AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I’m going after Roman...he’s hurting and he needs me.’
But instead of letting her go, her sister grasped her other arm and gave her a subtle shake, the expression on her face full of sadness and sympathy.
‘Yes, he is hurting. And what he revealed explains a lot. But you need to stop and think now, Milly.Thinkabout why he came here. Why he was dating you. If anything, what we’ve just discovered about his past makes his motivations for being with you even more suspect.’
Milly shook her head, rejecting her sister’s assessment in every aspect of her being. Lacey didn’t know what they had shared over the last two and a half weeks, the sweetness, the wicked fun, the laughs, the excitement, the intensity not just of their lovemaking, but the companionship and the confidences they’d shared. She knew now why Roman had seemed so off as soon as they’d arrived. Knew why he had struggled with her close relationship to Brandon.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said simply. ‘About him, about us, about everything. You don’t know him like I do.’
‘Please, Milly, don’t do this. He used you, for whatever reason, surely you can see that now?’
‘No, he didn’t. He wouldn’t.’ She yanked herself free of Lacey’s hold, rejecting the statement categorically. ‘I’m a grown woman, and I’m going with him, Lacey. And you can’t stop me.’
She rushed out of the room and ran down the corridor towards the gardens and the heliport—her sister’s protests fading behind her. Until all she could hear was her heart punching her ribs and her heels landing on the marble floor of the summer gallery.
She would tell Roman she loved him. Everything he was and everything he had been. Right back to that neglected boy, he had taught himself to hate because the people who should have loved and protected him had rejected him.
And everything would be okay.
She finally located him ten minutes later, standing in a gazebo near the exit to the heliport, alone. And waiting... For her.
The buzz of conversation from the party on the other side of the garden walls helped to calm the pulse still thundering in her ears as she tried to calm her breathing.
He stood in the shadows, his body tense, his face lit by the last of the sunlight and the torches that dotted the gardens. His tortured expression made her heart swell.
‘Roman,’ she called to him, stepping into the gazebo.
His head jerked up, and her heartbeat skipped into overdrive. Joy swept across his harsh handsome features, but it disappeared so swiftly, she wasn’t sure if she had imagined it.
‘Milly?’ He frowned, his expression becoming wary and guarded. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Coming with you, of course.’
She wrapped her arms around his waist and tried to smile at him. So sure of her feelings as she hugged him tight, shewas surprised her heart didn’t burst right out of her chest and land at his feet. She breathed in the delicious scent of salt and sandalwood and man, mixed with the fragrant aroma of jasmine and vanilla from the honeysuckle and clematis climbing the trellis.
But instead of smiling back at her, instead of looking pleased to see she had chosen him, he tensed, then lifted his arms, to dislodge her, and stepped out of her embrace.
‘Why?’ he said, his hard expression as closed off as the sharp edge in his voice.
She refused to be thwarted though. Or denied. She had to tell him now, how she really felt. No holding back. So he would know. She trusted him. Always. And completely.
‘Why? Because I’m falling in love with you, Roman, and I know you would never use me, like they said,’ she declared, putting every ounce of her new-found confidence into the words. ‘Although there’s no pressure,’ she added hastily, when his expression barely changed.
Had her declaration been a bit premature? Perhaps she should have kept that to herself? After all, he was hurting. She wanted to be supportive now, not needy.
‘I thought you should know, my feelings for you are pretty strong. And I... I still want to come to New York. I’m a little hurt you didn’t feel you could tell me about your connection to Brandon. But I want you to know now, you can trust me too. I want us to have fun again. And enjoy each other’s company.’ She wiggled her eyebrows, desperate all of a sudden to lighten the mood and take that blank look off his face. ‘In all our favourite positions.’
But instead of his giving her the hot look she had come to love, his frown became a scowl, the sceptical expression making the words dry in her throat. Why had his expression tightened even more?
‘Really?Just like that? You think you love me? And you want me to trust you?’ The harsh tone didn’t register at first. But the hope died inside her at the irritation in his voice when he spoke again... ‘You’re pretty naïve, aren’t you?’
The cruel words found the insecure and unhappy teenager she’d once been, standing beside her mother’s casket as she listened to a man she didn’t recognise inform her sister he really didn’t have time to be a father to them.
‘I’m not naïve, what do you mean?’ she managed, around the blockage forming in her throat. The memory of that hideous, humiliating moment as raw and painful now as it had been on that rain-slicked November afternoon.
‘You’ve just told a man you’ve known for a little over two weeks you love him,’ he said. ‘I’d call that naïve, sweetheart.’
Sweetheart?Why was he calling her that? When he had never used that generic term before, which now sounded vaguely insulting. And why did she suddenly feel invisible? The way she had the day of her mother’s funeral.
