Still reeling with the shock that had nearly taken out his knees, Duarte grabbed his T-shirt off the bed and yanked it on as if it might provide some kind of protection against the detonation of his world.
Orla’s reminder of the date had landed like a grenade that had then gone off. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten. How the hell had it happened? He had no idea, but it did make sense of a lot of the things that had been baffling the life out of him today. Such as the curious glances she’d been casting his way. The bizarre tiptoeing around him and the constant questions about how he was feeling. The concern in her expression and the sympathy in her eyes, which he hadn’t been able to fathom and which had only added to the unease that had been gripping him for the last forty-eight hours.
Around lunchtime he’d wondered if she’d started to regret their affair. If she wanted to put a stop to it for some reason that may or may not have had something to do with his strategy of keeping his distance, and had been trying to figure out a way to let him down gently.
The idea that she regretted anything about what they’d been doing had left a strangely sour taste in his mouth, and he’d recoiled in denial at the thought of their affair ending early. But he needn’t have worried about that because he’d been wrong. She’d simply remembered the date, that was all, and why wouldn’t she? At the time, her company had sent flowers. She’d handwritten him a personal message of condolence. And being good with dates was part of the job, she’d once told him.
He needed to get out of here, he thought grimly as he discarded the towel and pulled on his shorts and jeans. He’d already revealed too much. When, too stunned to exercise his customary caution, he’d admitted he had indeed forgotten the significance of today’s date, Orla had been horrified. She’d looked at him as if he’d told her he drowned kittens for fun. She clearly found him severely lacking and he needed no judgement, from anyone, least of all from her. That was precisely what he’d been trying to avoid by allowing the myth of his marriage to perpetuate and the truth to remain buried.
So he ought to leave, pack up his things at the Casa and fly straight to Porto. Before he said or did something he’d really regret. Like telling her the truth. He’d have to be insane to do anything as stupid as that. He’d never uttered a word of it to anyone. If he did, to her, if he gave her even half an inch, she’d take a mile. She’d bulldoze her way through his fractured defences and poke around at the exposed weaknesses they were designed to protect. She’d uncover the man he was behind the facade, and she would find him weak. Shameful. Abhorrent.
And yet he was so sick of the secrets, the lies and the guilt. Not even his parents knew the whole truth of what had gone on during the course of his relationship with Calysta. He carried the burden alone, and because he wasn’t as good at shouldering it as he liked to tell himself, it was crippling.
He didn’t know how much longer he could hold it together. For weeks now, he’d been fraying at the edges, the gruelling schedule he’d adopted to keep a lid on his emotions and get through the days taking its toll. His mother was worried. He’d become short with his staff. It couldn’t continue.
So what if he did tell Orla what had really happened? Could he trust her to listen without judgement? The feeling that somehow he’d let her down curdled his stomach. He wanted to set the record straight. He wanted to be able to let go of the guilt.
After she’d spilled the truth about her pregnancy Calysta had regularly tried to get him to talk, to no avail, and he was all too aware that if only he had, if only he’d listened, things could have turned out differently.
Might that be the case here? Could shedding the crushing load somehow be cathartic? And what if Orla wasn’t sickened by the real him? What if somehow she understood? What if she was able to shed some light on the quagmire of his soul?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said hoarsely, jolting him out of his thoughts as she slid off the bed, still wrapped in the sheet, and reached for her clothes. ‘I should never have brought it up. How you choose to handle this is entirely up to you. I should go.’
‘No.’
Her gaze snapped to his, her eyes wide with surprise. ‘What?’
‘Stay.’
‘Why?’
He silenced the voice in his head insisting he had to be insane to be considering doing this. The NDA Orla had signed still held. He had nothing to lose and possibly everything to gain. It would be fine.
‘Because I want to tell you what really happened.’
***
At that, Orla went still, a shiver of apprehension rippling through her as Duarte stalked into the bathroom to hang up his towel.
She had never seen him look so serious, she thought, her heart thudding heavily as she slipped on her T-shirt and the pair of knickers she’d discarded earlier. So haunted and desolate. So completely the opposite of the former playboy she’d caught the occasional glimpse of over the last couple of weeks. She had the unsettling feeling that whatever he wanted to tell her was momentous. It was going to turn everything she thought she knew about him on its head, and that was happening already. Already his halo was shining a little less brightly than before.
Was she ready for that?
God only knew.
But she had told him she’d listen, and this was what she’d wanted. To discover the real man behind the image, whoever that might be. The curiosity about his wife and the marriage they’d had, not to mention the shameful jealousy she’d failed to overcome, had become unbearable. And who knew, if he wasn’t dealing with everything as stoically as the world believed, maybe she could try to help him in the way he’d helped her to make a start at overcoming her issues? All she had to do was keep calm in the face of any seismic revelation, which would be a challenge when she was gripped with trepidation, but she’d just have to handle it.
‘All right,’ she said, settling back against the pillows as Duarte sat down in the armchair that stood in the shadows in a corner of the softly lit room. ‘I’m listening.’
He rubbed his hands over his face and then shoved them through his hair. ‘Calysta was far from my soulmate,’ he said grimly. ‘And I didn’t love her. In fact, I loathed her.’
Right. Orla swallowed hard, trying to absorb the shock of that when every cell of her body wanted to resist what she was hearing.
‘But what about the fairy tale?’ she asked, thinking of the pictures she’d seen spread across the pages of Hello that March. The bride, beaming, beautiful in white. Duarte looking darkly—although, come to think of it, unsmilingly—handsome in his navy suit as they stood side by side on the battlements of a castle just outside Sintra.
‘There was no fairy tale,’ he said flatly. ‘It ended up being more of a nightmare. We’d been dating for a month when she told me she was pregnant. I married her out of a sense of duty. I felt responsible for her and the baby. That was it.’
No. She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears and screw her eyes tight shut. Yet why would he lie? ‘And what about Calysta?’ she asked, faintly dreading an answer that would make a mockery of the photos and destroy further an already tarnished image of perfection. ‘Did she marry out of duty too?’
He let out a harsh laugh that chilled her to the bone instead. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, his voice tinged with bitterness. ‘She claimed to love me.’
Her throat tightened. ‘Claimed?’
A shadow flitted across his face. ‘As I said, we’d only known each other a month.’
So what? She’d known him less than that and—
Well.
No.