‘Because I thought you wanted more from me than just—sex.’
His frown was a slash on his features. ‘I wanted to share our grief.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘But you didn’t really want me. Any woman would have done for that.’
His response was to move his whole body closer, so she felt his hardness against her, his arousal against her belly. Her stomach looped.
‘And you already had a girlfriend,’ she added quickly.
‘No,’ he said.
‘But you said—’
‘I said what I needed to make sure you got the message. At the time, I thought I was looking out for you, pushing you away for your own good. I didn’t want you thinking there was any future for us so I told you what I thought would scare you off.’
Surprise shifted her features. ‘You lied to me?’
His expression was impossible to interpret. ‘And that lie cost me. If I hadn’t said that
, would you have tried to tell me about Max?’
The world was falling away from them; Annie felt as though she were standing on an island with only Dimitrios, their history forming a swirling, raging ocean on all sides. She lifted a hand, curling her fingers in the fabric of his shirt, feeling the warmth of his body through her fingertips.
She’d intended to push him away but, just for the moment, the proximity and warmth of him flowed through her, his strength pushing into her body.
‘I did try to tell you.’
The words were softly spoken, so Dimitrios had to focus to make sure he’d understood her. I did try to tell you. Was she lying, to justify the fact he had a six-year-old child he’d only just learned about?
‘After I found out I was pregnant, I came to tell you, but...’
He was finding it hard to breathe. ‘But?’
‘I saw you with all your friends, and some woman—who I presumed to be your girlfriend—and I just couldn’t do it.’ Her voice was hollow, as though she were speaking to him from a long way away. ‘You were so sophisticated, it was like you belonged to a whole other universe than the one I lived in. I was only eighteen, Dimitrios. I was scared and embarrassed, and I had no idea what you’d say, but I knew you already had a pretty low opinion of me.’
His gut tightened. ‘Where was this?’
‘At some bar. I’d seen in the papers that you were going to the opening. You’d been involved in funding it or something.’
He remembered. It was a place on Circular Quay. ‘I wish I had told you then.’ He could hear the sincerity in her voice and it pulled at something inside him. Whatever anger he was still nursing towards her shifted. ‘If it happened now, I would.’
‘You were young,’ he pointed out.
‘Like the child you accused me of being?’
That had been wrong. At the time, she’d felt like a child, but so much of that had been tied up in his guilt. Guilt at sleeping with Lewis’s younger sister. If Lewis had been alive, it would never have happened. Lewis would have killed Dimitrios. He’d adored Annabelle—or ‘Annie’—and had spoken of her often. Dimitrios had been aware that she had a bit of a crush on him, but he’d never planned to do anything to encourage it. So why the hell had he found his way to her door that night? Why had he pulled her into his arms and kissed her until all thoughts of Lewis, death and sadness were obliterated from his mind?
She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I did want to tell you. But then I saw you with that woman and I was—hurt. Jealous.’ She shook her head, not quite meeting his eyes. ‘I know I had no right to feel that way...’
He lifted his hands, cupping her face. ‘Whatever else we were, I was your first lover. It’s natural that you felt something when you saw me with another woman so soon after that night.’
Her lower lip trembled, and he groaned, because he didn’t want her to cry. He needed her not to.
‘I thought I’d be ruining your life because I’d fallen pregnant. Then I thought you might insist on taking the baby away from me. I was hormonal and alone and it was hard to know what to do. But, the more time that passed, the more I felt I’d done the right thing. Until he was born...and he just looked so much like you, Dimitrios. His eyes were exactly like yours.’ Her voice was hoarse, thickened by emotion.
‘I thought about telling you then. I even picked up my phone to call you, but the things you’d said to me that night kept going around and around my head.’
He stiffened, anger at the past making his body grow tense.