throat.
‘If I had told you who I was from the first moment we met—’
‘I wouldn’t have thought any more or any less of you.’
They stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then, leaning in front of Zoë, Rico clicked the mouse and cleared the screen.
Straightening up, he gazed at her. ‘My full name is Alarico Cortes de Aragon. I have many business interests, but flamenco is my passion, and Castillo Cazulas, as I’m sure you have already worked out, belongs to me.’
‘When were you going to tell me, Rico? After we’d slept together?’
‘Don’t speak like that, Zoë. You must understand I have to protect my position.’
‘Your position? And I have nothing worth protecting—is that it? I was nothing more than an entertaining diversion while you toured your estates in Cazulas?’
‘Zoë.’ Rico reached out to her, and then drew back. ‘Try to understand what it’s like for me. I have to know who I’m dealing with.’
‘What are you trying to say, Rico?’ Zoë said softly. ‘A man as important, as rich and influential as you, has to be cautious about the type of woman he takes to bed?’
‘It’s a lot more than that, Zoë, and you know it.’
‘Do I?’ She smiled faintly. ‘I’m afraid I must have missed something.’
‘Can you imagine my shock when I read this headline?’
‘It must have been terrible for you.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic.’
‘How do you expect me to be? You tell me you have to protect yourself from me as if I’m some piece of dirt that might tarnish your lustre.’
‘Don’t say that. I asked for this information before I knew you, Zoë.’
‘And now you do know me,’ Zoë said bitterly, glancing at the screen. ‘You must be glad that you took that precaution.’
‘You don’t know me very well.’
‘I don’t know you at all.’
The coldness in her voice, the bitterness in her eyes cut right through him. He wasn’t sure about anything any more, Rico realised. He had spent most of his adult life protecting himself from the gutter press. It was ironic to think that it was their common bond. He focused on her face as she spoke again, and was shocked to see the pain in her eyes when she gazed unwaveringly at him.
‘I don’t have anything concrete like a headline to shake the foundations of my belief in you,’ she said. ‘All I have are candles, a romantic night in a beautiful luxury spa, and the horrible suspicion that maybe you arranged all that because you wondered if you had what it took to seduce a frigid woman.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘You seem shocked, Rico. Why is that? Because I’m getting too close to the truth?’
‘No!’ The word shot out of him on a gust of loathing that she could even think such a thing. ‘It isn’t true. I don’t know what’s happened to you in the past, but you’re not frigid. And I don’t need the sort of reassurance you seem to think I do!’
‘You lied to me.’ Her voice was low, and cruelly bitter. ‘You made assumptions about me, Rico. You invaded my privacy—that same privacy that’s so precious to you, El Señor Alarico Cortes de Aragon! You had me investigated.’ She ground out each word with incredulity, and then gazed up at the sky to give a short, half-sobbing laugh. ‘And while that was going on you tried to get me into bed. And then—’ She held up her hand, silencing his attempt to protest. ‘Then you sold me out to the tabloids for some type of sick revenge.’
‘Zoë, please—’
‘I haven’t finished yet!’ She shouted the words at him in a hoarse, agonised voice, leaning forward stiffly to confront him, her face white with fury. ‘To cap it all, you turn all self-righteous on me—pretending it matters to you that someone else hurt me, used me as a punch-bag—as if you care any more than he did!’
‘You’ve gone too far!’ He couldn’t hold back any longer. ‘How dare you compare me with that—that—’
‘What’s the matter, Rico? You think of him and you see yourself? Even you can’t bring yourself to admit what you are.’
‘And just what am I?’
‘A deceitful, lying user!’
‘User?’ He threw his hands up. ‘Who’s using who here, Zoë?’
‘That’s right—stay up in your ivory tower, where you’re safe from all the gold-diggers, why don’t you, Rico? Only I don’t want your money—I never did. I can manage quite well on my own!’
‘And that’s what you want, is it, Zoë—to be on your own?’
‘What do you think?’ she said bitterly.
‘Then I’d better leave.’
‘That would be good.’
‘You signed the lease on the castle. You can stay until it runs out. Do whatever the hell you want to do! I’ll see myself out.’
CHAPTER TEN
HE’D been thrown out of his own castle. That was a first. Rico looked neither left nor right as he strode purposefully across the courtyard towards his Jeep. Throwing himself into the driver’s seat, he slammed the door, breathing like a bull. The knuckles on his hands turned white on the steering-wheel.
They wanted each other like a bushfire wanted fuel to sustain it. They were burning so hot they were burning out—burning each other out in the process. He had seen her muscles bunched up tight across her shoulders. And she wanted to believe him—that was the tragedy of the situation. They wanted each other, they wanted to believe in each other, to be with each other and only each other—but they were tearing each other apart. They needed each other—but she didn’t need him enough to tell him the truth. She didn’t trust him. Maybe she would never trust him. Could he live with that?
The answer was no, Rico realised as he gunned the engine into life. Some of it he’d worked out for himself—the rest he could find out. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her to tell him. She had to tell him if there was anything left between them at all. If she was the victim, not the architect, of that newspaper headline, why the hell didn’t she just come out and say so? Maybe there was a grain of truth in it—maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to explain.
Her accusers were guilty of making a profit out of the scandal—but newspapers were in business to make money, not friends. He had been shocked when he’d read the torrid revelations, but he had to admire her. She was a fighter, like him. But was she fighting to clear her name or to put up a smokescreen? Would he ever know?
Trouble was, he cared—he really cared—and it made him mad to
