Page 43 of The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
She had gone and done what she had been cautioned against. She had fallen in love with him and as she dithered and wondered what to do about it, the days went by, each one making her more dependent than the one before.
Meanwhile, loose ends piled up around her. She was saving hard, steadfastly ignoring Dante’s insistence that she move in with him, move in to the vast penthouse apartment in Mayfair that he had used as a base in the past whenever he’d happened to be in London. That final step, she knew, would be a huge mistake. At least her little one-bedroom flat was hers and he had given up trying to persuade her out of it. His solution was to avoid it at all costs because the area made him feel uncomfortable and, gradually, Caitlin had grown accustomed to a life largely led in his rarefied part of the world.
The money Alejandro had transferred was still sitting in her account, untouched.
He refused to give her the details of his bank account so that she could transfer it back to him.
He’d told her that it had been thanks to her that he had finally moved forward with his life and was no longer trapped in a cage of his own making.
He owed everything to her, he had confided the last time she had telephoned him and brought it up.
She would give him back the cash, she decided, just as soon as he was back in London, which would be in five days’ time.
Face to face, he would have to cave because she would just refuse to leave him alone until he did.
Looking back on everything, she understood why she had agreed to the arrangement and yet, somehow, when she thought of that cash, she was overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt and unease.
She knew that she was enjoying life with a desperation that could only end in tears, so when, the day before Alejandro was due to arrive back in London, she glanced up from the kitchen table where she was meticulously looking at a series of photos she had taken two days previously, to see Dante framed in the doorway to the kitchen, she was almost resigned to the axe about to fall.
It was there in his expression. She realised that she had become accustomed to him strolling in to greet her with a smile that was part pleasure, part desire. Without even consciously thinking about it, she had been lulled into a state of security that had always been fragile at the very best. God, she was inhiskitchen, as comfortable as though it were her own! She had fallen into the trap of thinking that she could tame a tiger.
Even in the depths of passion he had never, not once, offered anything other than what had been put on the table from the very start. Impermanence. Passing enjoyment. Lust.
His expression was cool. He stared at her until she fidgeted, angry with him for his silence and with herself for the fear that was filling up inside her.
‘Too good to be true,’ he rasped stonily, ‘is what comes to mind when I look at you.’
He clenched his jaw and for a moment he was catapulted back to Luisa, her unexpected knock on his office door less than an hour and a half ago. He hadn’t welcomed her in. In fact, he had risen to his feet to escort her out but as he had moved impatiently towards her, she had extended her hand with a piece of paper grasped in her fingers.
‘Before you throw me out—’ she had halted him in his tracks ‘—you need to have a look at this.’
‘You need to leave my office, Luisa.’ But his eyes had already been drawn to the single piece of paper and he had snatched it because it had seemed the fastest way of getting rid of the woman. He had listened to Caitlin’s intermittent noises about Luisa and had played them down, omitting to tell her that he had fended off an unpleasant phone call from the other woman shortly after he had arrived in London. Why open a can of worms? The minute Luisa had accosted him in his office, he had assumed that she was going to pursue her plea to think about their long family connection and the value of resurrecting their defunct relationship.
This time, he’d thought, he wasn’t going to bother with politeness.
He had half looked at that damning sheet of paper and then had looked more carefully.
Now, standing in his kitchen, he could still feel the cold fury that had swept through him when he had registered what was written.
But before the fury...
The devastation of realising that, once again, he had been sucked into a relationship with a woman who had not been what she had seemed.
Worse, he had realised, with shock, that there was something beyond devastation, beyond rage at his lack of judgement.
There had been the raw pain of knowing that what he’d felt for Caitlin had been far deeper than he could possibly have imagined, and on the back of that pain had come icy rage.
The self-discipline that was so much a part of his personality had masked all emotion as he had politely frozen Luisa out of the satisfaction of engineering the outcome she had anticipated, but his rage had not abated.
And now...standing here...
‘Where did you get this?’ Colour drained away from her face and her hand was shaking.
If ever there was a picture of guilt, he thought bitterly. What had he expected? Really? Some crazy explanation that might make sense?
Unfortunately, he knew exactly what he had expected. He had expected her to be different. When he looked back, he knew that he had thought her different from the very first moment he had clashed with her as she had skulked up the long avenue that led to his mansion. She had intrigued him, and she had continued to intrigue him, and when everything had come out in the wash about his brother he had done the unthinkable. He had dropped his guard and given her the benefit of the doubt.
For the first time in his life he had begun to play with the crazy notion of longevity.
