“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m over it.”
Something Margot had said came to Skye’s mind, out of nowhere. “Your aunt says you’re not.”
“My aunt says a lot of things,” he muttered.
“She says you and Clare still love one another.”
A muscle throbbed low in his jaw. “We’ll always love one another on some level.”
Skye’s blood felt very icy in her veins. “I see.”
“She’s the first woman I ever loved. The only woman I ever intended to marry.”
Skye’s heart crackled.
“But we are not still in love. I couldn’t love her after the lies she told me. If she’d been honest, I might have been able to forgive her, but to know she was leaving our bed and going to his—,” Matthieu shook his head angrily. “It is the deception I cannot forgive.”
Sympathy ran through Skye, but something else, too. Jealousy. This other woman knew so much about Matthieu, she understood all parts of him, she understood his pain and past and had known his family intimately. Skye would never be that to Matthieu. And even though he was opening up to her now, it was only titbits, the tiny pieces he didn’t mind sharing.
“Why did you let everyone keep thinking you’d done the wrong thing?”
“Because even then I cared about her too much to let her suffer.”
Skye frowned. “So you’re taking the fall to protect her?”
“We broke up. It’s no one else’s business as to why.”
“But everyone blames you.”
“And maybe they should. She cheated, but I did ignore her. I was working on a new project, I was distracted—,”
“Did she talk to you about how she felt?”
“No,” he grimaced. “It came out of the blue.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t said anything—even to your own family.”
“You have to remember, she’s a family friend. My grandparents adore her. I didn’t want to damage their relationship.”
“Wow,” Skye shook her head sympathetically. “That’s really thoughtful of you.”
“The story was in the papers; everyone had made up their mind. I cheated. We’d broken up, the wedding was off. It would have been undignified to correct the record. Besides, I did…move on…with haste. The night after we broke up, I slept with someone else.” He frowned. “I’m not proud of that. Looking back, I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to prove something to myself as well,” he shook his head. “Those photos ran, and my alleged affair became the story.”
Skye reached out, putting her hand on his. “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. It’s ancient history. My aunt is very, very wrong. I would never go back to Clare, not for anything. I couldn’t trust her again.” Skye’s heart wobbled. That wasn’t the same as not loving Clare.
“She might be wrong about you, perhaps, but what about Clare?”
“So far as I know, she’s happy.”
“Your aunt—,”
He laughed now, a genuine laugh. “My aunt is a complete bitch.” His eyes sobered, his expression growing suddenly taut. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with her. Believe me, I will make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“I can handle it,” Skye said, though his sharply protective promise did funny things to her insides. “It’s what you’re paying me for, remember?” She added defiantly, because there was a risk to both of them of forgetting the commercial nature of their arrangement.