Page 36 of Cipriani's Innocent Captive
‘I told you I wasn’t in the market for love and commitment.’ He recalled what he had felt when he had seen other men looking at her and then later, when his gaze had dropped to that perfect diamond on her finger, and something close to fear gripped him. ‘I willneverlove you the way you want to be loved and the way you deserve to be loved,cara.I can desire you but I am incapable of anything more.’
‘Surely you can’t say that?’ she heard herself plead in a low, driven voice, hating herself, because she should have had a bit more pride.
Lucas’s mouth twisted. In the midst of heightened emotions, he could still grudgingly appreciate her bravery in having a conversation that was only ever going to go in a pre-ordained direction. But then shewasbrave, wasn’t she? In the way she always spoke her mind, the way she would dig her heels in and defend what she believed in even if he was giving her a hard time. In the way she acted, as she had at an event which would have stretched her to the limits and taken her far out of her comfort zone.
‘I can’t feel the way you do,’ Lucas said, turning away from her wide, green, honest eyes and feeling a cad. But it wasn’t his fault that he just couldn’t give her what she wanted, and it was better for him to be upfront about that right now!
And maybe this was a positive outcome. What would the alternative have been—that a charade born of necessity dragged on and on until he was forced to prise her away from him? She had taken the bull by the horns and was doing the walking away herself. She was rescuing him from an awkward situation and he wondered why he wasn’t feeling better about that.
He hated ‘clingy’ and he didn’t do ‘needy’ and a woman who was bold enough to declare her love was both. He should be feeling relieved!
‘I’ve seen how destructive love can be,’ he told her harshly. ‘And I’ve sworn to myself that I would never allow it to enter my life, never allow it to destroy me.’ He held up one hand, as though she had interrupted him in mid-flow when in fact she hadn’t said a word. ‘You’re going to tell me that you can change me. I can’t change. This is who I am—a man with far too many limitations for someone as romantic and idealistic as you.’
‘I realise that,’ Katy told him simply. ‘I’m not asking you to change.’
Suddenly restless, Lucas pushed himself away from the desk to pace the room. He felt caged and trapped—two very good indications that this was a situation that should be ended without delay because, for a man who valued the freedom of having complete control over his life,caged and trappeddidn’t work.
‘You’ll meet someone...who can give you what you want and need,’ he rasped, his normally graceful movements jerky as he continued to pace the room, only stopping now and again to look at her where she had remained standing as still as a statue. ‘And of course, you’ll be compensated,’ he told her gruffly.
‘I’m not following you.’
‘Compensated. For what you’ve done. I’ll make sure that you have enough money so that you can build your life wherever you see fit. Rest assured that you will never want for anything. You will be able to buy any house you want in any part of London, and naturally I will ensure that you have enough of a comfort blanket financially so that you need not rush to find another job. In fact, you will be able to teach full-time, and you won’t have to worry about finding something alongside the teaching because you won’t have to pay rent.’
‘You’re offering me money,’ Katy said numbly, frozen to the spot and stripped bare of all her defences. Had he any idea how humiliating this was for her—to be told that she would bepaid offfor services rendered? She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. She was still wearing the princess dress but she could have been clothed in rags because she certainly didn’t feel like Cinderella at the ball.
‘I want to make sure that you’re all right at the end of this,’ Lucas murmured huskily, dimly unsettled by her lack of expression and the fact that she didn’t seem to hear what he was saying. The colour had drained from her face. Her hair, in contrast, was shockingly vibrant, hanging over her shoulders in a torrent of silken copper.
‘And of course, you can keep the ring,’ he continued in the lengthening silence. ‘In fact, I insist you do.’
‘As a reminder?’ Katy asked quietly. ‘Of the good old days?’
The muscles in her legs finally remembered how to function and she walked towards him stiffly.
For one crazy, wild moment, Lucas envisaged her arms around him, but the moment didn’t last long, because she paused to meet his eyes squarely and directly.
‘Oh, Lucas. I don’t want your money.’ She felt the engagement ring with her finger, enjoying the forbidden thought of what it would feel like for the ring to be hers for real, and then she gently pulled it off her finger and held it out towards him. ‘And I don’t want your ring either.’
Then she turned and left the room, noiselessly shutting the door behind her.
CHAPTER TEN
BEHINDTHEWHEELof his black sports car, Lucas was forced to cut his speed and to slow down to accommodate the network of winding roads that circled the village where Katy’s parents lived like a complex spider’s web.
Since leaving the motorway, where he had rediscovered the freedom of not being driven by someone else, he had found himself surrounded on all sides by the alien landscape of rural Britain.
He should be somewhere else. In fact, he should be on the other side of the world. Instead, however, he had sent his next in command to do the honours and finalise work on the deal that had been a game changer.
Lucas didn’t know when or how the thing he had spent the better part of a year and a half consolidating had faded into insignificance. He just knew that two days ago Katy had walked out of his life and, from that moment on, the deal that had once upon a long time ago commandeered all his attention no longer mattered.
The only thing that had mattered was the driving need to get her back and, for two days, he had fought that need with every tool at his disposal. For two days, Lucas had told himself that Katy was the very epitome of what he had spent a lifetime avoiding. She lived and breathed a belief in a romantic ideal that he had always scorned. Despite her poor experience, she nurtured a faith in love that should have been buried under the weight of disappointment. She was the sort of woman who terrified men like him.
And, more than all of that put together, she had come right out and spoken words that she surely must have known would be taboo for him.
After everything he had told her.
She had fallen in love with him. She had blatantly ignored all the ‘do not trespass’ signs he had erected around himself and fallen in love with him. He should have been thankful that she had not wept and begged him to return her love. He should have been grateful that, as soon as she had made that announcement, she had removed the engagement ring and handed it back to him.
He should have thanked his lucky stars that she had then proceeded to exit his life without any fuss or fanfare.
