Madeline watched him for a while, feeling oddly like crying when really she should be pleased at m
anaging to better him so easily.
A sigh whispered from her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she relinquished heavily. ‘I would like us to be friends, Dominic. For Vicky’s sake if not for our own. But I don’t know whether a friendship between you and me would ever work.’ Too much bitter-tasting water had swirled under the bridge to support a rocky boat of friendship. And anyway, she added grimly to herself, he could still affect her emotions too easily. It was dangerous to so much as contemplate letting Dominic in close again.
She’d been hurt enough the first time.
She thought he wasn’t going to bother replying, then he took in a deep breath and let it out again slowly. ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘I do tend to agree with you on that point.’
He turned to face her, and they found themselves staring sombrely at each other again, the vibrations between them an odd mixture of remembered pain and a beautiful loving.
‘Why did you do it, Madeline?’ he said suddenly, his voice pitched low and thick. ‘Why did you run away like that?’
She dropped her gaze. ‘Let’s not go back over old ground,’ she advised heavily. ‘I was very young and foolish, and you were…’
‘What was I?’ he muttered when she hesitated. Reaching for her, he grasped her by the shoulders and drew her to her feet. His expression was harsh, the dark glitter in his eyes burning wretchedly into hers. ‘What was my excuse for what happened four years ago?’ he demanded, giving her a small shake as if he couldn’t help himself, his fingers clenching into the tender pads of her shoulders. ‘It’s all so easy for you to use your youth and impulsiveness as your excuse for your behaviour. But what excuse did I have? Tell me,’ he growled, ‘if you know, because it would certainly help me to understand something I’ve never been able to justify in four long miserable years!’
Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, shaken by the depths of his self-contempt. ‘I just don’t know what you thought or felt then, Dominic! How could I, when you never allowed me to know?’ Her mouth turned down on a bitterness and frustration she had allowed to fester for four long years.
Clenching her teeth, she forced herself to calm down, sending him a smile that was every bit as blasé as he’d just accused her of being. ‘Why not count your blessings and just be thankful for the lucky escape you had,’ she drily suggested, ‘instead of trying to understand what was, when all’s said and done, a disaster?’
Instead of becoming angrier as she expected him to, Dominic surprised her with a rueful smile, his fingers slackening on her so that she was able to move away from him a little. ‘Disaster covers it quite nicely, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘But,’ he continued more seriously, ‘as with all disasters, it’s the confusion it leaves in its wake which causes the real problems.’ He leaned back against the drinks bar, his hands sliding into the pocket of his black silk trousers, his expression grave. ‘The confusion we left behind us, Madeline, has affected and still is affecting everyone attached to us. We have a responsibility to them to do something about it,’ he concluded firmly.
‘I’ll get Nina to write out invitations to all the Stantons, inviting them to her wedding,’ she suggested, ‘and personally deliver them myself—I have no intention of joining this feud, Dominic,’ she warned him. ‘And both your family and my own will know that the first time I get the chance to show it—if, that is,’ she then added ruefully, ‘your family ever place themselves in my company again.’
‘They stayed away from the Lassiters’ to give you time to readjust, Madeline. It was not a personal message to you.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I had managed to work that out for myself.’ She lifted cool eyes to him. ‘It isn’t me who has gotten into the habit of reading an insult into everything, Dominic,’ she pointed out. ‘I can still remember how warm and caring your parents were to me.’
‘They love you,’ he said softly.
Her heart gave a painful squeeze. ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘And I love them. And tomorrow evening I shall pay them a visit to tell them so—with Nina’s invitations to sweeten the pill of having Madeline Gilburn threaten their peaceful lives again,’ she added drily.
Dominic just smiled. ‘And what do you think your father will have to say about that?’
Madeline made an impatient gesture with her hand. ‘He shall just have to accept it,’ she said stubbornly, then turned her impatient glance on him. ‘I can’t understand why you’ve let this go on for so long, Dominic! If I’d been at home, I would have made sure this silliness stopped long ago!’
‘Would you?’ he clipped. ‘Then it just goes to show how little you know about the problem.’ He eyed her thoughtfully from his casual stance. ‘Did you know, for instance, that your father and mine almost came to blows over our break-up? That your father went as far as withdrawing all his accounts from our bank at a very awkward period for us—and he knew it? Did you also know,’ he went on ruthlessly, ‘that at this very moment your father is trying to get one of the big banks to back his latest brainwave but, as usual, everyone is wary of touching a Gilburn idea?’ She was looking so bewildered that Dominic knew he was telling her fresh news. ‘I’d finance him, Madeline,’ he told her huskily. ‘At the drop of a hat, I’d put the money up he needs to get his idea off the ground. But he’s so damned pigheaded, he won’t even discuss it with me!’
‘Have you tried to approach him?’ She was visibly shaken, her face gone pale beneath its smooth covering of make-up.
‘Twice,’ he nodded, turning grimly away to retrieve his glass. ‘He didn’t even bother to acknowledge my calls,’ he informed her bitterly.
‘The stubborn old so-and-so,’ she muttered. Dominic was right. Her father was pigheaded! ‘So, what do you suggest we do?’ she asked, accepting at last that they were not going to solve anything the easy way.
He turned back to face her. ‘We have to give an impression that you and I are considering making a go of it again,’ he told her. ‘It’s the only thing I can think of which will melt the ice around them. They always did love the idea of you and me being a pair. Hell!’ he rasped. ‘I would even go as far as saying they took rather a large role in pushing you towards me! We all rushed at you when I come to think of it,’ he added grimly. ‘We were all guilty of hunting and cornering the spirited prey, forgetting that she had a habit of coming back spitting.’
‘I seem to remember thinking you were the one cornered,’ she murmured, remembering that awful night she had tried to seduce him.
‘I was old enough to know my own mind.’ Dominic dismissed. ‘You weren’t.’
‘I don’t flirt, Dom,’ she made coolly clear, telling him two things in that brief statement: Firstly that she was at last beginning to take his suggestion seriously, and secondly that she had no wish to rake over the past. It resurrected too many bad memories.
‘No, I do remember that,’ he said soberly, eyes momentarily turned inwards on some private memory. He flicked a measuring glance at her, then grinned, the mockery back in his expression. ‘How about a romance, then?’ he offered.
‘What…?’ Madeline drawled, matching his tone. ‘Another one?’
‘Oh, but this time it will be different,’ he assured her. ‘I mean, neither of us is in danger of making the same mistakes a second time, are we? You told me yourself on the phone only the other day that you learned your lessons thoroughly the first time around, and I…’ His smile was something only he understood. ‘The circumstances will be different for me. So what’s to stop us indulging in a bit of romance? We surely are not immune to each other, so there should be no difficulty making it believable.’