‘Do you remember the pact?’
He stilled. For a full second it was as though his big frame had been snap frozen, and she had the scary sensation of having blundered onto a live mine. For a second his lean, handsome face might have been carved from ice.
Her heart began to tremble as his eyes narrowed on her face with a hard intensity.
‘Pact?’
‘The pact we made.’
His expression didn’t change, but she was so sorry she’d mentioned it. How could she have offered it up for re-inspection in this hostile climate? But he was waiting now, and she felt condemned to plough on.
‘You know,’ she persevered in a breathless voice. ‘When you had to go back to finish your studies at Harvard. The deal-that if we still felt the same way…’ It was so embarrassing now, having to refer to their former feelings. ‘If we thought there was a chance of us still-wanting to-be together, we’d meet in six weeks at the top of the Centrepoint Tower.’
He glanced down at the floor, a sardonic quirk to his mouth as if there were something nasty on the rug, then he looked up, his glittering eyes narrowed. ‘Remind me. What was my part in this deal?’
‘You-you agreed to fly back from Harvard in your mid-semester break.’
He considered her in silence, his eyes veiled, then his lashes drifted down. ‘And your part was…?’
‘Oh, well…’ In truth, from a travel perspective she had always been shamefaced about the lightness of her end of the pact. From a certain angle, it could have looked to outsiders as though her sincerity was above reproach, whereas his…
Her lips dried with discomfort. ‘I-I was to meet you there. Travel down from Bindinong.’
He strolled around to the front of the desk and leaned his big frame on the edge, his arms folded across his powerful chest, brows lifted.
‘All the way from Bindinong?’ he drawled softly, with a mockery that made her insides squirm. ‘Sacramento, I think it’s clear who had the easier end of this deal.’ There was a flash of something she couldn’t interpret in the depths of those black eyes.
She wished she’d never brought it up. Certainly, Bindinong in the Blue Mountains wasn’t that far from Sydney. When she’d lived there with her parents it had only been a ninety-minute train trip. Not quite as far as Harvard. Viewed now from the vantage point of maturity, the whole thing made the younger Lara Meadows look like some dewy-eyed tyrant, willing to put a man through hell to prove himself.
She made a small gesture of appeal. ‘I know, I know it sounds unlikely from this distance, but at the time we both believed…We sincerely felt…Don’t you remember?’ As she tried to interpret his expression she felt herself growing hot. ‘There were good reasons to make sure. You wanted me to go away with you-well, that’s what you said-and I was young. I’d never travelled overseas, away from my parents. I was unsure, understandably, of risking everything for…’
‘For me, apparently,’ he said with a derisive lilt of his eyebrows.
It shook her, that he’d think of it, of her, in that hard way, then she started to see how the pact might have looked through his eyes, and felt all her doubts rise to the surface.
‘And tell me…whose idea was it?’ he continued the ruthless pressure. ‘This-pact?’
He nearly spat the word. His uncharacteristic cynicism gave her a shock. Anyone would think she’d behaved badly. She had a flash of herself as acting like some capricious princess in a mediaeval fairy tale, setting endurance tests for her suitors.
So all right, he had been reluctant at first to agree, but he’d come to appreciate her reservations, and he had agreed. Heavens, who could expect a woman to just toss everything up and plunge into life with a man on just three weeks’ acquaintance, without taking some time to think?
In the end, he’d seen the wisdom of her small delay, and his acceptance of the pact had been as wholehearted and sincere as her own. Well, it had seemed so at the time. She had to keep reminding herself that it had all been a sham on his part. To look at him now, though, you would hardly think so, his expression was so hard and unforgiving.
‘Well?’ he queried.
‘Oh, well…’ What was this, the Spanish Inquisition? She could see by his stern mouth and the set of his handsome jaw that he wasn’t about to admit to remembering it. ‘Look, forget it. Just forget it. This clearly isn’t the time.’
She made a move towards the door, but rocked to a halt when he said, ‘So tell me, Lara Meadows. Did you? Keep your end of the deal?’
There was mockery in his voice and it caught her on the raw. She swung round to face him. His dark eyes were shimmering with a sardonic, enigmatic light.
‘No. No, I didn’t,’ she said, anger welling in her at being mocked for what was, in fact, the tragedy of her life. ‘And neither did you, or you’d have known that. You never had any intention of keeping it, did you?’
Ridiculous, after six years, but it still hurt. Just as well she was over him. Lucky for her she’d long since grown used to the idea that he’d never intended to come back. She’d just been a little diversion, to while away his time in Sydney.
All at once she had the most overwhelming need to leave. Run. Run as fast as she could from the gorgeous ice-man, all the way home, if necessary. Home to Vivi. Home to hug her darling little girl to herself.
All to herself.
But pride, and the need to keep talking, helped her keep her brave front. She gave a breezy wave of her hand. ‘Just as well neither of us took it seriously. That was the deal, after all. No hard feelings on either side if anyone should pull out. Thank goodness we both did, or we’d really have something to regret, wouldn’t we?’
She walked out on a cold, hard laugh, snapping the door to a little too firmly, and stood outside breathing more furiously than an Olympic hurdler, while the implications began to gel. How amused he’d be if he knew of the lengths she’d gone to in preparation for going away with him. If he had even the faintest idea how she’d loved him.
How she’d cried.
That was when she thought of the other thing she should have asked. Having gone so far to open the old wounds, she supposed she might as well know everything. How much worse could it get?
She opened the door again and looked back in. He was standing very still staring down at his files, his face a grim mask.
‘Oh, incidentally, Alessandro,’ she said softly, ‘have you brought your wife with you?’
His head came up and he gazed at her for a long, steady moment, then a gleam shot into his eyes. ‘My wife? I don’t have a wife, carissa.’
It was her turn to stare. Then she realised what he’d said.
‘Larissa,’ she corrected, then with an exasperated gesture, ‘I mean Lara. That’s Lara.’
CHAPTER FOUR
LARA, Alessandro mused, standing under the shower in his hotel room, soaping his chest after a rigorous workout in the hotel gym.
For once he didn’t feel like breaking into song. The interview hadn’t been as satisfying as he’d expected. Using his power to punish a woman, however much she deserved it, hardly felt like the act of an honourable man.
He raised his arms and submitted himself to the jets of water, as if the warm needles coming from all directions could somehow rinse away the jagged feeling that had lodged somewhere just below his throat.
He forced himself to admit that, even with his perfectly justifiable anger, he hadn’t relished hurting her. And strangely, despite the authority of his position as compared to hers, he couldn’t honestly say he’d won the encounter outright.
That moment when she’d admitted her failure to meet him gnawed at him. He wasn’t a fanciful guy by any means, but surely there’d been something in her manner then, that look in her eyes. Again, he canvassed the old possibilities he’d been through a million times, of her having been delayed on that fateful long ago day. As always,
