She got away from Hans. He looked slightly bewildered by her sudden departure, but it could not be helped. At the door to the restaurant she glanced towards the revolving doors at the main entrance, leading to the street, then whirled around to head towards the side entrance.
Just as a tall, immovable figure turned abruptly away from the reception desk, out of her eyeline.
She cannoned into it.
It was Marc.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE GAVE AN audible cry—she couldn’t stop it—and lurched backwards as quickly as she could. He automatically reached up his hands to steady her, then dropped them, as if he might scald himself on her.
She couldn’t think straight—couldn’t do anything at all except stumble another step backwards and blurt out, ‘Marc—I... I thought you had left the hotel.’
Marc’s face hardened. The livid emotion that had flashed through him as she’d bumped into him turning away from the reception desk was being hammered down inside him. He would not let it show. Would not. He’d been cancelling his reservation for that night. What point and what purpose to stay now? he thought savagely.
He knew he had to say something, but how could he? The only words he wanted to hurl at her were...pointless. So all he said, his voice as hard and as expressionless as his face was, ‘I am just leaving.’
Had she come running after him?
But why should she? She has no need of me now!
The words seared across his naked synapses as if they were red-hot. No, Tara had no need of him now—no need at all!
Savage fury bit like a wolf.
Hans! God in heaven—Hans, of all men! Beaming like a lovesick idiot, offering her that ring...that glittering, iridescent diamond ring! For her to reach for. To take for herself. Just as Marianne had.
Fury bit again, but its savagery was not just rage. It was worse than rage. Oh, so much worse...
Yet he would not let her see it. That, at least, he would deny her!
She was looking up at him, consternation in her face. Was she going to try and explain herself—justify herself? It sickened him even to think about it.
But she made no reference to the scene he knew she had seen him witness. Instead she seemed to be intent on attempting some kind of mockery of a conversation.
‘So am I,’ he heard her say. ‘Just leaving the hotel.’
Tara heard her own words and paled. Oh, God, don’t let him think I’m angling for a lift! Please, please, no!
Memory, hot and humiliating, came to her, of how she had asked to go to New York with him—and the unhesitating rejection she had received. She felt that same mortification burning in her again, that he might think she had come racing after him.
This whole encounter was a nightmare, an ordeal so excruciating she couldn’t bear it. He was radiating on every frequency the fact that seeing her again was the last thing he wanted. His stance was stiff and tense, his expression closed and forbidding. He could not have made it plainer to her that he did not want to talk to her. Did not want to have anything at all to do with her any more.
He wants nothing to do with me! He didn’t even want to come over and say hello—not even to his friend Hans!
Could anything have rammed home to her just how much Marc Derenz did not want her any longer? That all he wanted was to be shot of her?
Her chin came up—it cost her all her strength, but she did it. ‘I must be on my way,’ she said. She made her voice bright, but it was like squeezing it through a wringer inset with vicious spikes.
She paused. Swallowed. Thoughts and emotions tumbled violently within her, a feeling akin to panic. There was something she had to say to him. To make things clear to him. As crystal-clear as he was making them to her. That she, too, had moved on with her life. That she would make no claim on him at all. Not even as a casual acquaintance...
She felt emotion choke her, but forced herself to say what she had to. Reassure him that she knew, and accepted, that she was nothing to him any longer.
She had said as much in her letter to him and now she would say it again, to make sure he knew.
‘I’ll be moving away from London very soon. I’m getting out of modelling completely. I can’t wait!’ She forced enthusiasm into her voice, though every word was torn from her.
His stony expression did not change.