An Inheritance of Shame(39)
‘You started thinking what?’ he asked brusquely.
Her teeth sank in deeper to her lip and he saw cloud-coloured shadows in her eyes, hiding the true emotion underneath. ‘I started thinking that maybe I never gave you a chance,’ she whispered.
‘A chance? A chance for what?’
‘To love me.’
The words seemed to hang in the air between them, a hope, a challenge. A chance to love her.
What the hell was he supposed to do with that? ‘Lucia…’
‘I’m not asking you to love me,’ she said quickly. ‘Not just like that. But…but if you do actually want to be with me, then I won’t take some affair, some kind of sordid arrangement. If you want to be with me, then you be with me. You get to know me again, you ask me out on a date.’
‘I did ask you on a date,’ he objected, nettled. ‘I asked you out to dinner at a proper restaurant.’
‘In order to convince me that I don’t love you! What was behind that, Angelo? Did you think if I decided I didn’t love you, I’d think desire was enough and I’d hop into bed with you? Is that how your twisted mind works?’ She spoke with an edge but also with humour, and he actually blushed.
Yes, it appeared that was how his twisted mind worked.
‘Love complicates things,’ he said defensively. ‘It’s messy.’ And scary. And awful. And loving people usually meant they didn’t love you back. They didn’t love you at all.
‘You think I don’t know that?’ she answered, still with the edge and the humour. ‘My life would have been a whole lot simpler, a lot cleaner, if I’d never loved you.’
He bristled instinctively. ‘So don’t.’
‘I’ve tried.’ She met his gaze squarely, her eyes blazing truth. ‘But I can’t stop, because I love you too much.’
Her words made him breathless, as if he’d been punched in the gut. He was quite literally winded. ‘So why are you telling me this now?’ he asked after a moment, when he trusted his voice. ‘When you’ve been denying it all along?’
‘Because I decided you should know. I want you to know. I’m tired of pretending I’ve never cared about you, when I do. So very much.’ She drew a deep breath and he heard how it shuddered through her. She’d laid everything out there for him, and God help him but he had no idea what to do with it. What to say. What he wanted.
Her.
‘So now it’s your turn,’ she said, and gazed at him with a fragile pride, a tremulous determination. ‘You have to decide what you want, Angelo. If you just want sex, find someone else. If you want a fling or an affair, don’t look at me.’ She let out another breath, threw her shoulders back. Angelo felt a surge of admiration for this woman who was so strong, so proud, so brave. She’d endured so much already, and yet she remained unbowed. ‘But if you want something more, something real…if you want to give me—us—a chance, then…’ She smiled, barely. ‘You know where to find me.’
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS AMAZING how liberating telling the truth could be. After her painful admission to Angelo last night, Lucia had expected to feel raw, exposed. Uncomfortable, at least, from revealing so much. She hadn’t denied or dissembled, hadn’t thrown the truth in his face as a defensive ploy. No, she’d given it to him. Presented it to him like a gift, and it was now his to do with as he wished.
The realisation made her feel buoyant. She had nothing more to hide, and it gave her a giddy sense of both relief and joy. Of course she wondered just what he intended to do with her gift, but she refused to let herself become mired in fear or doubt. For the first time her love for Angelo didn’t feel like a weakness, a burden to bear. It felt like a strength.
Several chambermaids were huddled in the staff locker room when she arrived at the hotel for work the next morning. They broke apart as soon as they saw her, and Lucia felt a ripple of unease at their suddenly hushed whispers, their averted gazes. Emilia was the only one to look at her directly, and the expression on her face was one of savage jealousy, eyes narrowed and glittering, lips thin and pursed.
‘Ciao,’ Lucia said with an uncertain smile. ‘Come va?’
‘Look.’ Maria took her by the elbow and brought her over to a table on the side of the room; a huge bouquet of flowers rested on it. ‘For you.’