He had forced her into coming with him. Threatened her with the loss of her child.
That was who he was. A man who had never known one of his parents and had suffered for it, and yet had thrown himself wholeheartedly into pressuring the only parent his own son had ever known into doing as he wished. And more, making her believe that he would take the child away from her.
Dirt into dirt. Dirt forever, staining him no matter how exquisitely he dressed these days. Dirt was who he was.
The distance between them seemed far more vast and unconquerable than simply the span of his office floor.
He wished that he’d done something on one of those torturous nights when he’d lain awake, holding her in his arms and wondering how he would keep from breaking. He wished he’d simply turned, set his mouth against her skin, and let it happen.
Where would they be now?
But of course he hadn’t done it. Pascal preferred to armor everything, especially if it would have been better to cherish it. If there was a gift that could be given, he could be counted upon to break it first. To make it into a challenge instead.
Because going to one war or another was all he knew how to do.
That and cover any good thing he found in his own brand of dirt and kick it around a few times, just for good measure.
If he was any kind of man at all, he would fall to his knees here and now, and beg her the way he’d told her she would beg him.
If he was something more than a grim monument to a whole life spent avenging himself on a man who stoutly refused to care one way or the other, he would have thanked her.
Loved her. Cherished her.
Just like the vows he’d made himself, there in the only place on this planet where he’d ever briefly toyed with the idea that he could be more than just an angry man. A good one, say. Or simply…whole.
But he couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t make himself do it.
“I did it because that is who I am,” he told her, and his voice sounded like the old man he would become. Bitter. Old. Calcified by his own grim march toward the darkness. “I seek my own ends, Cecilia. Always. I know no other way.”
She sucked in a shocked sort of breath as if he’d punched her, so he kept going.
“Nothing and no one is safe,” he growled. “I will use you. I will use our child. I will use anything and everything if it serves my purpose. Did you expect something else of a man who threatened you as I have?”
And he braced himself for tears. Temper. It was one thing to stand and deliver his own character assassination. It would be something else again to hear her do it. But he told himself he was prepared.
Because it wasn’t as if, no matter what she said, it wouldn’t be the truth. She took a few steps toward him, and then stopped, almost as if she hadn’t meant to move. He wondered, almost idly, if she would strike him. If he would let her.
But she didn’t raise her hands. Instead, Cecilia studied him, for the span of a long, hard breath. Then another.
She took another step toward him, and he couldn’t help himself. He could only admire how quickly and easily she had taken to his new role of hers, however little she’d enjoyed her time in Rome. Even in a temper, as today, she had dressed from the wardrobe he’d provided her. Her honey-colored hair was twisted back into an effortless chignon. It only emphasized her unusual eyes. She wore a wool dress that hugged her lithe curves and a pair of boots in butter-soft leather. She looked simple, yet elegant. She always had.
The only difference now was that the clothes she wore enhanced what was already there, in a way the ragged, torn clothes she’d worn in her role as a cleaner never could.
It was due to his own arrogance that he’d ever imagined she was within his reach.
Accordingly, he stood where he was, ready for anything she might throw at him.
“That’s a dark picture you paint,” was all she said. “Of a dark and remorseless man, incapable of changing himself for the better.”
He couldn’t read her expression. Or her voice. He could feel his pulse, rocketing through him too hard. Too fast. “It is an accurate portrait.”
“You say that as if I did not already know exactly who you were, Pascal.”
His lips thinned at that. “Then I should not have to tell you these things. But I will.” He told himself his throat was not dry. He was not too tense. That none of those things were happening to him, because he should have been perfectly calm. “If I were you, Cecilia, I would go.”
“Go?”