Page 47 of The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
‘What?’
‘What I have to say, I would be happy for them to hear.’
Caitlin hadn’t been expecting that and she hesitated. If he was here about the wretched money, then she might as well get it over and done with. She pulled open the door with marked reluctance and stood back as he walked past her into the house.
He looked around and she saw what he did, but through his eyes. A small but tidy house. Her mother had always been house-proud, and her dad had never minded a bit of DIY, and the house reflected this. In her mind’s eye, she saw his magnificent estate, the vast mansion shrouded in privacy, the acres of marble that told a tale of impossible riches, a penthouse with a priceless and exquisite Chagall painting hanging in the cloakroom, just the sort of casual afterthought only a billionaire could ever afford. Anger tasted like bile in her throat when she imagined him writing her off as a cheap, nasty gold-digger.
She walked towards the kitchen and was aware of him following in her wake.
‘My parents are out at the moment,’ she offered tersely, ‘but they’ll be back soon and I don’t want you around when they get back. I don’t want to have to explain...anything.’
‘The last time I showed up unannounced,’ Dante said, declining the cup of coffee she offered although he knew he could do with a stiff drink in its place, ‘I told you that I missed you.’
Caitlin blushed a furious red and waited in silence for him to get on with it. She’d been a sucker once and she wasn’t about to repeat the exercise.
He was still standing but he sat down now and so did she, like two strangers facing one another in a boardroom, not quite sure how the meeting was going to go. Her spine was rigid and her fingers were curled over her knees in a defensive, vice-like grip.
‘When I saw that email,’ Dante plunged right in, still very much conscious of the fact that he could be chucked out at any given moment and he wouldn’t blame her, ‘I... I felt like the bottom of my world had dropped out. I couldn’t have been more shocked and I reacted in just the way I was programmed to react.’ He held up one hand because he could see that she was on the point of interrupting and he just needed to carry on saying what he had to say, had to gather momentum and run. It was the only way he was going to be able to hurl himself off the edge of that damned precipice.
Caitlin was riveted. He shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be listening to him. But there was a gut-wrenching, despairing honesty about him that held her rapt.
‘I’d been let down once and, after that, I built a wall around myself. There was no way that I was ever going to be let down again. Then I got that email and read it and realised that I’d done the unthinkable. I had dropped all my defences. It was the only thing that could account for the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that my world had stopped turning.’ He breathed in deeply and realised his heart was racing. ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘You’ve never said anything like this before.’
‘I didn’t...know how.’
‘I’m not drifting back into some sort of relationship with you because you still want me in your bed.’
‘When I said that I missed you, I should have said the bits I miss most aren’t the ones where you occupy my bed. Not that I don’t miss those.’
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.’
‘I’m trying to tell you that I don’t care. I don’t care about whatever financial arrangement you had with my brother. I don’t care whether you needed the money to cover a lifestyle of fast cars and gambling dens.’
Caitlin raised both eyebrows. She was still clutching her knees, but the white-knuckle ride was abating and something inside her was melting.
‘You didn’t even hear me out,’ she said painfully. ‘You just went ahead and assumed the worst.’
‘I did and I will regret that for the rest of my life.’
‘You searched me out once, Dante, because you felt that what we had should have carried on. I’m not that same person any longer.’ She really wasn’t, she thought. She was way too involved to risk having her heart broken all over again.
‘I don’t expect you to carry on with what we had,’ Dante told her seriously. ‘It wouldn’t be what I wanted. I don’t want a fling with you,querida. I want the rest of my life with you.’
Caitlin blinked and gaped.
‘You’re kidding...’
Dante reached into his pocket. The black box had been burning a hole there since he had entered her house. That thing he’d had to do, the final step he’d had to take.
The box sat in the palm of his hand, then he opened it, his dark eyes firmly pinned to her face, registering her tremulous disbelief, then the dawning smile that told him that everything was going to be just fine.
‘Far from it. I’m deadly serious. I love you and I can’t envisage a life without you in it. I want you to wear this ring and then I want you to wear my wedding ring next to it.’
Caitlin stared then she smiled and tentatively reached out to touch the ring with one finger. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, a solitaire diamond glittering in its bed of white gold, and on the band were tiny diamonds, like perfect tiny stars paying homage to that single, glittering and much bigger one that nestled in the centre.
‘Am I dreaming?’ she murmured to herself. She raised her eyes, barely able to breathe.
