None.
She was the one who had worked for it. And he’d unwittingly blighted it for her. Blighted it so comprehensively she’d walked away from all of it. What right did he have to blame her for being tempted to take him down a peg or two, or to show him she was a person to be reckoned with, not a walkover?
Her cry, I didn’t want to want you, made absolute sense. His course was very clear now. He had to move Serena past that conflict, make her understand where he was coming from, convince her it was okay to want him because the wanting was very, very mutual.
He brushed his cheek over the silky softness of her hair, planted a kiss on it. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Serena,’ he assured her. ‘I’m the one who should be apologising for my behaviour. That night at Lyall’s party, I was bored. Bored out of my mind with all the big-noting that was going on. And I was niggled by Lyall’s pretentious act of owning me. His architect. Not the architect.’
‘It made him look good…you being who you are,’ she muttered, a brittle edge to her voice.
‘Not me. The Moretti name. He was riding on it. I expected his fiancée to have a name worth dropping, too, so I was surprised…and amused…when he conceded what you actually did for a living. I didn’t even think of you as a person. I was irritated with Lyall and I needled him about his choice.’
‘Choice!’ Her head snapped up. Her whole body stiffened. ‘You didn’t even pause to find out what that choice entailed—the reputation I’d earned as a topline stylist. You just cast me as some kind of low-life…’
‘Okay! I did do that. And I know ignorance is no excuse for what must have sounded like a snobbish criticism of you. I can only say it had to do with the person I knew Lyall to be, not the person he was marrying. And I’m sorry you overheard what was a mean and unkind act on my part. Sorry you were so hurt by it.’
She moved restively in his hold, still uneasy with his explanation. ‘It was like…who I was inside didn’t matter.’
‘It does,’ he pressed earnestly, knowing this was the core of her hurt. ‘It matters more than anything else. And if I’d met you that night, Serena, those words would never have been spoken.’
She lifted her head and strained against his embrace, looking a pained protest at him when he didn’t loosen his hold. ‘It’s not just me. It’s an attitude. And being a victim of that attitude is not a place I want to go. Ever again.’
His gut twisted at the finality he sensed in those words. He had to fight it. He couldn’t stomach losing.
‘I swear to you it’s not an attitude I live by,’ he stated vehemently. ‘On the whole I take people as I find them. And what I’ve found in you is what I want, Serena.’
He dropped his embrace to cup her face, to keep her gaze locked to his, desperate now to impart the intensity of his feeling for her. ‘You’ve found something you want in me, too. Or we wouldn’t be here now. And it was good. It can still be good. Even better for having all this out in the open.’
‘No. It poisons things.’
‘I won’t let it. Trust me on this.’
‘Trust?’ Her expression of painful conviction wavered.
‘Yes.’ He dropped a promising kiss on her forehead. Then he took her hand, gripping it tightly as he pulled her towards the Cherokee, determined on drawing her into his territory and keeping her there.
‘Where are you taking me?’ It was a fearful cry. Her hand tugged against his.
He stopped to answer her, to use every persuasion he could think of, barely restraining the urge to sweep her off her feet and carry her away with him. Her face held the same wildly vulnerable look he’d seen on it last Sunday morning. It distracted him from his immediate purpose, the compelling need to understand everything about her taking instant priority.
‘What was the problem Michelle called you about last Sunday?’
A flood of heat washed into her pale, strained face. ‘It was Lyall. He’d come demanding to see me. He…he wanted…’
‘To get you back.’
A nod.
‘But you wouldn’t have him.’
A shake of her head.
‘Because of me?’
She took a deep breath, her eyes anxiously searching his, perhaps needing to know how much their connection had meant to him. ‘I couldn’t go back anyway. What I’d had with Lyall was gone,’ she stated with stark simplicity.
‘But against the whole tide of those past events, you did choose to stay with me, be with me, even though you didn’t want to want me,’ he argued, forcefully reminding her of how it had been. ‘That says a lot, Serena. You can’t want to cut off what we have together any more than I do.’
Helpless turmoil in her eyes.
‘It’s too good to give up,’ he asserted strongly, and led off towards the Cherokee again, pulling her with him.
‘It won’t work! It can’t work!’ she wildly insisted. ‘Let me go, Nic!’
‘I can’t undo the past, but be damned if I’ll let it wreck the present or the future,’ he declared with passionate fervour, ignoring her plea for release.
‘But I’ll be in the same place with you as I was with Lyall. Worse. No one’s going to think I’m good enough for Nic Moretti.’
‘Then I’ll tell them why you are. And it sure as hell won’t be in the same terms Lyall Duncan used,’ he retorted fiercely, whipping out the car keys and pressing the remote control button to unlock the doors.
Before Serena could protest again, he had the passenger door open and took intense satisfaction in picking her up bodily and placing her on the seat where she’d be right beside him on the journey he was determined on their taking together.
‘I shouldn’t be letting you do this,’ she agonised as he fastened the seat belt around her.
‘When the going gets rough, the tough get going,’ he recited, and stroked her lightly on the cheek. ‘You’re tough, Serena. You’re like that mythical bird, the phoenix. You keep rising from the ashes. Nothing can put you down for long. And I refuse to accept that you’d be happy if you wimped out on us.’
He closed the door on any further argument, strode around the bonnet to the driver’s side and climbed into his seat, closing his own door with a sense of triumphant achievement.
‘I do have the right to choose,’ she threw at him in one last challenge.