Roberta stared at him, aghast. ‘My father?’ she gasped. ‘You spoke to my father and he said that? When?’ she demanded breathlessly.
He shrugged. ‘Early evening that same day,’ he said.
‘But he told me the call wasn’t for me,’ she murmured.
‘So you didn’t even know I’d rung?’ Mac asked in surprise.
‘No,’ she said softly, her green eyes warming because, in his own way, her father had been protecting her from anything potentially hurtful, just as Mac tried to protect Lulu.
‘That’s why it came as such a surprise when you told me you’d been on holiday with them,’ Mac explained, then asked curiously, ‘What brought the holiday about?’
Roberta flushed, remembering, and looking away. ‘Not telling,’ she refused.
Mac began to grin, seeing the flush for exactly what it was. ‘You were feeling wretched and told them all about me, didn’t you?’ he teased, lifting a finger to caress her jutting chin. ‘I bet you told them what a bastard I am then admitted that you love me anyway, which is why they suddenly acquired protective instincts and told me lies. Am I right?’ he prompted. ‘Did you describe the big, bad wolf and Daddy got out his shotgun to kill him for you?’
‘I am allowed a little tender, loving care myself, you know!’ she flashed, goaded into doing so. ‘Sweet Lulu doesn’t have the monopoly on it!’
‘From people who ignored you for the best part of your life?’ he mocked. ‘Come on, Roberta, you must have been shocked out of your mind when they responded like normal parents should do!’
‘What’s normal?’ she countered. ‘Do you class you and Delia as normal parents? Because I certainly don’t, and I don’t suppose Lulu does either!’
‘True,’ he conceded. ‘I’ve never withheld love from her, though,’ he pointed out. ‘When I met you, bunny rabbit,’ he added gently, ‘you were totally and utterly starved of love.’
Tears spread across her eyes, because she knew he was right. ‘That didn’t mean you had to take advantage of it,’ she choked.
‘No,’ he sighed, drawing her close. ‘You’re right. And that was the most painful truth that hit me full in the face that night in Zurich, when you begged me to take you with me,’ he said. ‘The truth that, unwittingly, or greedily, maybe,’ he acknowledged heavily, ‘I was starving you even more, the way I was using you.’ His eyes darkened on her pained face. ‘I can’t turn back the clock, Roberta,’ he murmured gruffly, ‘but I can control the future from now on. If I promise to make you the axis that my whole world turns upon, can you forgive me enough to give me a second chance?’
A second chance? She almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the plea. She would give him second chances, third and fourth, she was that much in love with him.
His hand lifted to her hair, gently stroking back a stray curl from one of her satin-smooth cheeks. ‘I could kiss you into submission, you know,’ he drawled. ‘In two minutes flat I could have you so bent to my will that you’d let me take you right here in broad daylight on the concrete path!’
Her green eyes flashed. ‘Touch you in a couple of strategic places and you’re not so controlled yourself!’ she retaliated. ‘Even with the threat of your daughter, your ex-wife and your brother walking out here to catch you out!’
He grinned, not in the least bit ashamed of admitting his own weakness to her touch. ‘Or we could go home,’ he suggested warmly, ‘go inside, lock the door, unplug the phone and see just who loses control first in the privacy of the bedroom, on a comfortable bed, with as many hours as we need to decide who is the winner without the smallest chance of interruption from anyone?’
‘I’m still not going to marry you!’ she told him, using the words as a form of surrender.
‘And why not?’ he demanded, the triumph gleaming in his eyes telling her that he knew he had won, whatever she might say to the contrary.
‘Because you’ve not grovelled enough,’ she informed him. ‘I want you at my feet, Mac,’ she warned. ‘As far as I am concerned, nothing less than your complete subjugation will make up for what you’ve been putting me through.’
‘Then get in the car,’ he coaxed. ‘Let me drive us home so I can subjugate myself to your heart’s content.’
‘Home—where?’ she demanded, remembering even if he didn’t that he had at least three different places he called home.
‘Chelsea, of course,’ he replied. ‘It’s too damned far for us to go to Berkshire—especially the way I’m feeling right now,’ he added wickedly.
‘And what about the Knightsbridge place?’ she reminded him. ‘Do I still not warrant entrance into there?’
‘Blow the Knightsbridge place,’ he dismissed, bundling her into the car. ‘I haven’t been near it since you walked out of Chelsea!’ he told her, once he’d climbed in beside her. ‘The only bed I want to sleep in, my darling bunny rabbit,’ he murmured huskily, ‘is the one I share with you. And that is where we are going right now!’
* * *
‘Is this low enough for you?’ he murmured later as she lay supine on their bed, groaning at the exquisite pleasure his tongue wreaked against the sole of her foot.
‘No. I want more,’ she demanded greedily.
‘More?’ He threaded moist kisses across her toes, then the arch of her foot, then her slender ankle. ‘This kind of more?’ he requested dutifully.