And he felt he deserved every single one of them. Because that questioning, that self-doubt, wasn’t that what he’d done to her that first time? If he’d known what it had been like for her he never would have taken her innocence, never would have allowed her back into his life. Because this? This was pure hell.
So he took his punishment, knowing that he fully deserved it. Every single sharp twist of the knife, he would take a million times over because he had done worse to her.
And that was why, no matter how much he wanted to go to her, to beg her to take him back, to beg to spend each and every day seeking to make up for his awful actions, to be better, to do better, he would not. Because he would never be worthy of her.
He reached the corner of the bar, where a barman jumped to attention, knowing without Roman even having to ask for the bottle of vodka he’d appeared almost nightly to demand, before disappearing to his lair above the club.
The bottle appeared on the counter top and Roman swept it up and stalked towards the lift in the back corner of the room. But in his mind he was not holding the slippery condensation-covered chilled bottle, but the warm, slim crook of Ella’s elbow, his palm heated despite the cool feel of the glass. As he swept his key card over the electronic plate he followed a ghost into the lift, unconsciously making space for the image of her with him.
Roman caught sight of the image of his reflection in the mirrored surface, barely meeting his own gaze. He grimly acknowledged that he looked like hell, the dark sweeps under his eyes speaking to the fact that he’d not been able to sleep fully through the night since he’d left her bed and, in all likelihood, wouldn’t ever again.
The only thing that soothed the ache was that he’d provided for them both—Ella and their child. They would never want for anything. Certainly not for a husband or father who wasn’t good enough, who wasn’t worthy enough.
Was that what his mind had kept hidden from itself? he wondered. All these years and all that determination for vengeance. Had it hidden…this? These feelings and this fear he’d never voiced before he’d met Ella. Never needing to account for his actions or his behaviour to anyone before now.
He cursed and, rather than waiting to cross the distance of his living area to find a glass, unscrewed the lid of the bottle of zubrowka and raised it to his lips, anticipating the taste of the ice-cool alcohol on his tongue. But, before he could take a sip, he stopped, his hand hovering before his mouth, holding the bottle but not moving.
Ella sat on his sofa, encased in the red cape he had bought her, and he wondered whether he had finally lost all sense. Because surely his twisted mind had conjured her from his thoughts and memories. Surely she was not sitting there, her beautiful shapely legs crossed, her hands placed in her lap, her level gaze one that could easily be mistaken for serenity.
But he knew, the moment he took a breath, that she was real because her scent had filled the air of his apartment. A delicious taste of something almost like orange blossom, mint and memories.
Everything in him became alert, the hair at his nape raising slightly as his first fearful thought careened through him.
‘The baby?’
‘Is fine.’
He took a moment for her assurance to sink in, to smooth out the erratic pulse of his heart, but it didn’t work. He was still fired with adrenaline as if under threat, as if the ground was shifting beneath his feet. She looked incredible. Everything he’d ever wanted, right there, within touching distance, and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
‘Then we have nothing to discuss,’ he growled as he stalked past her to the kitchenette. ‘You can let yourself out.’
‘I could. But I won’t.’
He hoped to high heaven that she didn’t see the way his fingers shook as he reached for the glass he would have easily forgone just moments earlier. He felt a growl rising in the back of his throat, the need to lash out and release some, if not all, of this pent-up fury he felt rising in his chest. The fury of pain, of hurt, of loss.
All of it he swallowed as he forced himself to turn around and look towards his…well…if she was here with the divorce papers then he couldn’t really call her his wife any more. Landing on that explanation for her appearance here in his apartment, a cold fist so fierce it burned struck his heart. That was it. That was why. It could only ever be that.
‘You could have sent the papers to my lawyers. This,’ he said with a sweep of his arm and the bottle he still held, ‘is unnecessary.’
‘On the contrary. I find it deeply necessary.’
‘If there is something you want to contest—?’
‘And if I wanted to contest the whole thing?’
Roman reared back as if slapped. ‘I don’t…’
‘It’s not often that you are lost for words, Roman.’
He stared at her, unsure what she was saying, unsure as to what was happening.
‘What game are you playing?’ he demanded.
She cocked her head to one side. ‘The one you apparently decided we were playing.’
‘Would you stop speaking in riddles!’
That his anger apparently caused her only to smile was deeply unsettling.
‘I think that might be the first real and honest reaction to this whole damn thing since you took me to the restaurant. A tad ironic, but real at least.’
Roman ground his teeth together so hard he thought he might have heard something crack. For here she was again. The beautiful, proud, determined fury that he had met here six months ago. The woman who had seduced as much as been seduced. The woman who had become the mother of his child
