but the urge was too strong. ‘But I saw you—at the party last night, with your latest lover.’

His grasp on her arms loosened and she knew she’d said the wrong thing. ‘How?’

Now she would have to spill the whole sorry truth about looking him up on the internet, about searching for information about the accident. ‘I saw the pictures on the internet.’ She pressed her lips firmly together to prevent herself airing more babbling excuses.

She kept her gaze averted but when she looked up again it was to see a wary look of surprise on his handsome face. ‘Does that mean you couldn’t stop thinking of me?’

‘Yes. I mean no.’ She knew she was in danger of talking too much again and pulled herself free of his grasp. She couldn’t think straight when he was so near, when the intoxicating scent of him made her remember those nights she’d sworn she would forget.

‘Natalie, don’t.’ The sexy accent he used for her name drew her up sharply and those memories hurtled back.

‘Don’t what?’ she asked in exasperation. He really had to go before she spilled everything out and told him she loved him. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t risk it. Already he’d tired of her and could hurt her far more than Jason ever had. She couldn’t face rejection again.

‘Don’t hide. Don’t run.’

She couldn’t look at him. ‘I’m not hiding or running, Xavier. I just want to be honest with myself and you. I can’t be with you, not how you want anyway.’

‘And how exactly do I want to be with you?’ The gruffness of his voice hinted at his frustration.

‘I can’t be just another woman, one you call when you are in London. I’m not that type of girl.’

He took her swiftly in his arms, pulling her excruciatingly close to him. ‘I’ve tried to forget you, tried to put you to the back of my mind as nothing more than a memory. I have no idea who I was pictured with. I might have been there at the party, but in my mind I was still at the manor with you, the only woman I want.’

* * *

Suddenly everything became clear and Xavier could see why Tilly was so anxious. Since the accident he’d never had a serious relationship. He’d only dated a woman once, always avoiding anything more intimate, worried about his scarred body.

‘I see my recently acquired reputation has coloured your view of me.’ He didn’t know how to explain without scaring her away completely. All he knew was that he had to tell her.

‘Something like that, yes,’ she said, and looked back up into his face. He wanted to lower his lips to hers and kiss her to prove she was the only woman he wanted. Could a kiss prove how much he loved her? The whole concept of love was totally new to him. Her eyelashes lowered over her eyes as she looked down, the long dark lashes sweeping against the pale skin in an alluring way.

‘I was drowning in guilt and badly scarred. What woman would seriously want me? You are the only woman I have made love to since the accident.’ Each word was raw, pulling at his heart as if being ripped from it, dragging out emotions he’d kept locked away, preferring guilt and self-pity. ‘I wanted you so badly, Tilly.’

‘You did?’ The soft whisper caught his attention and he lifted her chin with his thumb and finger, forcing her to look directly at him. The blue of her eyes was shrouded in tears threatening to fall and he hated it that he’d made her cry.

But she wasn’t fighting any more. She wasn’t resisting what had sprung to life between them the very first moment their eyes had met. She was here in his arms—exactly where he wanted her to be. Those two huskily whispered words whirled round in his head.

‘You are the only woman I ever wanted to stay after finding out about the accident, because you are the only woman I want. I love you, Natalie Rogers, and I intend to love you more each and every single day for the rest of my life—if you will let me.’

‘I want to say yes.’ She looked at him, a tear slipping from first one eye then the other. He caught them with his finger, wiped them away, cursing softly because he’d made her cry.

‘But what?’ He sensed the doubt, the reservations she was fighting.

‘Jason breaking things off was my fault. I didn’t want passion and he didn’t want only companionship.’ She looked down again, as if she was gathering her strength. When she looked back up her blue eyes glittered. ‘I can’t be who I was those two nights at the manor. That wasn’t me. Nothing seemed real then.’

‘Our passion was real.’ How could she deny that sexy and passionate woman had been her? Every time she’d caressed him she’d set light to him. Every time he’d touched her the intensity of it had risen.

‘Because we were different people, cut off from reality. I can’t give you passion and excitement, just as I couldn’t give it to Jason. I’m scared to.’

Anger simmered to the fore. Damn that man. ‘What are you scared of?’

It wasn’t making any sense. She’d given herself to him with passionate abandon. What had burned between them those two nights had been so hot it still fired his body now to think of it.

‘Loving and losing.’

‘Losing?’

‘My parents,’ she said quietly. ‘The love they had for one another was so all-consuming. They only had eyes for each other, but it didn’t stop them being wrenched apart. It didn’t stop my mother’s heart breaking after my father died.’

‘Natalie, Natalie.’ He pulled her against him, holding her tight and kissing her hair. He closed his eyes against the pain she must have felt as a child. A fluid flow of Italian left his lips and she pulled back to look up at him, her eyes moist with unshed tears.

‘I can’t be like that,’ she whispered softly. He knew then she hadn’t been able to love Jason because she’d been scared of the consequences. Joy at knowing she hadn’t loved the man she should have married, that she didn’t love him now, surged through him.

‘You don’t have to be.’ He lowered his lips to hers, brushing his over the plumpness of hers and enjoying the sensation that fizzed to life. ‘All I want is the woman who arrived at the manor, full of joy at the falling snow as I stood and watched her from the doorway. You just need to be you. The woman I love.’

‘Do you really mean that?’ Hope shone in her eyes and in his heart simultaneously.

‘I want you in my life always, Natalie. I want to be with you as you rediscover your family. I want you to be my wife.’

Her gorgeous eyes widened and he laughed gently as he placed another light kiss on her lips. ‘Your wife?’

‘Yes, Tilly, my wife, and to prove it I will do it properly.’ He stepped back from her, reached into his pocket as he lowered himself to one knee. He took hold of her hand in one of his and held the ring box out to her. ‘Mi vuoi sposare, Natalie?’

‘But we’ve only just met.’ Despite the protest, she was smiling.

‘Sì, and by next Christmas Eve we will be back at the manor for our wedding. There will be the biggest and most brightly decorated tree possible—and our families, so we won’t be quite so alone.’

She took the ring from the box, a smile of wonder on her face, and he stood up and slipped it on her finger. It fitted perfectly. Yet another sign that they too fitted perfectly together.

‘Sì, lo ti sposerò, Xavier.’ Her acceptance in Italian warmed his heart more than anything and he crushed her to him with a demanding kiss. The woman he loved was going to be his wife.