naturally I believed that your interest in me was genuine.’
‘It is genuine!’ Sev slammed back at her, losing patience with her accusations. ‘We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if it wasn’t. If your only value to me was the fact that you’re Oliver Lawson’s daughter, you wouldn’t even be here now. We would be finished.’
A humourless laugh fell from Amy’s dry lips. ‘We’re finished anyway. You dressed me up like a doll tonight and took me out to humiliate and hurt me.’
‘I did not,’ Sev sliced in stark denial.
‘Oh, yes, you did. You introduced me in a public place to a father who looked at me in disgust, a father I can only be ashamed of,’ she extended tightly, struggling to contain her turbulent emotions. ‘That was information I should have received in private. I deserved better than that kind of treatment, Sev. And what about Oliver’s wife, Cecily?’
‘What about her?’ Sev queried with a bemused frown.
‘You humiliated her as well and, like me, she was an innocent party. Couldn’t you have had some consideration and taken your revenge in a way that was less painful for me and for her? No,’ Amy answered curtly for herself. ‘You wouldn’t have done that because you wanted to be in at the kill and see my father’s face as you exposed him. But that doesn’t excuse you any more than your sister’s hurt excuses you for harming innocent people.’
‘I have not harmed you in any way!’ Sev shot back at her with a growling edge of frustration.
‘Do I look happy to you? Did it ever occur to you that I may have had a dream about my unknown father, a dream in which I had one parent who, if he actually met me, wouldn’t despise me? And did it ever occur to you while you were playing your vengeful games that I could be falling in love with you? In love with a guy who doesn’t actually exist in the real world? A guy you were only pretending to be?’ Amy fired back at him shakily, her voice rising in tune with her distress.
‘You’ve only known me for a couple of weeks,’ Sev parried in scorching dismissal. ‘Nobody falls in love that fast or that easily.’
And he was so confident that he was right in that assumption, she recognised painfully as the colour in her clammy face drained away. But she had fallen for him like a ton of bricks, possibly because she hadn’t loved before, possibly because she had never met a man so attractive before, and she had trusted him instinctively and had let down all her defences. Now she felt gutted and guilty that she had been so susceptible, so weak.
‘I think I hate you and that should tell you a lot about how I feel,’ Amy said tightly. ‘I’ve never hated anyone before. I believe it’s time I went home.’
‘I want you to stay. I want to talk this out,’ Sev fired back at her impatiently.
‘There can be no talking it out. What’s done is done...and you’re not even sorry, which says it all really,’ Amy muttered in a brittle undertone. ‘You don’t understand or accept that what you did to me tonight was cruel and wrong...and that this whole pretence you went through with me was even more dishonest and shameful. Everything was a lie.’
‘No, it wasn’t!’ Sev bit out rawly, his fists clenching. ‘I only concealed what I knew about you when we first met. That was the sole pretence! Everything since then has been one hundred per cent truthful and real.’
‘Sev, you only brought me into your life and kept me there to ensure that I went to that party tonight...how is that not a pretence? How is that real?’
The silence stretched taut as a rubber band stretched too tight.
‘Do I still qualify for a lift home?’ Amy enquired abruptly, standing at the front door, thinking that nothing about Sev had been real. He hadn’t really been a nice guy, blind to the difference in their social status and income. In truth, whatever she had looked like and however she had behaved, Sev had intended to march her out to confront her father with his daughter at that party.
‘Dio mio...’ Sev bit out. ‘What the hell do you think I am?’
‘A devious bastard with about as much decent feeling, compassion and humility as the average rock,’ Amy framed unevenly. ‘Tell me one last thing—are you planning to keep Harley or was that also a