Page 40 of Their One-Night Rio Reunion
But he was insistent. ‘I do. It’s not fair for you to think that I married you because you reminded me of my mother. It was more complicated than that. I never saw you as weak or a victim, Ana. I married you for all the reasons I outlined, but also for another, much less tangible reason. An instinct. I cared what happened to you.’
‘Which is just another way of saying you felt like you had to save me from my situation.’
Caio balled his hand into a fist on the kitchen island. ‘Dammit, Ana—no, it’s not. I’m no one’s saviour. I knew that after my mother went back to my father. I just...saw something in you that transcended all the very concrete and practical reasons for marrying you. Maybe it was chemistry, which I wasn’t prepared to admit I felt, because that would have complicated matters.’
Ana pushed down a dangerous bloom of hope. ‘You don’t have to pretend you fancied me all along to make me feel better, Caio. Please don’t patronise me. I know last night was an aberration but, as I said, we both got something out of it and now we can get on with our lives.’
‘You sound very...okay with everything.’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Ana forced some more coffee down her throat, hoping it would burn away the growing ache she felt at her core. The pain near her heart. This was excruciating.
‘Because last night was...intense.’
Ana affected a nonchalant shrug. ‘I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I’ll take your word for it.’
Caio sounded grim. ‘Believe me, it was not usual.’
Ana’s heart thumped. ‘Like I said, I’ll just have to take your word for it.’ A reckless devil inside her made her say, ‘I can let you know once I’ve had some more...experiences.’
The colour in Caio’s face grew darker and after a minute he got out a very terse-sounding, ‘That won’t be necessary.’
For a moment Caio looked almost tortured. Could it be possible that he was actually...jealous?
But before that flight of fancy could sweep Ana away there was a strident piercing noise. It was so unexpected that it took her a moment to identify it as the ringing of a mobile phone. Caio’s phone. Which was now vibrating on the island between them.
Ana’s guts turned to water. This was it. The outside world was back. What if they were told they had to stay for longer? That prospect alternately made her feel ridiculously relieved and also sick. Clearly Caio was ready to draw a line under the whole experience and move on.
He looked at her as he picked up the phone. He listened for a long moment and then said, ‘Okay, that’s good news. Thank you for all your hard work.’ And then, after a few more seconds, ‘Yes, we’ll be ready. Thank you, Tomás.’ He took the phone from his ear.
Ana couldn’t speak. She just lifted a brow in query.
‘It’s over. They got the gang. They mounted a huge operation using two stand-ins for us. The gang had no idea we’d managed to escape. Security forces in Rio and Europe followed the stand-ins, and the gang were arrested in the act of kidnapping “you” at the airport in Amsterdam, and “me” in Rio. They didn’t want to tell us how big the operation was until they knew it was successful, but it had been in the planning for some time before we heard about it.’
‘Oh, wow.’
Ana felt flat. Somehow the fact that a major kidnap operation had been averted didn’t have as much of an impact as the fact that they could now leave the island.
‘They’re sending a helicopter to get us; it’ll be here within the hour.’
Within the hour.
A sense of panic, dangerous and far too exposing, rose like a ball from Ana’s liquefied guts. But she just nodded her head and said, ‘I should retrieve those clothes from the beach and pack.’
Caio put out a hand. ‘No, I’ll do it.’
But Ana was already walking out of the kitchen and down the lawn, in a bid to escape. She slipped off her shoes and left them on the grass, and stepped onto the beach in her bare feet.
She spotted Caio’s sweats and her night clothes. They looked flimsy in the daytime, and she couldn’t quite believe she’d felt compelled to come down here and swim in the dark. A moment of insanity induced by lust.
Caio was right. It had been reckless and dangerous. But she could remember the feeling of needing to connect with some elemental force. And now that elemental force was within her and she would never be the same.
She sensed Caio behind her. The suspicion that he wasn’t remotely fazed by last night and the fact that they would be parting ways made her feel desperate, and also devastated. Now she could understand why he’d been reluctant to sleep with her—because he’d known better than her that she would find herself in emotional turmoil.
Except he had no idea that her turmoil had far deeper roots than merely confusing sex with emotion or because he was her first lover. He had no idea she’d been falling for him over the last year. That this was no overnight sensation.
He couldn’t know. He couldn’t possibly ever know how devastating this was for her. She’d already exposed herself so much by seducing him that this would kill her. And so, as he came alongside her, she affected an expression of bland neutrality.
CHAPTER TWENTY
