The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance 2016. Кейт Хьюит
without telling you what I’ve come to say.’
‘Which is what?’
‘I liked being engaged to you.’ He looked around him at the crowded lounge. ‘I have my driver outside.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Alexa was frantically trying to analyse what he had just said about liking being engaged to her. What did that mean? She didn’t want to dwell on it, because it meant nothing coming from a man who had spent the past three weeks avoiding her and who didn’t have a committed bone in his body—a man who had a block of ice for a heart.
‘I want to talk to you and I can’t do it here.’
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’ Alexa’s body was ramrod-straight and as stiff as a board. She dreaded that one of those hands loosely dangling between his thighs might accidentally brush against her, because if it did then she knew the already uphill task of projecting indifference would be even harder.
‘Please.’
That single word was wrenched out of him and for a second she hesitated, because please was not a word that passed his lips very often.
‘What do you want to talk about?’ she asked, relenting a little.
Theo glanced at her and kept his gaze on her face.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said roughly, and Alexa tried to hold on to some of her gritty determination not to melt.
You’ve missed having sex with me.
‘Are you travelling to London as well?’
‘I will if I have to. I’m booked on the same flight as you, although I’d rather we didn’t have this conversation on a plane or in an airport lounge...’
‘Look, I can’t think that there’s anything to talk about, Theo. I mean, you’ve got your freedom, and I know that was all you wanted when you thought you’d lost it for a year. So maybe you miss having sex with me? You said that you wanted to carry on sleeping with me until... Well, until you got bored and dispatched me to wherever it is you dispatch women you no longer want hanging around. Some locked cupboard in your head, I expect. Of course, physically I’d have still been around, until the year ran out, but as far as sleeping with me went I guess it would have been separate rooms and you discreetly returning to your diet of leggy blonde supermodels...’
Her voice was brittle and she looked away and stared straight ahead.
‘So I’m not going to jump into bed with you again just because you’re not bored with me yet, Theo.’
Theo heard what she was saying and knew that she was describing the man he had thought himself to be. Even when they had walked away from one another he had still thought himself to be a guy who worked hard, played hard and avoided commitment.
‘And I wouldn’t ask you to,’ he said quietly. ‘Are you sure you won’t dump your flight so that we can have this conversation somewhere a little less...frantic?’
‘No one’s paying us a scrap of attention.’ She sighed with heartfelt longing. ‘I just want to get to London and begin a new chapter in my life.’
Theo’s jaw hardened. He had heard a lot about this wonderful new chapter in her life on the night they had returned from the best time he had ever had with a woman, to discover that the charade was over and they were free to go. She couldn’t have waxed more lyrical when it had come to letting him know how relieved she was that the pretence was over.
Pride had turned his responses then to ice, and pride had kept him away for three weeks, but now he had discovered that there was something more powerful than pride and that had been a bitter pill to swallow.
‘Your mother tells me that you have a new job lined up.’
‘You spoke to her?’
‘That’s how I knew that you would be leaving for London today. She told me a few days ago...’
‘A few days ago? Since when have you and my mother been having cosy chats behind my back? She never mentioned a word about talking to you!’
‘Because I asked her not to.’ Theo flushed darkly.
‘You asked her not to? Why would you do that?’ Alexa was genuinely bewildered.
‘I...’ He hunkered down.
Never in his life had he felt less cool, more in danger of making a complete fool of himself and more exposed to rejection. Indeed, when it came to women he had never felt exposed to rejection, and he loathed the feeling of vulnerability. He had never been vulnerable. He had always had the direction of his life firmly within his controlling hand.
Alexa was even more bewildered at his discomfort. It just wasn’t him.
‘I never thought I wanted involvement with a woman,’ Theo surprised her by saying. His eyes met hers and held them. ‘Don’t interrupt me,’ he continued, returning to some of his usual form. ‘I...I didn’t have any crash-and-burn relationships that turned me off commitment. I never lost my heart to a gold-digger only to find out in the nick of time. I suppose I was simply a product of my background—just as my brother is. I was ambitious, and in my upward climb I enjoyed women but never invited any of them further than the front door, emotionally speaking.’
Alexa gave him an encouraging look. She was all ears.
‘I was in no hurry to settle down—in fact it never crossed my mind what sort of woman I would end up with, or even if I would end up with one at all.’ He paused and thought about the relationship his parents had had. ‘When my mother died Daniel and I watched my father fall apart at the seams. Actually,’ he confessed heavily, ‘we all fell apart. And that was when I realised just how destructive all-consuming love can be.’
‘Empowering,’ Alexa corrected in a staccato voice. ‘I’m sure your father would agree that it was better to have had all those wonderful years with your mother than to have lived the sort of life you want to carve out for yourself.’
Theo smiled crookedly at her. ‘And that’s why I thought that, whether I married you or not, you and I were poles apart. I admit that the only kind of marriage that ever crossed my mind after my mother died was one that would have been very similar to the one we found ourselves pushed into—a marriage of convenience. But not with a woman who was all about romance and love and happy-ever-after endings... What I anticipated was a relationship where I couldn’t be hurt—a relationship that was a mutually convenient business arrangement...’
‘So you’ve come here to tell me what I already knew?’
‘No. I’ve come here to tell you that I was wrong.’
Hope flared inside her, suffocating everything else and shooting up blooms that she couldn’t squash.
‘What do you mean?’ Alexa asked in a stifled voice.
‘You know what I mean,’ Theo said drily. ‘I was wrong. I might have wanted a relationship I could control, but in the end I needed the relationship that I couldn’t. I needed you. I still do...’
Alexa masked her disappointment, because need was very far from love. ‘And that’s why you’re not the man for me,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve learned to be cynical and I’ve learned the opposite. I don’t want something that stops at need or desire or lust. I want the full package and I always did.’
‘And why can’t that be me?’ Theo demanded with muted belligerence.
He had never had to justify how he felt to anyone in his life before, and even if he left now, without her, he was driven to lay himself open to that possibility.
‘Because—’
‘I love you, Alexa. I never expected to, but somehow it just...happened. Without even realising it I let you into my life, and I came here to tell you that I don’t want you to leave it.