You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,56

was going to tell you.”

“When?” she spat, dashing her tears away with the back of her hand.

“I thought . . . after the holidays.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Carry on behind my back, so what? I can have a Merry Christmas? So we can ring in the New Year together, and then you were going to lower the boom and come clean? Oh, save me!” She violently shook her head. “You’re so clueless. What does Christmas have to do with us? With this?” She threw her hands up. “I loved you, James. I thought you loved me too!”

He didn’t take the bait, wasn’t about to step into that trap.

She was full-on crying now, sniffing and fighting sobs. “I thought we were going to get married.”

“What?” he asked, so loudly that Ralph, curled in his bed near the fire, gave off a startled “woof.”

“I thought you would propose to me at Christmas.”

“But, Megan, why would you think that? We . . . we’ve only been dating for . . . for . . .”

“God, you don’t even know, do you? It’s been nearly six months, James. June. Remember? I do. It was summer in Seattle. You were there for some builders’ convention.”

And to see Rebecca.

“In your display of the tiny house? Remember?”

He did. All too vividly, despite the fact that he’d drunk far more than usual at the convention. He recalled how she’d come on to him. How she’d told him that Rebecca had been cheating, showing him pictures of Rebecca out to dinner with another man. When she’d wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, sliding her tongue into his mouth, he should have pushed her away, but he hadn’t.

“Don’t you get it? I love you. God, how can you be so dumb! And then you go behind my back? With her? Why? Jesus, James, why?”

He wanted to say that it had just happened, that he hadn’t intended to get involved with someone else before ending it with her, but it sounded so lame, so cliched, that once again, he kept quiet.

“I thought when you left Rebecca for me, that it was because we had something special, something unique, something like no one else!” She stopped then, her eyes glistening, her misery palpable. “I was wrong. Just another fool. Another girl to fuck and leave.”

“No, God, no.” But there it was. “I didn’t mean . . . Look, Megan, I’m sorry,” he said, and that was the truth. He felt like the shit he was. He’d never intended to hurt her, but, of course, he had. “I should have told you.”

“You should never have cheated on me in the first place!” she said, and her pain morphed once more into a fierce, bright anger.

“You’re right, I should have broken it off before—”

“No! Don’t you get it?” she asked, advancing on him. “You should have just been faithful. Is that so damned hard?”

Yeah. It was. But he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t say anything. He’d already tried to apologize, and she was having none of it.

“You’re the worst,” she charged, standing in front of him, breathing hard, her face flushed, her gaze scathing. “You know that, don’t you?”

He kept his silence.

“A rich boy who grew up coddled, always knowing he was going to inherit a fortune, so you just think you can do whatever you want, don’t you? That you can hurt whoever gets in your way.”

“Not true,” he ground out. Yeah, he’d grown up knowing he’d inherit, and he’d borrowed against his trust, but he’d worked every day of his life, making it on his own, trying not to become a typical trust-fund baby, a label he’d heard one too many times before. But he never intended to hurt anyone, though, of course, he had. Too many times to count.

“What’re you worth? Five million? Ten?” she asked, her blue eyes narrowing. “Twenty?”

“It has nothing to do with this.”

“You mean ‘us,’ don’t you? It has nothing to do with ‘us’?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where you’re wrong! It has everything to do with us and every damned woman you ever took to bed. You think you’re so ridiculously charming and good-looking that women can’t help falling for you?” Glaring at him, she answered her own question. “It’s the money, James.” She was so close now, he felt the heat radiating from her, saw the bits of darker blue in her light eyes. “It’s all about the money. Every damned woman you’ve dated in your entire miserable life has known you had money. Including Jennifer and Rebecca