breath as he touched her hip and uttered a vicious oath as he examined the slightly swollen area beginning to show the first tinges of a nasty bruise. ‘Gianna?’
‘I came into contact with a vanity unit in the powder room.’
His eyes hardened.
‘She didn’t like what I had to say.’
‘And that was?’
Gianna gave him a condensed version, watching as his expression assumed pitiless disregard for the woman who’d sought to destroy his marriage.
‘You would have carried through with your threat?’
Her eyes never wavered from his own. ‘Not without informing you of my intention. But, yes,’ she indicated firmly. ‘Sierra’s lies and manipulative behaviour have caused enough damage.’
So they had. Damage he’d attempted to repair, with little success.
To believe Gianna had sought to discover the truth for herself and confronted Sierra with a litany of fact almost undid him.
To have gone to such lengths meant she cared, and with care there was the hope he’d regain her trust.
Relief lightened his heart as he closed the water dial, picked up a towel and dried the moisture from her body before tending to his own.
He removed two towelling robes, helped her into one before selecting another for himself.
With considerable care he took hold of her hand and lifted it to his lips, his eyes dark and unfathomable. ‘You should never have allowed yourself to be alone with her.’
‘Sierra is an adult, not a child who throws a tantrum because she can’t have what she wants. What were her parents thinking, indulging her by allowing such behaviour?’
‘I imagine she fooled them as successfully as she managed to fool me.’
A hard act to maintain for three months, Gianna admitted, only to reveal her true nature when the idealistic bubble burst. She could imagine how it had gone down…the tears, the pleading, the machinations.
There was never going to be a better time to reach him.
‘I owe you an apology.’
His eyes sharpened and became incredibly dark. ‘For?’
‘Not believing in you,’ she said simply.
For a long moment he simply looked at her, seeing the shadows, the ethereal quality she strove to hide beneath the surface…and his heart twisted a little at the pain she’d suffered as a result of one woman’s vindictive psychosis.
Without a word he swept an arm beneath her knees and carried her into the bedroom, where he sank down into a comfortable chair and settled her on his lap.
‘Sierra played her cards a little too well by initiating a game she could never win. At least not with me.’ He captured her face and his eyes seared her own. ‘I failed to see through the façade she presented until she mentioned she should move in with me. It didn’t go down well when I chose to end the relationship. Polite refusals to take her calls resulted in a false claim of pregnancy which I personally ensured was negative by insisting on independent testing. When I threatened legal action, she promised she’d never contact me again.’
Facts Gianna hadn’t known. But then why should she have? It had happened before she’d met Raúl, and formed part of his past.
‘Except Sierra turned up at the same events,’ Gianna said quietly, and felt his hand smooth gently over her head.
‘Yes. It was awkward in that her father is a colleague and mixes in the same social circles.’
How could she forget the number of times Sierra had accompanied her widowed father, always perfectly groomed, a new designer gown shaping her slender curves, showcasing her generous cleavage? There, a visible personage designed to silently taunt the one man she coveted…a man who had, in her eyes, wilfully discarded her.
‘Sierra saw a chink in your armour when you miscarried, and she sought to drive a wedge between us in the only way she knew how…by contriving a situation that would attack you at your most vulnerable.’
And she’d succeeded.
‘You think it didn’t hurt me to lie next to you each night and know you wept silent tears and couldn’t sleep?’
Pain was evident, and regret. ‘It killed me,’ he revealed quietly, ‘to witness your miscarriage. To know there was nothing I could do to help other than be there. And after you left, nothing I could say would ease the hurt Sierra had inflicted. I was unable to reach you on any level, and you shunned any comfort I offered. You even refused to believe the truth.’
She had failed, she reflected, caught up in her own grief, wanting so much to confide, to believe, but unable to summon the right words. So she’d chosen silence,