It sent shivers down her spine.
Fragments of the last time they’d seen each other were like sharp glass, cutting through her equilibrium. The way he’d refused to listen to her, refused to let her even try to explain. The way he’d seen only the worst in her actions.
Time away from him had dragged anger towards bewilderment. How dared he think he’d loved her when he’d found it so easy to turn his back and walk away? No, push her away even as she’d been begging to stay.
‘What are you doing here?’ She spoke with a steely determination that replicated his the last time they’d spoken.
‘I went to see Wyndham last night. You weren’t there.’
Mortification at having lost her job—and having this man discover the fact—caused her stomach to flip. She lowered her gaze, but couldn’t hide the bright red that bloomed in her cheeks.
‘He fired you.’
Her eyes flared wide; but what was the point in lying? Spurred on to the defensive, she snapped sarcastically, ‘Did he? I hadn’t realised.’
A muscle jerked in Rio’s cheek. Her eyes dropped to it of their own accord.
‘I do not think he can fire you because you took a week off work.’
‘That’s not why—’
‘There are laws to protect employees,’ he said quietly, overriding her explanation.
She nodded, moving around him, skirting him at a safe distance, lifting the coffee cup out from the machine. He might be a guest in her home—albeit an uninvited one—but she was desperate for food and energy. She lifted the cup and inhaled its delicious scent gratefully.
‘I know that. But...’ She lifted her slender shoulders, unconscious of the way her robe gaped a little at the chest. ‘I like him too much to fight it. I couldn’t work for him now anyway. Not knowing what I’d helped orchestrate.’
Rio’s eyes were watchful. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but you had no idea Cressida was going to get married.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She bit down on her lip and forced herself to meet his gaze. It would be over soon. ‘I let her pay me to impersonate her. I lied to Art—a man I care for and admire beyond words. I lied to you, Rio. To you, the man I loved. And I’m lying to my parents now—it would kill them if they knew I’d been frogmarched out of the building by Security. That I’d been fired.’
Mortification crept along her skin at the surreal indignity she’d suffered. Strangely, she saw a corresponding anger in his expression. Had he come here to enjoy her failure? To show her how deserving she was of such humiliation?
‘In any event,’ she said quietly, ‘none of that is your concern.’
He lifted his lip in a small flicker of a smile.
‘Isn’t it?’
His eyes were drawn to her face as if by an invisible magnet. He stared at her for so long that she shifted self-consciously, moving away from the coffee machine to the other side of the kitchen. She propped herself against the door, pretending fascination with the rim of her coffee cup.
‘I didn’t have your address,’ he said quietly.
The sentence was strange. Discordant.
‘The fact you’re here disputes that,’ she pointed out, sipping her coffee so fast she burned her throat a little.
He ignored the comment. ‘Nor did I have your phone number. When you left the island—’
‘After you ordered me to leave,’ she felt obliged to remind him.
‘I seem to remember giving you the option to remain,’ he said, and the words were heavy with an emotion she couldn’t identify. Anger? Annoyance? Irritation?
‘As your paid lover?’ she muttered, her stomach squeezing painfully at the recollection.
To her embarrassment, more tears drenched her eyes. She dug the nails of one hand into her palm, refusing to let them fall. Refusing to let him see her sadness.
‘I was very angry,’ he said, but it was not an apology and she noticed that.