Taken aback by that attack, Gaetano stared back at her with stunned intensity. ‘Back up a minute...where is this coming from?’
‘I heard you talking to Dario in your office.’
His brows pleated. ‘Dario hasn’t been in my office since yesterday.’
‘So?’Lara interrupted aggressively, brows raised, mouth compressed. ‘You think you’re the only one around here who can pride themselves on their acting ability?’
‘You mean you’ve been sitting on these crazy assumptions of yours sinceyesterday?’ Gaetano demanded incredulously. ‘All these nasty suspicions were going on below the surface and I had no blasted idea?’
The thundering annoyance in his raised voice only provoked a shrug of Lara’s slight shoulder. ‘Not so nice, is it, when you’re not the one in the know?’ she quipped.
‘Are you aware of that saying that eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves?’ Gaetano asked grimly as he slid free of his jacket and yanked loose his tie to toss them back into the bedroom.
‘Well, I heard the truth.’
‘If you’d stayed long enough to hear the truth, you wouldn’t be attacking me now!’ Gaetano blitzed back with unhidden annoyance. ‘And as you didn’t stay, you didn’t hear the whole conversation and went away with completely thewrongimpression of what I was talking about.’
Lara shrugged another shoulder, her face tense. ‘Of course, you’re going to say something like that in circumstances like this. You want to put a lid on this argument before the party. You’re going to make some very smooth and practised explanation and try to hang me out to dry and convince me that I didn’t hear what I heard. I know how you operate.’
‘There are some definite markers requiring further exploration in that speech,bambola—’
‘Don’t call me that now as if you’re fond of me!’ Lara practically spat at him in her rage. What was infuriating her most was that the angrier she became, the cooler and calmer Gaetano seemed to be.
‘You don’t think that I could possiblybefond of you?Dio mio.Evidently, no matter how smooth and practised you believe me to be, I seem to have failed utterly to impress you with my ability to be truthful and sincere.’
‘Ha!’ Lara snapped, unimpressed, as she pushed past him to return to the bedroom, stalking in her high heels. ‘Back in England, you tied me into knots with your cleverly chosen words and I believed you every step of the way...so much for that!’
‘And so much for your perception and self-belief,’ Gaetano traded with sardonic clarity.
Hands on hips, Lara spun back to him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? You implied that you regretted our marriage breakdown and that you wanted us to be a couple again.’
‘As far as it goes, that was true. I knew that I had to bring Freddy back to Mosvakia and I didn’t want to fight you through the courts for custody of him. I was determined not to frighten or intimidate you with threats of legal action.’
‘I could have coped!’ Lara slung back at him with determination.
‘You didn’t deserve that. You’re a brilliant mother but Freddy is the heir to the throne, and I couldn’t leave him with you in the UK. He needs to grow up here and learn about who he is. That’s my duty: to do what’s best for the Crown, regardless of how fair or unfair it is,’ Gaetano breathed in a raw undertone. ‘Freddy belongs with youandme and you belong with me as well. We’re together. We’re a family. No way was I prepared to fight you in court and threaten to take him away from you. He needs you every bit as much as he needs me.’
‘So you lied to me by letting me believe that it wasmeyou wanted back more than Freddy because you guessed that that would be a winning proposal.’
‘Yes,’ Gaetano conceded with none of her drama. ‘But lying is a harsh description of what I did to get you both back.’
‘Sorry if I offended!’
‘I had no idea what my feelings for you were at the time,’ Gaetano disconcerted her by admitting. ‘I knew that I was still hugely attracted to you the instant I saw you again, but I was still at war with what happened when we fell in love two years ago.’
‘At war?’ she queried with a frown of incomprehension.
‘You caused that war, Lara,’ Gaetano told her. ‘When you walked out and disappeared on me, I couldn’t believe or accept that wehadloved each other. People who love each other don’t usually lose faith in each other that suddenly.’
Lara lost colour. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes, you do. You just don’t want to hear it,’ Gaetano incised gravely. ‘When you walked out, it made me doubt my feelings for you. The way I saw it, if you could walk away that easily you had never had true feelings for me. That fast I told myself that I’d never been in love with you even to begin with.’
‘Two years ago I thought you regretted our marriage. I thought leaving and disappearing was the kindest thing I could do!’ Lara shot back at him shakily, all her emotions swelling inside her tight chest.
‘That may be true but that’s not how it affected me. It wrecked meandthe trust I had in you. Don’t tell me that I didn’t feel what I felt,’ Gaetano warned her very seriously. ‘You’re not the only one of us who got badly hurt.’
Lara was trembling and thinking that wasn’t it just typical that she confronted Gaetano and all of a sudden he was turning everything round and blaming her for walking out on him in the first place.