Rising to look at her, he felt he’d turned to stone inside and out as she watched her rising, too.
“For closure to be complete, so we’d never have any loose ends tangling us in each other’s lives, I’m also here to have everything out once and for all. It’s the only way we could both finally let each other go. For good this time.”
Seven
Richard let Isabella leave his side, a jagged rock in his throat. This felt real. And final.
Anything he did now to stop her would have to be true coercion. And no matter that he was losing his mind needing her, and she’d proved again she needed him as much, overpowering considerations had made her decide to quell that need. He could force her. But he couldn’t. He had to have her not only willing, but unable to live without having him.
He watched her careful progress to the bathroom in only her sandals, what had remained on all through. She soon exited and, without looking at him, bent to pick up her panties, dropping them again when she realized they were ruined before walking out. Pulling on his pants, he followed her as she retraced and reversed her stripping journey.
Once beside the pool, she sat on the couch where they’d almost made love the first night and looked at him.
And the way she did...as if he was everything she wanted but could never have.
Before he charged her and overrode her every misgiving, her subdued voice stopped him in his tracks.
“I’ll start.” She stopped to swallow, her averseness to coming clean clearly almost overwhelming. “I’ll tell you everything. My side of the story. But only if you promise you’ll reciprocate and tell me the whole truth, too.”
“What if I promise, and you tell me everything I want to know, but I don’t deliver on my end of the bargain?”
Her shoulders jerked dejectedly. “I’d do nothing. I can do nothing anyway. The first truth I have to admit is that I am at your mercy. The imbalance of power between us is incalculable. I have so many vulnerabilities while you have none. You can force me to do anything you want.”
He made her feel this way? Defeated? Desperate? He’d thought she needed his chase before she gave in to what she’d wanted all along. But if she truly hated it, this was as insupportable, as abhorrent, to him as when she’d thought he could harm her.
Feeling his guts twisting over dull blades, he came down to sit beside her. “You previously said you considered my word worth having. If you really think so, you have it. A caveat, though. You’ll probably end up wishing you hadn’t asked for the whole truth. It will horrify you.”
“After what I’ve been through in my life, nothing ever would again.” Her gaze wavered. “Can I have a drink first?”
Her unfamiliar faltering intensified his distress. He’d never seen her...defenseless before. Besides the shame that choked him for being what made her fee
l this way, a piercingly poignant feeling, akin to the tenderness only Rose had previously provoked, swamped him. For the first time he wasn’t looking at Isabella as the woman who made him incoherent with desire, a woman he wanted to possess, in every meaning of the word, but a woman he wanted to...protect. Even from himself.
Especially from himself.
Stunned by the new perception, he headed to the bar and mixed her one of the cocktails she liked.
For a year after he’d left her, whenever he’d made himself a drink, he’d made her one, too, as if waiting for her to materialize and take it.
The day he’d thrown Burton in the deepest dungeon on the planet, he’d looked at the cocktail glass he’d prepared with such care and faced the stark truth that she never would. And he’d smashed it against the wall. Then he’d furiously and irrevocably terminated every method of communication she hadn’t used. He’d been convinced she’d forgotten him. And he’d hated her then, with a viciousness he hadn’t even felt for Burton. Because he hadn’t been able to forget her.
And all that time she’d been running, pregnant with his child, giving birth to him, facing endless difficulties and dangers he could only guess at.
He didn’t have to guess anymore. She’d finally tell him.
He poured himself a shot of whiskey, breaking his rule of not exceeding two drinks per day. He had a feeling he’d need as much numbness as he could get for the coming revelations.
It seemed she felt the same way as she gulped down the cocktail as soon as he handed it to her. Even with little alcohol, for a nondrinker like her, having it in one go would affect her as much as half a bottle of hard liquor would affect him.
As soon as he sat, struggling not to drag her onto his lap, she said, “To explain how I became Burton’s wife, I have to start my story years earlier.”
His every muscle bunching in dreadful anticipation, he tossed back his drink.
“You probably know my early history—that I was born in Colombia to a doctor father and a nurse mother and was the oldest of five siblings. My trail stops when I was thirteen, when my family was forced out of our home along with tens of thousands of others.
“Though we ended up living in one of the shantytowns around Bogota, my parents gave me medical training, while I home-schooled my siblings. Everybody sought our medical services, especially guerillas who always needed us to patch up their injured. Then one day, when I was nineteen, we went to tend to the son of our region’s most influential drug lord, and Burton, who was there concluding a deal, saw me. He later told me I hit him here—” she thumped her fist over her heart “—like nothing ever had.”
His own heart gave a clap of thunder he was surprised she didn’t hear.