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“You honestly believe it’s that simple? That every woman you’ve ever been with has felt as cut and dried about love and commitment as you? That just because you’re crystal clear at the start of an entanglement, things don’t shift along the way?”
“Yes.”
The answer was too swift; he wasn’t allowing even the slightest possibility for her to be right.
“Then you have no idea how charming you are.”
“I want you to be happy, Mila. I have wanted that all along.”
“It’s not your job to make me happy, nor your job to rescue me. You think you owed some debt to Benji? Fine. Consider it absolved. But don’t involve me any further.”
“Hang on. Don’t change the subject.”
“It’s all the same subject,” she rejected with an angry glance thrown in his direction. “You, Benji, stupid deals and machismo. God, what a mess.”
“If you truly believe this is who I am, then how the hell can you say, in the same breath, that you love me?”
“Because obviously my mother was right. Love is for fools, a stupid, stupid pastime, yet here I am, so freaking in love with you I’d walk through the fires of hell if you asked it of me.”
“I’m asking you to stay two more nights and you won’t even consider it.”
Anger exploded in her chest. “Don’t act as though I’m letting you down in some way. I’m being honest with you, Leonidas. I’m telling you the truth. What you’re asking of me is too much. It’s too risky for me.”
“What is the risk?”
“I love you,” she said angrily. “Staying here isn’t going to change that, it’s just going to make me love you more, to make leaving harder, to make my life without you impossible to get pleasure from. Don’t you get it? I just need to get back to London, to get back to training, to be in my own routine, far away from you and all this,” she waved a hand wildly around the garden, towards the golden house.
“You are denying yourself something you want.”
She couldn’t disagree with him on that score. “I’m a realist, Leonidas. There is no winning here, only escaping.”
“I think you are mistaking your feelings,” he said, after a beat. “You are inexperienced with men. You’re mistaking lust for something more, seeing friendship as love.”
“You have relationships like this all the time?” She pushed, lifting a finger and pressing it to his chest.
“Not exactly like this,” he said after a short pause.
“What’s different?”
He put both hands on his hips. “You’re trying to trick me into saying that you’re different? That perhaps I am in love with you?”
“I’m not trying to do anything except leave,” she demurred.
“Then leave,” he snapped. “If that’s truly what you want, I’ll take you to the mainland tonight.”
He’d called her bluff. What choice did she have? “Thank you. I’ll go and pack.”
At the sightof her retreating back, so ramrod straight, the bottom fell completely out of his world. He wasn’t sure what the hell had just happened, only he knew that he’d bungled everything. Everything. From the moment he’d acted on his feelings for Mila, he’d been managing a situation that was out of his control, betraying his best friend, pushing the boundaries with Mila, defying his own rules for relationships. And now, it had all exploded in his face.
“Mila, wait,” he groaned, breaking into a jog when she didn’t stop walking. His fingers caught her wrist, wrapping around it, tugging at her so she spun to face him, eyes sheened with an angry mist of tears. At least, he hoped they were tears of anger. He didn’t want to be the reason she cried; not from sadness.
“What?” She lifted her hands and pushed at his chest, but he caught both wrists then, easily, holding her hands between them, his body strong and dominant, her sweet fragrance driving his senses into overdrive. Having her there, so close, made him ache for her.
“I just want you to stay,” he said simply, even when there was nothing simple about that request. Nothing simple about what they were doing. “It feels wrong for you to leave.”
“You think I don’t know that?” She demanded ferociously; her frustration palpable. “I am in goddamned loved with you. I don’twantto leave. I want to stay with you, but not for a night, not for two nights, for all the nights of the rest of my life. How the hell does that work?” She demanded. “How do I stay knowing you don’t love me back? That you don’t want anything more from me than this very temporary, very transient affair? How do I stay knowing that means walking away from a career I have dedicated my life to? Something that I have wanted to achieve for so long I literally don’t remember a point in my life where this wasn’t the goal I would live and die by?”
“I’m not asking you to give anything up…”
