Sinful Rapture (The Rapture #2)(23)

“How long?” she husked.

He frowned. “What?”

Her cognac eyes glittered with tears she refused to shed. “How long have you known?”

He flinched. Christ. It felt as if someone was twisting a knife in his gut.

Or maybe he was just wishing he could be stabbed.

It would be less painful.

“Since the two of you became engaged.” He forced himself to admit the truth.

There would be no more lies.

She flinched, her hand pressed to her chest. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“Would you have believed me?” he demanded. “Or would you have assumed I was just trying to cause trouble?”

Her jaw clenched, revealing she was in no mood to accept his perfectly reasonable explanation.

“So you let me make a fool of myself for months?”

Liam glanced toward the silent Luc.

“It was your family’s place to make sure your fiancé was worthy of you,” he said.

Luc grimaced. “He’s right. I failed you.”

“This has nothing to do with you.” Holly waved a silencing hand toward her brother, unconsciously looking as imperious as Vigo as she faced Liam with her chin high and her pale face hard with a stubborn expression. “How did you get the file?” she demanded of Liam.

He shrugged. “I hired a private investigator.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

She frowned, but she didn’t try to pretend as if she didn’t realize he’d been fiercely determined to lure her away from Ted from the beginning.

“You just said you didn’t use the file because you didn’t think that I would believe you.”

“I said I didn’t intend to show it to you,” he clarified, his hand lifting to touch her, only to be yanked back when she took a sharp step away. Shit. He flinched, regret slicing through him like a dagger. “But I’d hoped that the bastard would grow some balls and do the right thing. When he didn’t, I paid him a visit and warned him that if he didn’t confess the truth I was handing the file over to his father.”

Holly frowned. “Why would you send it to his father?”

Liam arched a startled brow. Hell, had Holly not realized why she’d been chosen as Ted’s bride?

He swallowed a curse. As if he needed to be the bearer of even more bad news.

“Theodore the Senior has been obnoxiously obsessed with his desire to climb the social ladder,” Liam grudgingly revealed. “His son is well aware he would be disinherited if he showed up for Sunday dinner with a woman who has nothing to offer the Wentworth clan beyond her obvious fertility.”

Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, pain darkening her eyes as she abruptly turned to pace toward the glass wall.

“God.”

“Holly, please,” he husked, not sure what he was pleading for.

Understanding. Forgiveness. A second chance.

“You let me get into my wedding dress and wait with two hundred guests for a groom who was never going to show up.” She slowly turned to reveal her accusing expression. “Do you know how embarrassing that was?”

Liam grimaced. “I truly thought he would call off the wedding, princess. I never dreamed he would be enough of a bastard to simply not show up.”

A sharp, humorless laugh was wrenched from her throat. “What is it with me?” she demanded, her voice thick with tears. “Is there any man who isn’t going to betray me?”

Liam recoiled, feeling as if he’d taken a physical blow. “I never betrayed you.”

The cognac eyes blazed with fury. “You let me be publically humiliated and then you swooped in like some knight in shining armor and convinced me you genuinely cared.”

Hell. When she put it like that…

“I do care,” he rasped. “I love you.”

She made a sound of disgust, heading toward the elevator. “If that’s your idea of love, you can keep it.”

“Holly.”

She stabbed the button that opened the steel doors. Entering the elevator, she turned to send him a warning glare.

“Just stay away from me.”

Liam was in instant pursuit. He understood her need to get away from him, but she was in no condition to be on her own.

Not when she was so upset.

But he’d barely managed more than two steps when his arm was being grabbed in a painful grip.

“Let her go,” Luc commanded.

Liam sent his companion a death glare. “Fuck that.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion,” Luc warned, his fingers digging into Liam’s arm with enough force to leave bruises.

He hissed as the elevator doors closed, whisking Holly away from him.

“Damn you,” he snarled. “She needs me.”

“Right now she needs some time to cool down and think clearly,” Luc warned.

He was right.

Holly was too hurt to listen to his frantic justifications.

That didn’t, however, make it any easier to let her walk away.

“You just want to keep us apart,” he accused the man who was looking at him as if sizing him up for a coffin.

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t want to protect my sister?”

“I’m not the one you need to protect her from,” Liam pointed out in rough tones.