She nodded, her eyes misty, remembering being whisked into a world of wonder, showered by his passionate attentions. A world where she was wined, dined, flattered and seduced by his dynamic personality and fiery devotion to her sexual pleasure. Her initial insecurity—her doubts that she was just a sexual challenge to him or that she was allowing herself to be overwhelmed by his wealth—was swiftly overridden by the strength of her feelings.
‘I arrogantly assumed that I alone had the power to make you completely happy. And then, when I came here, I continued to arrogantly assume that I knew you better than you knew yourself.’ His glance encompassed the cosy room. ‘But having seen your work…the way you’re painting…I can see that you’ve fulfilled yourself here in a way that you never managed to do during our time together, even with all the material advantages I could provide. I have to admire and respect what you’ve done. Maybe you’re right after all, about this being where you really belong. Maybe this is the price I have to pay for my foolish arrogance—freeing you to decide my happiness.’
She felt his hope like a brand on her heart. ‘You don’t have to do it this way.’
His eyes were implacably steady as he stood up, drawing her to her feet. ‘I do, and one day I hope you’ll understand why.’ He felt in his pocket. ‘Here, I want you to have this.’ Something smooth and heavy slipped into her palm. His silver cigarette lighter.
‘A souvenir of your flying visit?’ She splashed him with the acid of her disappointment.
His bruised face welcomed the evidence of her fighting spirit. ‘No, hopefully something to remind you of what you’re missing.’
As if she would need any reminding! She looked down. Each moment she spent with him, some blurred detail from those two years slipped into sharper focus.
‘I gave this to you,’ she said, recalling, her voice softening as she re-read the engraving. No wonder the weight of it had felt familiar the night he had washed up in the storm. ‘You admired it at a jewellery exhibition, but you said it was ridiculous to own a cigarette lighter when you’d given up smoking in your teens. But I could see that you loved it, so I bought it for your birthday.’ The money hadn’t been what attracted her to him, but there were certain undeniable advantages to being the wife of a rich man!
‘Along with an exquisite candelabra so I’d have plenty of cause to use it with a socially acceptable flourish,’ he finished with a deep chuckle.
Her fingers uncurled reluctantly. ‘I can’t take this.’
‘The giver was always more important to me than the gift. They’re a matched set as far as I’m concerned,’ he said softly, ‘that I hope will soon be restored to me intact. You never did explain to me what the words you had engraved meant,’ he added. ‘I guessed they were a quote of some kind, but I could never track down the reference—it’s certainly not from Shakespeare.’
She had teased and tantalised him with her secret knowledge, knowing that he delighted in the challenge, knowing that one day, when the time was ripe, she would tell him what she had then been too insecure to put into words, half-appalled by the intensity of her own feelings.
Now was her chance. Nina threw back her head proudly and looked at him with clear green eyes. ‘It’s Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.” It means that you’re my love—the foreign part of myself. An indivisible part.’
Her bold gamble paid off, but only briefly. His face tautened with a triumphant, predatory hunger. His hands reached for her, then just before contact, clenched into furious fists of self-denial that he forced back down to his sides.
‘Ah, the same man who said that “Art is a jealous mistress”,’ he quoted shakily, his voice growing progressively steadier with each word as he mastered his emotions. ‘No wonder you thought he was an appropriate source of wisdom.’
That’s all he had to say! She makes a passionate declaration of love and he flips a breezy quote back at her?
‘Ryan—’
‘Don’t, Nina,’ he cautioned her roughly. ‘This isn’t only a matter of whether we love each other. Sometimes love just isn’t enough.’ He turned aside from her frown. ‘Talking of art—I do want something from you in exchange for borrowing my lighter.’