‘My past relationship with Joanna is not your concern—’
‘No, I just have to help pick up the pieces seven years later!’ Brynne scorned, feeling stung by his words.
She accepted they had been wrong to argue like that in a place where Michael could overhear them. But she didn’t accept the argument had been her fault. Alejandro was the one who had reacted to a perfectly innocent remark—
‘Is that your only interest, Brynne?’ Alejandro challenged, as he looked down his chiselled nose at her. ‘Or is it that you feel some—personal curiosity, concerning my relationship with Joanna all those years ago?’ he added softly.
Brynne felt the colour warm her cheeks. ‘What are you implying now?’
His mouth twisted, there was o humor in his tone. ‘There is a saying in your country, is there not, something about people in glass houses should not throw stones …?’
Brynne stared at him blankly for several long seconds, and then her eyes widened as his meaning became clear. ‘If you’re talking about what happened between us last night—’
‘That is exactly what I am talking about, Brynne,’ he sneered. ‘How do you think that would have ended if we had not been interrupted in the way that we were?’
She had tortured herself with those very same thoughts alone in her bedroom last night …
‘Is that why you did it, to prove—’
‘We did it, Brynne,’ Alejandro cut in harshly. ‘I kissed you—certainly not to prove anything!—but once I had kissed you you were a willing participant to what happened next,’ he reminded her coldly. ‘So,’ he clipped. ‘What do you think would have happened?’ he persisted.
‘If your girlfriend hadn’t arrived, you mean—’
‘Oh, no,’ Alejandro cut in softly. ‘I am not going to allow you to antagonize me into changing the subject in that way.’ He crossed the room to stand just in front of her.
Making Brynne all too aware of him, the heat of his body, that all-male smell, the leashed power that could be released at any second.
She avoided that compelling silver gaze as she moistened suddenly dry lips. ‘I like to think—’
‘No, Brynne!’ Alejandro grasped her arms and shook her slightly. ‘No thinking. No wishing. No imagining.’ He shook her again. ‘Tell me what you think would have happened after I had touched you here.’ One of his hands moved to caress lightly across her breast before returning to grasp her arm. ‘Kissed you here.’ He held her gaze as his head lowered. His lips and tongue grazed lightly across her hardened nipple beneath her cotton top.
‘Stop it!’ Brynne struggled to pull away from him but was held tight by the strength of his hands on her arms.
‘What if we had not stopped—for whatever reason—when we did, Brynne?’ he repeated softly. ‘What do you think would have happened next?’
She didn’t need to think—she knew what would have happened!
She had wanted Alejandro last night, mindlessly, urgently. She had been unable to think of anything but him, of being even closer to him; she hadn’t even been aware of the approaching car that had alerted him to Antonia Roig’s arrival.
Alejandro could see the pained bewilderment in Brynne’s eyes, could guess at the reason for it, knew that he was hurting her, but needed to make her understand the past.
It was this lack of understanding—perhaps of experience?—that caused her to judge him and Joanna as harshly as she did, and while he did not care for himself, Joanna was a different matter.
‘We both know what was going to happen next.’ He released her abruptly, moving several feet away to thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘The two of us would have become lovers—’
‘No—’
‘But yes, Brynne,’ he insisted softly. ‘We were almost there already.’
‘You’re despicable!’ she gasped.
‘I am honest,’ he corrected grimly. ‘With myself. And with other people. It is the same honesty that Joanna and I had between us seven years ago. We were not in love with each other, but we liked each other, were attracted to each other. It was an attraction that we acted upon. The same attraction that was between us last night—’
‘No—’
‘What are you saying, Brynne?’ he taunted. ‘That what you felt last night was not lust but something else? That you are in love with me?’ he added derisively.
Of course she wasn’t in love with him!
He was hateful. Arrogant. Mocking. And she despised him for discussing last night in this cold, analytical way.
That completely mindless passion had never happened to her before, with anyone, and it was something she still had trouble accepting, let alone understanding.
‘Well, are you?’ Alejandro continued remorselessly.
‘No, of course not—’
‘Of course not,’ he echoed scornfully. ‘But you allowed me to touch you, to caress you, to kiss you—’
‘Stop it!’ she cried emotionally. ‘Just stop it!’ She turned away, shaking.
‘Yes, I will stop.’ Alejandro sighed heavily. ‘But you are a hypocrite, Brynne Sullivan. You are fooling only yourself by believing you are incapable of the same feelings that drew Joanna and I together seven years ago.’
Brynne knew she was fooling herself. She was totally aware of the fact that she wouldn’t have been able to pull back from making love with Alejandro last night. She had wanted him completely. She had continued to ache for his possession for hours afterwards.
She still ached for that possession …
‘You also blame me for the fact that Joanna went through her pregnancy alone, brought Michael up alone for the first four years of his life,’ he continued determinedly. ‘My defence to that is it was Joanna’s choice—’
‘Because you were married—’
‘My marriage is immaterial. It was Joanna’s choice not to tell me of the pregnancy or of Michael’s existence,’ Alejandro continued remorselessly. ‘If anyone should be angry about that, then it should be me, not you,’ he stated flatly. ‘I am disappointed not to have known Michael until now, yes, but I do not blame Joanna for the choices she made. They were hers to make, after all.’
He was right. Brynne knew he was right. But it had been far easier to be angry with Alejandro, living, breathing, arrogant Alejandro, rather than Joanna, her feistily independent sister-in-law.
‘I do not intend to discuss this subject with you again, Brynne,’ Alejandro told her huskily. ‘The past is gone. Joanna is gone. And so any further discussion on the subject is pointless. Harbour such thoughts as you want about me—I am sure that others have thought much worse,’ he added dryly. ‘But do not think those things of Joanna.’ He sobered. ‘She was a beautiful free spirit when I knew her, a woman who knew her own mind and body, and that is how I will always think of her.’
Joanna had been the same beautiful free spirit when Brynne had known her too, when Tom had fallen in love with her.
And that almost gentle way that Alejandro talked of her seemed to imply that his own emotions had not been as removed in that relationship as he would have liked them to be …
‘There is only Michael now,’ Alejandro continued briskly. ‘He is all that is important.’
‘I agree,’ she said quietly.
‘You do?’ Alejandro sounded amused now.
She raised her head to look at him, that amusement