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“Well?” He prompted, crossing his arms over his chest, standing in the doorway and effectively blocking her from so much as seeing into his home. Let alone the invitation she’d been hoping he’d extend.
Addie’s throat was thick. Speech was suddenly difficult. This was a stupid idea.
She’d sell the house. She’d have to. She couldn’t ask this man for help. She’d gambled on the fact he would still feel something for her, something of the love that had set them both on fire during their impetuous affair. She’d gambled on a lingering sense of affection, a lessening of his anger in the intervening months.
There was nothing here now.
She shouldn’t have come.
“It… it doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, as if to mentally clear the ludicrous hopes she’d cherished that he might be able to help her. The wasteful, stupid hopes that had seen her use money she couldn’t afford to waste on a last-minute fare to Spain, on taxi fares through Madrid.
His eyes narrowed and now he moved closer, his expression one she’d never seen on his face – even when he’d been at his angriest with her, it had never been so chilling as this. Oh, but up close, she could smell his citrusy, alpine cologne, and every cell in her body surged with the instant rush of memories that were slamming into her.
“You’re pregnant?” The question was iced with disgust and outrage.
Addie’s eyes flew to his face, meeting his straight on for the first time since she’d arrived at his house. “Pregnant?”
“You don’t look it, but then, I don’t know. Are you?”
Despite the tension of the situation, Addie couldn’t help the smile that tingled on her lips. “Guy, we haven’t slept together in six months. Do I look like I’m six months pregnant?”
The question was a mistake.
Because it invited him to drag his gaze down her body and this time, it was no cursory inspection. He towered over her, and he let his attention linger on the vantage point of her cleavage, and lower still, to the nipped in waist, the slender hips, and with every stroke of his attention, her body responded. Her skin pricked and her blood heated, her nerve endings jangled with recognition. He roamed his gaze back up, his eyes once more indulging in a slow, sensual appreciation of her breasts, so that when his sardonic gaze returned to her face, it was to discover cheeks that were pink and lips that were parted as breath burned its way out of Addie’s mouth.
“No,” he admitted finally, and with obvious relief. “You are not pregnant.” He took a step back, propping his shoulder against the doorframe with the appearance of indolent unconcern. “Which begs the question, why are you here?”
Addie’s emotions zipped through her. She’d launched from desire to amusement and back to desire all in the space of a minute and her brain was having a hard time keeping up. What could she say to his question? Because I need help? Because you’re the only person I know who can help? Because you once told me you’d do anything in the world to make me happy, and I’m hoping you still feel the same?
“I do not have all night, Ava.”
“Please,” she shook her head, her expression distracted. “Call me Addie.”
His eyes hardened with some of the legendary ruthlessness for which Guillem Rodriguez was renowned. In business, he was revered. Feared, even. His management of the Rodriguez empire had taken it from a position of considerable power to indomitable strength.
“I would rather not have to call you anything, ever again. Do you not remember what I said to you, the last time we spoke?”
Addie recoiled instinctively. His harsh invectives from that night were burned fiercely into her brain. “I remember everything you said.”
Satisfaction crossed his features. “And yet you are here?”
“It was a mistake to come,” she whispered.
“You said that then,” he rejected, scathingly. “A mistake. You seem rather… mistake-prone.”
Addie nodded slowly. He was right. She had made mistake after mistake after mistake where Guy was concerned.
No more.
How could she fulfill the accusation he’d laid at her feet – that she’d been using him for money? It would kill her to have that opinion confirmed.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, wishing she’d never come.
He leaned imperceptibly closer. “Oh, I have not ‘worried’ about you since I left London. I have not thought of you, in fact, since that night. And yet, here you are…”
His words cut deeply into her heart, because she didn’t doubt the truth of them for even a second. No doubt there’d been a succession of women in his life after her. She was ancient history.
“Then you were lying to me as well,” she heard herself allege softly, as reality began to explode inside of her.
