Page 55 of The Spaniard's Wedding Revenge

Love was destructive, but hers wasn’t. Why was that?

You know.

Cristiano closed his eyes, facing a truth he’d never wanted to see.

It wasn’t love that was destructive, because there had been nothing destructive about the way Leonie had looked at him. Nothing cruel in the way she’d touched him gently as he’d thrown her love back in her face. Nothing angry.

Because it was anger that destroyed. Anger that frightened. Anger that made him bitter and twisted and empty inside.

Anger that made him a coward.

Anger that had hurt her.

He took a shuddering breath.

His proud, beautifulgatita. He’d hurt her and she’d simply touched his cheek. Told him that she wished he could see what she saw when she looked at him.

His brave Leonie. Walking away from him with a straight back, unbowed. A fighter in every sense of the word. But alone. Always alone.

Not again.

It was the only thought that made sense. He’d made mistakes in his life—so many mistakes—but the one mistake he’d made, that he kept making over and over again, had been to let his anger win. And he couldn’t let it.

Once...just this once...he would let love win.

And he loved her.

Perhaps he had loved her the moment he’d picked her up from the street, seen her staring at him with wide blue eyes, her hair a tangled skein down her back.

He’d tried to deny the emotion, tried to ignore it. Tried to squash it down and contain it because his love had always been such a destructive thing. But he couldn’t stop it from pouring through him now, intense and deep. A vast, powerful force.

He remembered this feeling—this helpless, vulnerable feeling. And how he’d fought it, tried to manage it, to grab control where he could. The anguish of wanting something from his parents that they were never going to give, and their instinctive withdrawal from him and his neediness. The pain of it as he’d tried to hold on to Anna. As his son had slipped through his fingers.

The vulnerability that he’d turned into anger, because that was easier and he’d thought it more powerful.

But it wasn’t. This feeling was the most powerful. It was everything and he let it pulse through him, overwhelm him, making everything suddenly very,veryclear.

He had to find her. She thought that they both deserved more. He wasn’t sure that was true for him. But she definitely did. And though he had nothing to give her but his own broken, imperfect heart, it was all he had.

He just had to trust it was enough.

Cristiano turned and strode out of the study, his heart on fire, his phone still clutched in his hand.

Leonie waited outside in the garden of the tiny hotel in San Lorenzo, hiding in the darkness. She’d gotten good at it in Paris, and it seemed she still had the gift since no one had spotted her.

It was a long wait. But she had nowhere to go, and nowhere to be, so she stood there until at last the door to the wide terrace opened and a man came out to stand there, gazing out over the garden.

De Riero.

She really didn’t know why she was here, or what she intended to do by coming—maybe just see him. Her memories of him were very dim, and they were still dim now. She didn’t recognise his face. He was a stranger.

After she’d left the castle, walking to the village in the dark, she’d thought she’d probably have to hitchhike or stow away in a truck or something in order to leave San Lorenzo. The thought hadn’t worried her. She just wanted to get as far away from Cristiano and his cold green eyes as she could.

But then, outside the small village hotel, she’d spotted a tall boy with vaguely familiar features and vivid green eyes and she’d known who it was. And who the tall man beside him must be, too.

And she hadn’t been able to go any further.

She hadn’t wanted to go into the hotel, so she’d slunk into the gardens and skulked in the shadows, watching the hotel terrace.

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