‘Why would you think that?’
She closed the journal with a snap, a sudden hot rush of emotion obliterating the numbness and firing her deadened nerve-endings. ‘I told you everything about me, Finn. Everything. Yet every time I asked you anything about your parents or anything even vaguely personal you brushed me aside. You told me nothing. Until you absolutely had no choice.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Your adoption. That huge thing that you didn’t think to share with me.’
He stared at her, a tiny muscle in his jaw pulsating. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said gruffly. ‘I could barely make sense of it myself. I certainly couldn’t have talked about it any sooner than I did. With you or anyone.’
‘No one else knows?’
‘You’re the only person I’ve told. The only person I wanted to know, I’ve recently realised. You unlocked me in that respect. You made me re-evaluate the past and see things from a different perspective. I don’t regret any of that. I do, however, regret how that conversation ended. I’m sorry. I let decades-old hang-ups get the better of me. I was an idiot for letting you leave.’
‘If you’d told me that I mattered to you and that we were in this together I’d have stayed.’
A flicker of warmth and something that looked like hope leapt in the depths of his eyes. ‘You do matter to me and we are in this together.’
‘Because of Josh.’
His gaze intensified and heated. ‘Not entirely.’
No, she thought acidly. It wouldn’t do to forget the sex side of things, would it? Or to be careless and ignore the need to protect herself. ‘Yes, well, I have regrets too.’
‘What do you regret?’
‘Everything,’ she said with deliberate bluntness. ‘Our entire relationship is completely wrong.’
He paled. ‘In what way?’
‘In every way,’ she said. ‘Would you have chosen to be with me if it wasn’t for Josh?’
‘That’s a wholly unfair question,’ he said, his jaw tightening as a flash of wariness flitted across his face. ‘Not to mention impossible to answer.’
Which meant no. And only went to prove her point. ‘Right from the beginning I’ve forced you into doing things you can’t possibly have wanted to do.’
‘Such as?’
‘Being a father. Accommodating me and Josh, me in particular. Giving up your evenings. Taking me to bed. The dinner with friends I made you have. Then Paris. The sex. The talking. You name it, I’ve made you do it.’
He looked at her as though she’d come from another planet. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Is it?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Deadly.’
‘I have never done anything even remotely reluctantly in my entire life,’ he said, his steady gaze fixed to hers. ‘If I want to do something, I do it. If I don’t, I don’t. If I’d known about Josh sooner I’d have been right there with you every step of the way. The night you came into my room and took off your top I wanted you so badly I was at the end of my tether anyway. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you again. Why do you think I spent so much time out of the apartment when you and Josh first moved in?’
‘Work?’
‘Not work,’ he said darkly. ‘I spent every evening in the fitness suite trying to obliterate the need, much good that it did me. If you hadn’t come to me that night I would have gone to you. You were just quicker, that’s all.’ He gave his head a quick shake and then rubbed his hands over his face. ‘I didn’t deliberately delay us having dinner with friends, although I will admit to wanting you to myself for a while longer. And I didn’t need to take you with me to Paris. I’ve never taken anyone to Paris. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I didn’t even need to be there myself. I don’t usually. I prefer to stay in the background and let my extremely efficient PR company take care of that side of things.’
She swallowed hard, torn between wanting to believe him and not wanting to believe him. ‘So why did you?’
He looked at her for a moment, as if the question had taken him by surprise. ‘I wanted to show you my hotel,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘I wanted to show you off.’
‘Not for the sex?’