The Secrets She Must Tell - Lucy King Page 0,57

she thought acidly. It wouldn’t do to forget the sex side of things, would it? Or to be careless and ignore the need to protect herself. ‘Yes, well, I have regrets too.’

‘What do you regret?’

‘Everything,’ she said with deliberate bluntness. ‘Our entire relationship is completely wrong.’

He paled. ‘In what way?’

‘In every way,’ she said. ‘Would you have chosen to be with me if it wasn’t for Josh?’

‘That’s a wholly unfair question,’ he said, his jaw tightening as a flash of wariness flitted across his face. ‘Not to mention impossible to answer.’

Which meant no. And only went to prove her point. ‘Right from the beginning I’ve forced you into doing things you can’t possibly have wanted to do.’

‘Such as?’

‘Being a father. Accommodating me and Josh, me in particular. Giving up your evenings. Taking me to bed. The dinner with friends I made you have. Then Paris. The sex. The talking. You name it, I’ve made you do it.’

He looked at her as though she’d come from another planet. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Is it?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Deadly.’

‘I have never done anything even remotely reluctantly in my entire life,’ he said, his steady gaze fixed to hers. ‘If I want to do something, I do it. If I don’t, I don’t. If I’d known about Josh sooner I’d have been right there with you every step of the way. The night you came into my room and took off your top I wanted you so badly I was at the end of my tether anyway. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you again. Why do you think I spent so much time out of the apartment when you and Josh first moved in?’

‘Work?’

‘Not work,’ he said darkly. ‘I spent every evening in the fitness suite trying to obliterate the need, much good that it did me. If you hadn’t come to me that night I would have gone to you. You were just quicker, that’s all.’ He gave his head a quick shake and then rubbed his hands over his face. ‘I didn’t deliberately delay us having dinner with friends, although I will admit to wanting you to myself for a while longer. And I didn’t need to take you with me to Paris. I’ve never taken anyone to Paris. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I didn’t even need to be there myself. I don’t usually. I prefer to stay in the background and let my extremely efficient PR company take care of that side of things.’

She swallowed hard, torn between wanting to believe him and not wanting to believe him. ‘So why did you?’

He looked at her for a moment, as if the question had taken him by surprise. ‘I wanted to show you my hotel,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘I wanted to show you off.’

‘Not for the sex?’

‘We weren’t having it then. But I admit there may have been an element of that too. It had been a while.’

‘Why didn’t you call me?’

‘When?’

‘At any point over the last forty-eight hours. It occurred to me that you might be busy thinking about your other family.’

‘I wasn’t. I spent the hours I wasn’t in meetings processing the grief for my father that was interrupted when I found that certificate. And then thinking about what you said, how right you were and trying to figure it all out in my head. Would you have answered if I had called?’

‘Possibly not,’ she had to admit.

He leaned forwards and peered at her closely, confusion swirling in the depths of his eyes, a deep frown creasing his forehead. ‘What’s going on, Georgie? Where is all this coming from?’

Wasn’t it obvious? It was all coming from him. From their situation. From his lack of trust and her crushing disappointment that he wasn’t the man she’d desperately wanted him to be. From the realisation that they had no relationship outside parenting Josh and never would. From his shattering of her heart and the subsequent fracturing of her dreams.

Or was it?

Finn was still staring at her, his gaze clear and unwavering, as if he was trying to see into her soul, his presence about the only solid thing she could fix on. And through the fog of nothingness in her head, there was a spark of...something.

Light.

Clarity.

A seed of doubt planted itself in her head, its roots spreading fast and wide. That tiny voice of concern grew louder. And as fragments of what Finn had been saying spun through her thoughts, solidifying, gaining credence, gaining volume, those doubts