Page 89 of Virgin's Stolen Nights with the Boss

‘Oh!’

‘Is it adequate?’ he quipped.

‘Perfect,’ she said, and then blushed. ‘You saw my name on the box.’ She turned the bottle so the image of her mother faced away. ‘My full name is Carmen Romero de Luca.’

‘And the bodega’s not a little corner deli, I take it?’

‘No...’ She gave a soft laugh. ‘That is my mother on the label.’ She watched him glance towards the bottle. ‘She would like to remain there. My oldest brother disagrees.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s the next legal battle.’

‘Yikes...’

‘And then we shall have nothing left to fight over.’

‘Oh, there’ll be something. There’s always something.’ He looked over at her, naked in the bath. ‘I’m going to tell you something that I swore I never would tell a soul. I made the promise to my brother when I identified his body—’

‘Please don’t break your promise because of me.’

‘I want to,’ he admitted. ‘I trust you.’

‘How can you after this morning? And when I’ve only just told you my real name? I haven’t been honest all along...’

‘You haven’t lied, Carmen, you just haven’t opened up.’ Elias paused and looked at her again, lying stretched out in the bath, and then he amended that. ‘Fully.’

Carmen wasn’t sure she was up to any confessions right now. She didn’t think she’d be able to say the right thing. But then she looked at the trouble swirling in his velvet brown eyes. Even if what Elias told her wasn’t what she wanted to hear, the very least she could do was listen. She looked at Elias—really looked at him—and knew that it wasn’t just about trusting another person, but about trusting yourself also. Trusting that you would do your best, even if faced with something that wasn’t what you wanted, because you cared so very much.

‘You can tell me.’ She gave a small nod.

‘Seraphina...’ He swallowed and his voice was hoarse. She could see his guilt and his agony.

‘Okay...’ Carmen said, in a voice that was gentle rather than shaking with fear, even if she was more terrified than when she’d first turned her back on Domitian.

‘A couple of weeks before Joel died, she came on to me...’

Carmen actually wanted to stand up, climb out of the bath and walk away before he revealed what she knew was coming, but she owed it to him not to flinch or show fear...

‘I was staying at the lodge, and she was there, measuring up something or other. I didn’t even know she was there. I came out of the shower, heading up to the attic, and she was on the stairs...’

Carmen could picture it exactly...knew the squeak of every stair between the bathroom and the little attic bedroom. She lay so still that the water didn’t so much as ripple, yet she felt as if she was being pulled into his hell.

‘Nothing happened. I pushed her away. I was so shocked, and I might have been a bit rough...’

Carmen felt as if the oxygen masks had fallen down on a plane, but she was too scared to reach for one in case the motion betrayed her terror. Now she was afraid that he’d find out she’d believed the very worst of him.

But, given her cruel words this morning, he already knew that.

‘Elias...’ She touched his arm. ‘I am so sorry for what I said.’

‘Carmen, I get it. I would have thought the same. But nothing happened. At first I was so shocked that I couldn’t move. She said it had always been me...that Joel would never have to know.’ His voice really was hoarse now. ‘She was hiswife. He was mytwin. I mean...what the actual hell?’

‘You didn’t tell Joel?’

‘Hell, no!’ He shook his head, and then he looked at her with eyes that showed he had wrestled with that question all alone for so long. ‘Should I have told him?’

‘How could you have?’ She thought of her brothers in that situation. ‘No, you couldn’t tell him. Have you toldanyone?’

‘You.’

She heard the single word.

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