She turned and ran, just getting to the door and turning the key in the lock. But he must have run too because he reached above her head and pushed hard, so she couldn’t open it.
‘You’re not leaving now,’ he said.
‘You’re not stopping me.’
‘I am. This time I am.’ He turned her to face him. ‘You can’t go out there looking like that.’
‘Looking like what? A slut?’ With no underwear and kiss-swollen lips and the blush of orgasm still on her skin?
‘I’m sorry.’ He apologised again as he retreated into that damn formal reserve. ‘This shouldn’t have happened.’
She didn’t want him to turn all princely polite. She didn’t want him to regret what had happened. She just wanted him to want more the same way she did. But he didn’t. She cared more for him than he did her. And she was heartbroken. She looked at the floor, unable to bear looking into that emotionless face of his.
‘Forgive me.’
Angered, she lifted her head. ‘I’m not the one who needs to forgive you. You need to forgive yourself. You’re a coward, Antonio De Santis.’
He actually lost colour.
‘You think you’re so damn noble, burying yourself in duty. You think you’re protecting Alessia’s name? You’re only protecting yourself. You think you can keep yourself safe by not bothering to participate in life?’ She shook her head, so angry with him for shutting her out. ‘It doesn’t work that way. Who’s hurting now, Antonio? Who is hurting?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I cannot be the man you want me to be. I cannot be the man for you.’
It was the most humiliating moment of her life.
And he wouldn’t admit that he was hurting either. ‘I will control myself better in future. This won’t happen again.’
‘No.’ She nodded painfully. ‘It won’t. I don’t expect you to say hello or anything—you’re absolved from any duty to be polite to me.’ She half laughed bitterly at the heartbreaking mess she was in. He only wanted her for sex, whereas she? She’d gone fully in love. ‘This can only be all or nothing. You can’t give me all. So it has to be nothing.’ For her own sanity it had to be nothing. But she was so, so hurt.
He didn’t argue with her. ‘I can have you escorted discreetly—’
‘I’ll go out the door I came in.’ She straightened and pulled together the last shred of pride that she could. ‘But I need five minutes alone first.’
He stared down at her, as if he could somehow break her and make her change her mind. But he couldn’t. Her dignity was the one thing she’d leave this room with.
He had the intelligence not to apologise again, though she knew he wanted to. She could see that in his eyes. But she didn’t want his pity. What she really wanted was the one thing he couldn’t give her. He didn’t want to give her.
And that wasn’t his fault.
‘Leave, Antonio.’
And then he did.
She locked the door again right away and took deep breaths to recover her equilibrium. She was not crying here. She was holding her head high and walking out of there.
No one would ever know how she’d been so crushed.
It took ten minutes before she was ready. Then she unlocked the door, squared her shoulders and walked back down the corridor and around the corner to where the people were thronging and still laughing, oblivious to the cataclysmic encounter in that room so close by. She got into the ballroom and began her trek along the edge to the exit at the end. She was walking so quickly, and with such concentration, she almost crashed into the broad-shouldered man who suddenly stepped in front of her.
‘Do you really think you can ever belong here?’
She stared blankly for a second before realising who it was.
Salvatore Accardi. Her father. For the first time in her life he’d addressed her directly. And he wasn’t being conciliatory.
Frantically she processed his words, wondering at what he’d meant.
‘Look at you,’ he snarled. ‘You think it isn’t obvious what you’ve been doing?’ Salvatore sent her a scathing look. ‘Like mother, like daughter. Giving it all to anyone who asks. No doubt you’re aiming to get pregnant as quickly as possible and you’ll blame it on the nearest wealthy man.’ He stepped closer. ‘You’re the daughter of a whore and you’re a whore.’