Page 44 of The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
He should have stuck to the brief and he was paying for straying from it now.
‘Where?’ she repeated. The beautiful lean lines of his face were unforgiving and she could understand why. She had come to know this man in many little ways, and for him to have proof positive that there had been more to her relationship with Alejandro than an altruistic desire to help him in his hour of need by pretending to be his fiancée would signal the death knell to whatever he might have felt for her. Not love, no. But affection, yes, and certainly desire.
The email to the bank was brief, simply giving Alejandro’s private banker instructions to transfer a hefty amount of money to her account.
‘Does it matter?’ Dante asked with glacial indifference.
Naturally it would have made zero difference if she had tried to blag her way out of this, but he was still enraged that she was making no effort to even try, and angry with himself for caring one way or the other.
The game was up and she was showing her true colours. No more eager desire to please.
‘I don’t suppose it does,’ Caitlin said in a low voice. She couldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t bear the cold accusation there, thedisappointment.
‘Is that all you have to say?’ Dante gritted. ‘“I don’t suppose it does”? For the record, Luisa came by it and very thoughtfully decided to hand it over.’
‘Of course she did,’ Caitlin said wearily.
‘Luisa may be many things but her faults have always been out in the open. She happened to be helping my brother pack his things and when he was out of the room, she accidentally refreshed his computer when she went to pick it up and curiosity got the better of her when your name popped up on the heading along with an account number. Quite a substantial sum of money, I must say. A good day at the office, wouldn’t you agree?’ He breathed in deeply and watched as colour suffused her. ‘What were your plans for the money? Well-deserved spending spree? And did you decide that I might have been a more lucrative bet than my brother because if you managed to hook me, you might just have yourself a permanent passport to wealth instead of a one-off? Did you start as a fake fiancée only to imagine that you could become a real one but with the other heir to the throne?’
‘How could you say that?’ This time shedidlook at him, and with distress. ‘Don’t you know me at all?’
‘It would seem not,’ Dante grated harshly.
The truth was that he’d felt as though hedidknow her and even now, with the evidence of his own stupidity right in front of him, hestillfelt as if he did. It was an act of wilful self-delusion that enraged him further.
‘Would you even make an effort to believe me if I told you that...’ she sighed and blinked away a rush of miserable tears ‘...that it’s not what you think, despite what it looks like?’
‘It looks like you had a financial arrangement with my brother to cover your agreement to pose as his fiancée for the benefit of friends and family and to get our parents off his back on the business of marrying him off. How am I doing so far?’
Caitlin stared at him mutely.
‘I’m gathering from your silence that I’m doing pretty good. Except you got here, and things didn’t quite go according to plan. I should have paid a bit more attention to your striking lack of luggage when you arrived. I’m assuming the jaunt was supposed to be short-lived? A one-night charade then back to normal with a much-inflated bank account?’
‘You’re seeing it all in black and white...’ But actually, every single word was spot-on and there was nothing she could do to defend herself. Her own sense of guilt would have stopped her anyway.
‘No wonder you were so panicked at the thought of hanging around. Until, that is, you discovered that a little hanging around might work in your favour.’
‘You know that’s not true. You’re making it out like I’m some sort of...of...tramp...some sort of...sexual predator...’ She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘You were my first, Dante.’
Dante had the grace to flush but then he aggressively told himself that that counted for very little when hard evidence of her mercenary nature was in front of him.
‘Why are you still continuing with...’ he waved his hand at the pile of photos spread across her side of the kitchen table ‘...that?’ He vaulted forward, too restless to stay still any longer, and prowled the room before coming to stand in front of her, a towering and intimidating figure. ‘And why are you still living in that dump? What was the money for, Caitlin? Debts?’
‘Something like that.’
‘What debts?’ Dante didn’t understand and he didn’t like the feeling. ‘Forget it,’ he snapped, slashing the air with his hand in a gesture of conclusion. ‘I’m going to go out for an hour. In that time, I want you to pack whatever things you might have here and leave. Put it this way, when I get back I don’t want to find you still here.’
Dante was never going to listen to what she had to say, Caitlin realised. He had made his mind up. The only way he would ever have entertained hearing her out would have been if he had loved her, because if he had he would see what she saw, that it wasn’t black and white but a thousand shades of grey, and he would have understood.
She was realising now what the fundamental difference between lust and love was.
Lust was essentially self-centred. It went so far when it came to seeing the bigger picture, to listening and forgiving, and no further.
Love was what bridged the gap, jumped over the chasm, having faith that you would reach the other side and being willing to take the risk.
She loved Dante and she knew that, had the shoe been on the other foot, she would have listened because she would have known, in her gut, that there was no way he could be the person circumstances were portraying him to be, that there would be another explanation, however things might look on the surface.
Well, there was no point hanging around and hoping for the impossible.
