Scandals Of The Royals. Lynn Raye Harris

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СКАЧАТЬ Her voice broke.

      “Carlotta …” he said, taking a step toward her.

      “Don’t. You have to hear the rest. I was … utterly heartbroken. Completely. And that was when I … This is what I can’t forgive myself for, Rodriguez. I can’t.” For a moment, she couldn’t speak, her voice buried beneath the pressure in her chest, the shame, the guilt. She was sick with it, heavy. She felt too tired to go on, and yet, she couldn’t stop. She had to tell him. Had to let it out.

      She swallowed hard. “He … he wanted me again. He wanted to still be with me.” Her voice shook but she continued anyway. “He told me he loved me. And I believed him. And that night, I let myself forget about Kristen, just for a few moments. I let him have me one more time. Because I wasn’t ready to let him go. Because for one, stupid moment, I believed him when he said we could find a way to make it work.”

      She choked on the admission, her skin crawling even as she confessed it out loud. “I can’t scrub that night off my skin, Rodriguez. Not after six years.” A sob assaulted her. “And tonight I proved that I haven’t changed.”

      That was the part that no one knew. Something she’d never been able to speak out loud. The part that made it impossible to let it all go. She had been stupid enough, going into a clandestine, purely sexual affair with a man that she didn’t really know. But trying to block out the full horror of reality when she’d heard it from his own lips? When she’d known, known his wife was at home, in their bed alone, and he was with Carlotta.

      That was something she hated herself for. That she hadn’t been able to stop loving him in that instant. That she had given in when she’d had a chance to turn back.

      “The only real consolation of that is, by my dates, I was already pregnant. At least that last time … and it’s hard to even talk about because the one thing, the only thing, I don’t regret from that affair was Luca. But if I had gotten pregnant from that time, when I knew he was married … that would have been much harder to handle.”

      Rodriguez didn’t speak, he only looked at her, his eyes unreadable, black bottomless pools, in the dim lamplight of the sitting area. He stood frozen and for one, horrible moment she was afraid he was just going to turn around and leave her there.

      Then he moved to her, crouching down in front of her, clasping her hands in his.

      “That man was a bastard. He took advantage of you, of the fact that you loved him. He cheated both you, and his wife. All of his children. He should carry the shame of this, and I’m willing to bet that he doesn’t.”

      She forced a laugh. “I’m sure he doesn’t. I’m sure he doesn’t care enough about either of us.”

      He moved his thumb over the back of her hand. “What happened? After he told you, after the last time you were together?”

      He kept holding on to her, offering her strength. She looked down at their hands, joined together in her lap. “I had to find my clothes. I gathered them up, and I went into the bathroom. Then I threw up.”

      It had been awful, her entire body shaking and then, with Gabriel watching from the bed, she’d had to stumble from the room, be sick right in bathroom, where he could hear. Where he would know just how much pain she was in.

      “And then I got dressed, and I walked out. I avoided him the next day and prayed he wouldn’t come back again. I started feeling sick soon after that and then I realized … and I had to tell my father. Everything. He made me tell Gabriel. And then he paid Gabriel a lot of money. To never come back. To keep quiet when the media discovered I was pregnant.”

      She breathed in deeply. “It wasn’t like in movies where a woman finds out she’s pregnant and it’s somehow this wonderful moment. I was horrified. Numb. I had to go to the doctor and get tested for every STD under the sun because clearly our birth control efforts had failed, and there was no telling who else he’d been sleeping with. What he might have given me. And I just sort of existed for the next few months. I didn’t want to feel the baby kick. It made it too real. But when Luca was born … that was like the movies. He was just so tiny and vulnerable. And he needed me. But I realized then how much I needed him too. He gave me purpose. He made me want to be better.”

      “And better is denying you have sexual desire?” he asked, his voice soft.

      “That’s what it’s meant since Gabriel, yes. But it’s not just that. It’s everything. Things that feel good can be wrong. You have to trust in something more than feelings.”

      “He was a bastard.”

      “For cheating on his wife? Don’t you plan on cheating on me?”

      Rodriguez looked down at Carlotta, at her face, streaked with tears he wasn’t even certain she’d noticed. The confession had cost her, and he could well understand why. And now, faced with her question, he felt like he’d been eviscerated by her words.

      Yes. He had been planning on carrying on as he’d always done. But he had promised honesty. Surely that changed things? Now though, he didn’t feel like it did.

      “I promised you honesty,” he said, his voice rough.

      She nodded. “I know.”

      “I won’t hurt you.”

      “Rodriguez …”

      “I am not the same as he is.” He said it to convince himself, and the sad part was, he didn’t feel convinced. Not even remotely. He felt like he was deserving of every ounce of scorn he was ready to heap onto the man who had dared play with Carlotta in that way. Who had taken a young woman’s fragile emotions and used them so he could find satisfaction in her body.

      And for the first time he wondered how he was different than a man like that. Because he had always assumed his behavior was fine. He always parted with his partners on good terms. They had fun, in bed and out, he bought them gifts, he made them feel good about themselves. He’d never considered it wrong, not for a moment.

      Now he wondered if he had ever left a woman feeling like that. If he’d truly only used his lovers.

      No, he’d never been guilty of quite what Gabriel had. No children, no cheating.

      But he had been planning on doing that. To Carlotta. To Luca. It would have been in the tabloids. Luca would be able to see it.

      “I won’t cheat,” he said, the words falling from his lips before he had a chance to think them through.

      “What?”

      “I will stay faithful to you. If you will do the same for me.”

      “Forever?”

      “Forever. I can’t promise any deep, abiding emotion I … I can’t.” It was the honest truth, a limitation of his that he had accepted long ago. Embraced. “I just don’t have that. But I can control my actions, and I never want to put you in the position of being hurt or humiliated again. I will never do to you what Gabriel did to his wife. And I don’t want Luca seeing tabloid photos of me out with other women.”

      He had never believed he had it in him to be a good father. He still didn’t. He knew nothing about it. The mere thought of his own father made him feel ill. But he wouldn’t flaunt any kind of disrespect СКАЧАТЬ