‘Helena...’
‘We’re back to calling me Helena, are we?’ Another even shorter burst of humourless laughter. ‘Well, if that doesn’t answer my question, nothing will. But I do have one more question,’ she added before he could interject. ‘When you hired me, was it your sole intention to seduce me, make me fall for you again and then dump me?’
If she hadn’t been watching Theo so closely she might have missed the slight blanching of his features. The coldness that had been creeping through her veins throughout this whole wretched conversation suddenly spread into every cell of her body.
‘That’s what this has all been about, hasn’t it?’ she whispered when she managed to unfreeze her vocal cords. ‘Revenge for me having the temerity to jilt you.’
There was nothing subtle about his wince this time.
Rubbing her arms madly to try and inject some warmth into them, she stared at his now unreadable face. ‘I knew you had an agenda but I thought it was to watch me squirm while I designed the house we had once planned to live in together. I thought you wanted me to have a taste of everything I threw away, but it was more than that, wasn’t it?’
Please, she prayed, don’t let it be true. Please, don’t let it be true.
‘Yes.’
That one word was enough to make her stomach plummet to the floor.
‘Yes?’ she echoed.
Dropping his head, he kneaded his forehead with both hands. Then he looked back up. His eyes held hers as he steadily said, ‘Yes. Everything you said is correct. I brought you back here for revenge. I wanted to seduce you into falling in love with me again, display you on my arm to the world and then dump you.’
Her head swimming, she rubbed her arms even harder. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so cold. ‘I never realised you hated me so much.’
‘I thought I hated you.’ His features were stark. ‘One minute we were going to marry, the next you were gone. You cut me out of your life like I was nothing, like I’d never meant anything to you.’
‘And you didn’t cut me out of yours?’ Anger rose like a snake inside her. ‘You didn’t call me once. You were in another woman’s bed within weeks. While I was going out of my mind missing you, you were getting on with your life like I’d never been a part of it. You go to all this trouble for your petty revenge and for what? You never loved me. How could you have loved me if you were happy to sleep with other women so soon after I’d left? Dear God, I couldn’t even bring myself to kiss another man, not in all the years since I left you.’
‘You think I moved on?’ There was anguish in the gravelly tones. ‘I never moved on. God knows I tried but it was impossible. You were like a ghost in my head.’
‘And this is your exorcism?’ She couldn’t believe how blind she’d been, how stupid she’d been. ‘Make me fall in love with you again and then drop me from a great height for better impact?’
His throat moved. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. I’ve been cruel...’
‘That’s one way of putting it. Life’s just one big game to you, isn’t it?’ She was shaking so hard that when she got to her feet and put her hands on the table, the tremors shook it. ‘I thought you’d changed but you’re still the same spoilt bastard you always were. Everything has to be your way and you hate losing at anything. Well, congratulations. You’ve won!’
‘I have won nothing,’ he bit back, a spark of anger rising in his voice and glowing in his eyes. ‘I know I deserve your anger but you leaving me...it destroyed me. You weren’t marrying a statue. You were marrying a man who loved you and wanted only to make you happy. You threw that away, Helena. Not me. And for what?’ He shook his head in despair. ‘All I see is a lonely existence with a computer for company when there is so much more to you...’
‘Don’t you dare think I want advice on how to live my life from a charlatan like you,’ she spat.
Theo stared at her and felt his thimble of anger die. Helena was as unreachable as she’d been the day she jilted him.
There was far more than humiliation and rage flowing from her. There was pain there too. A lot of pain. And he was the cause of it.
‘I promise you cannot hate me more than I hate myself,’ he said bleakly.
‘Hate doesn’t begin to describe how I feel. You set out to seduce me and make me fall for you just so you could publicly dump me!’ There was a flash of confusion in her dark eyes. ‘Why are you ending things like this? Where’s the grand finale you planned? You had me where you wanted me. You could have strung me along a few more days, taken me to a couple more high-profile places and really got your pound of flesh. Did you get a fit of conscience? Or did you figure out that my love for you was punishment enough?’
‘Helena—’
‘Don’t ever speak my name again,’ she suddenly screamed, her hands flying to her ears. ‘Everything has been one big fat lie. You wanted to hurt me and you’ve succeeded, more than you could ever know. You’ve also reassured me that I did exactly the right thing in not marrying you, you selfish, narcissistic bastard!’
Unable to look at him or breathe the same air as him a second longer, Helena turned on her heel and fled. She needed to get as far away from Theo as quickly as she could and to hell with dignity and pride.
Running as fast as her legs would carry her, she soon left the perimeter of the lodge and the safety of its nightlights and was
