Page 34 of Forbidden Until Midnight

In the meantime, Edward’s chokehold on their interactions lessening just enough, she had been able to carve out some time with her mother, who had revealed her father’s name to her.Pietro. That was all she knew. The way that her mother had looked when she’d spoken of him...it nearly broke Eleanor’s heart. She knew in that moment that her mother had loved Pietro and had never stopped loving him.

She’d wanted to ask more, she’d wanted to ask if he’d tried to find them, if her father had tried to come for her, but she couldn’t afford to ask that question. Couldn’t afford to be so reliant upon another man ever again. And at least she knew with startling clarity she would never have that with James.

Eleanor found herself unable to avoid the reflection in the mirror. Santo wasstilllooking at her. A flush of angry heat painted her cheeks and she went to walk away, when suddenly Dilly appeared right before her, forcing Eleanor back a step and causing her to brush up against the wall of Santo’s immovable back.

‘Congratulations,’ Dilly said with disdain.

‘Thank you,’ Eleanor replied, trying to find her equilibrium.

‘Maybe this time it will stick?’

Eleanor felt as if she’d been slapped.

‘I mean, it would look almost incompetent to lose two fiancés.’ Dilly leaned in, as if confiding, in the way that she used to when they were friends. Before Eleanor had caught her with Tony.

Eleanor felt indignation at Dilly’s words swimming in her blood, rushing to her head, urging her to say or do something rash. She was so bloody tired of being everyone’s punching bag. But next year would be different. Next year she would be married, and could finally stop coming to these damn things.

‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ she said, trying to sidestep her one-time friend.

‘What are you going to do? Run back to Daddy?’

Eleanor spun round on the woman, fury sparking like electricity. Dilly couldn’t have known the effect of her words, would never understand how much they had cut and sliced and twisted. But this woman, who had been so wrong to do what she’d done, had no right to be angry with her when she had done nothing wrong. She’d never done anything wrong.

‘I don’t have to run back to Daddy,’ Eleanor said in a low voice, with more control than she felt at that moment. ‘I have everything I need right here. I have an audience of nearly two hundred of your nearest and dearest,’ Eleanor continued with a smile on her face, while Dilly began to lose hers. ‘I could easily tell them what I overheard you and Tony doing, but I haven’t. If people know, it is because Tony told them, not me.’ Eleanor took a breath and looked, really looked, at her once best friend. ‘I know what desperation looks like, Dilly,’ she said not unkindly. ‘And I can see it in you, coming out of every single pore.’

‘You ruined me,’ Dilly whisper-hissed in accusation.

‘You ruined yourself,’ Eleanor replied without missing a beat. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘Do?’Dilly asked, as if genuinely confused.

‘You got yourself into this mess. Stop blaming other people and do something about it.’

With that, Eleanor smiled, aware of the attention they had drawn, and placed a kiss on Dilly’s cheek, hoping that she could wait until she’d left the room before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Spinning on her heel, she exited the room, blind to the sea of faces swimming before her, driven forward by the building pressure in her chest. It was a sob, a cry, it was tears and oxygen, it was sadness, grief, loss wrapped in anger and frustration. But the one thing it wasn’t was helplessness.

She just needed a moment to gather herself. Just one.

But then she felt him hot on her heels and her stomach flipped, her heart pulled on a string tied to him, yanked hard, and her body felt flushed for all the wrong reasons.

Oh, why wouldn’t he just leave her alone?

She opened a door and slipped into the room, knowing that a closed door wouldn’t keep him from coming after her. She backed into the room and was halfway across when Santo came in, closing the door behind him.

Battling hard against the realisation that she wasn’t scared but thrilled, her breath punctuated the air between them. Why was he the man her body surrendered to? Why was he the man who made her pulse leap and her heart pound? Why was he the man who, no matter what she wanted, what she needed, she always came back to?

‘I want you to leave,’ she tried.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ Santo repeated.

Every step he took into the room not only made her step back but also drew them closer and closer to that damn line that, once crossed, couldn’t be taken back. But there was something primal in the air, working a magic that was unrecognisable to his brain, but known fully by his body.

It was the same alchemical reaction that always happened when they were near each other. As if they were magnets, unable to help the physics of their make-up. Drawn to each other, repelled from each other. It had worn him down to the last vestiges of his patience and it wouldn’t take much for him to lose it altogether.

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