expected that moment to come so quickly. He’d anticipated a car journey across London, time to process his thoughts, rehearse his words because he knew he only had one chance and they had to be right.
As if in slow motion she continued down the stairs toward him. This was the woman he loved, the woman he wanted to be with for ever, but could he say it now when that realisation was all still so new and fragile?
She reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. The diamonds at her neck glittered as she breathed, giving away the strength of her emotions right now, but the look on her face was unreadable. A mask of defiant beauty.
He became aware of people around him staring, looking from her to him and back again. The strength of the emotion arcing between them was so powerful it was drawing others in and they stepped back, watching, waiting.
Slowly she walked toward him, the emerald silk of the dress shimmering over her body, giving her an ethereal glow. The mutinous spark in her eyes sent a trail of fear sparking down his spine. She looked like a woman with a purpose. The love had gone from her eyes. He’d done that to her.
Then she was standing before him and her heady perfume invaded his senses, making clear and rational thought almost impossible. He knew they were being watched, knew they’d grabbed everyone’s attention, but right now he didn’t care, not if it meant he could tell Lisa what he had to tell her.
‘I’d like to dance.’ Her words were lethally sharp. The soft and gentle woman he’d unknowingly loved all this time had been replaced by an ice-cold vision of beauty.
‘It will be my pleasure,’ he said as he took one of her hands and pulled her gently into his embrace.
It should feel good to hold her against him, to feel the heat of her skin through the fine silk, but it was bittersweet. He looked down at her, but she was resolutely fixing her attention on his chest and he wished this particular scene had been played out anywhere else but the dance floor.
He wanted to ask her why she’d come after he’d been so cruel to her, wanted to know if it meant he had another chance, but the words just wouldn’t come. This was worse than a damn game of poker.
‘I came here tonight to honour the deal I made with you,’ she said, finally looking up at him, as if hearing his thoughts, but the fierceness in her eyes scared the hell out of him.
‘I’m glad you did.’ Her delicate brows lifted in surprise, but the hardness remained in her eyes, sparking more brilliantly than the diamonds at her throat.
‘Are you?’
‘We need to talk, Lisa.’ Max pulled her closer as they moved slowly in time to the music. She stiffened in his arms. This wasn’t going well. He could feel her more than physically pulling away from him.
‘There is nothing more to say, Max.’ She stopped dancing and looked up at him as she pulled off one earring, then with purpose she pulled the other off. ‘You have said all that needs to be said.’
‘Not yet I haven’t.’ What was happening?
She took his hand, turned it over and placed the earrings in his palm. Puzzled, he looked at them lying there like glittering icicles, but as he looked back at her he saw her reach up and begin to unfasten the necklace.
She was giving them back. Giving back her love—in the most public and final way.
‘Stop.’ The word came out as a feral growl but it snared her attention. She looked at him, her arms poised ready to unfasten the necklace, the diamonds setting off fireworks of sparks with each breath.
‘Why?’ The breathy yet fiercely determined word reared up at him like a stallion. Wild and untamed. Hurt.
This was it. This was the moment to put his cards on the table, the moment to tell her everything. Why here? Why like this? But as those thoughts raced in his mind he knew that if he didn’t do it now he’d never get another chance.
He took a deep breath, still holding the earrings, which now seemed to burn his palm. ‘Because I love you.’
LISA COULDN’T MOVE, couldn’t even blink as she looked at Max. She’d waited so long to hear those words that she’d given up hope of ever hearing. In desperation she’d come here tonight to give him back the diamonds and, by doing so, take back her love, her heart, because they were wasted on a cold and emotionless man like him.
A gasp from someone nearby warned her that everyone close to them had stopped dancing and had formed a circle around them. They were the centre of attention, just what he’d wanted to avoid, but she hadn’t planned it like this—so public. But somehow that didn’t matter, not any more. Her heart thumped hard and she couldn’t take her eyes from Max’s.
‘I should have said it a long time ago.’ Regret filled his voice, but she wasn’t going to be lured in by such tactics.
She lowered her hands so that he didn’t see how much they were shaking. ‘Yes, you should have. A long time ago, but you didn’t feel it, did you, Max?’
He stood just an arm’s length away but it might as well have been across the other side of the room. He was still closed off, still behind that barrier of steel. Those words he’d just said, the words she’d so longed to hear didn’t have a ring of truth in them.
‘Just as you didn’t trust me enough to truly let me in,’ she continued. Now that the floodgates of all her pain were open she couldn’t stop. ‘Even when I’d shared all the darkness from my past. When I’d told you everything that had made me so certain that I didn’t want you in our child’s life unless you could be there all the time, every step of the way. Even then, Max, you didn’t open up to me. You couldn’t tell me about your mother even though I was pregnant with your child, forcing you to face all that childhood pain and anguish again.’
He stood rigid, tall and proud, seeming to deflect all the emotion pouring from her. She wanted to pummel his chest with her clenched hands, anything to show him her frustration. But she couldn’t, not when all around them the party seemed to have stopped, all attention turned on them.
‘It was too painful, too raw to share. I guess I’ve never come to terms with losing my mother so young.’ He frowned at her. ‘How do you know?’
‘Angelina told me.’ She lowered her voice, gentled her tone as a wave of sympathy rushed forward like an incoming tide. ‘She told me all about your mother, the tough decision she’d had to make.’
‘Angelina?’ He frowned at her.
‘She’s hurting too, Max. You’re shutting her out. Denying her your love.’ Lisa let the truth flow from her. If nothing else came of this conversation maybe she could make things better between him and his sister, who deep inside was still the little girl who’d grown up with barely a memory of her mother and a cold, distant brother she believed hated her.
‘Ten minutes to midnight.’
The excited remark of another party-goer further away roused some of their spectators, eager to get the champagne needed to toast in a new year, but Lisa held Max’s gaze, implored him with her eyes to understand her, to forgive her for saying
