‘I told you. He stopped being my friend.’
‘So the story about him taking you home and putting you to bed the night I lost my baby was a lie, was it?’
‘Now that was quick, considering the state you are in.’ He dared to commend her with a brief smile. Then he lifted up a hand. ‘Lexi—’
‘Don’t you dare say my name like you want to apologise to me,’ she breathed shakily,
‘We met up by accident in the bar I was in. I did not arrange to meet him there.’ Grimly determined to get out the whole story, Franco ignored the way Lexi turned her back on him and continued doggedly on. ‘When I saw him, I went to hit him but I was too drunk so I missed my target, fell on the floor, and basically passed out. Marco picked me up and took me back to my apartment. I don’t remember anything after I crashed out on the bed.’
‘Poor Claudia got her dearest wish to sleep with you and didn’t care that you were comatose.’ She swung round again. ‘Is that the way you mean to tell it?’
‘It was the only way it was going to happen, because I never felt a thing for her … not sexually anyway. Tell me,’ he said then. ‘Was I undressed?’
Mouth flattening tight, Lexi slumped back against the galley wall, frowned at her feet and gave no answer.
‘I ask because I woke up the next morning with a thick head, still wearing my jeans,’ Franco went on patiently.
‘No T-shirt, though,’ she whispered. All she’d seen in that cruel video was his top half, broad and bronzed against the sheet, with—’Claudia was wearing a bra and pants.’
‘Then use your head, cara, and think this through—’
‘Stay back,’ she threatened as he took a step her way.
‘They planned it, Lexi,’ he persisted, going still again. ‘They wanted you out of my life. The video of me accepting the bet was just damn spitefulness on Claudia’s side, but the other one was a coordinated plot between Marco and his sister to make you leave me. And he was ruthless about it. Who do you think it was who recorded the moment?’
Marco. Lexi tugged in a painful breath of air. ‘Why, though?’ She had to ask the question even though it hurt. ‘He was your closest friend, and I thought he liked m-me.’
‘I have come to realise that Marco only liked Marco,’ he answered grimly. ‘I’ve known him for over twenty years and turned a blind eye to most of his shortcomings. He was my friend and I—I cared about him. Until I believed he had slept with you.’ Bleak cynicism cast a shadow across his face. ‘What kind of friend betrays you by doing that?’
‘What kind of lover betrays you by believing I could do that?’
‘Fair point. No answer.’ He held his hands out. ‘I was young and arrogant and full of myself. I did not see why he should lie to me about something so important. He blamed you, and I was too willing to listen when he advised me to look at all the men you flirted with—the way you turned them on without seemingly knowing you were doing it.’
‘I didn’t do that!’ Lexi gasped in hot denial, though she was already starting to blush. Back then she hadn’t given much thought to what her happy go lucky flirtations were actually doing to the men she flirted with.
‘Did you catch me coming onto other women?’ Franco lanced at her.
‘No.’ Lexi dipped her head again, then felt forced to add, ‘I used to drag you away when they came onto you.’
‘Well, it was a very simple step for me to believe you could have taken your flirtation with Marco the next level.’
Had she flirted with Marco too? Yes, she’d flirted with Marco, Lexi accepted uncomfortably. He’d been the laid-back, sunny one of their crowd. Franco’s best friend, whom she’d trusted and who’d always laughed and teased her about her practising her new found feminine wiles on him.
‘He was in love you too, of course.’
Lexi blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Marco,’ he explained. ‘When two friends fall out over a woman it usually means they are both in love with the same one … None of that is any kind of defence for the way I behaved during the months after we married. There is no defence,’ he stated abruptly. ‘But today, if you’re willing, we can start again and try to do better this time.’
‘Is that why we are here on the Miranda? To start again? Same venue, different odds?’
‘The odds are up to you, Lexi.’ He sounded so grim now, distant. ‘I want us to work. The thing you need to ask yourself is do you want us to work? I need to check some things out on deck,’ he added abruptly, and turned to disappear up the steps and out of sight.
Well, she thought once she was alone, did she want their marriage to work?
Of course she wanted it to work. She wasn’t such a self-pitying klutz that she couldn’t accept some of the responsibility for what had happened. After all, she hadn’t exactly been the sweet, bewildered bride a man with Franco’s proud personality could look at and find her melting his cold stance.
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