‘What about your parents?’
‘I never told them, not what had happened with you. But I had just received an offer of a place at a Queensland university. I hadn’t been sure I’d take it—it would mean I’d be a long way from my parents—but that’s what I told them—that I’d made up my mind to do it. I left two days later,’ she said bleakly. ‘You hadn’t come back. I didn’t even know if you would. But I couldn’t risk them losing their jobs.’ She looked at him long and steadily. ‘Not both of them at the same time. I just couldn’t.’
He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea. I must have been quite groggy because I don’t remember much about the medevac. But I did go back to West Windward after all sorts of tests and scans and—’ he shook his head impatiently ‘—palaver to determine whether I’d cracked my skull but you’d gone. That was when she told me you’d got a place at a Queensland university, that your parents were so proud of you and what an achievement it was for you. So I congratulated them and they told me they were so proud of you and there seemed to be no trauma attached to it.’
Mia patted her eyes again with the napkin. ‘They were proud of me.’ She shrugged. ‘Did you never…’ she paused, then looked at him directly ‘…did you never consider looking for me to check it out?’
He held her gaze for a long moment, then he said, ‘No.’
‘Why not?’ she whispered.
He looked away and rubbed his jaw. Then he looked directly into her eyes. ‘Mia, it occurred to me I could only mess up your life. I wasn’t ready for a relationship so all I could offer you was an on/off affair, especially if you were up in Queensland. I’d only just taken over from my father so my life was in the process of being completely reorganised.’
He shrugged. ‘I could have kicked myself for doing it—’ He stopped abruptly as she flinched visibly.
‘Hell,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry but—’
But Mia had had enough. She jumped up precipitately. ‘So, if your mother hadn’t warned me off, you would have?’
‘No.’ He said it decisively and he got to his feet and reached for her. ‘No.’
As she jumped away she tripped and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed her. ‘Listen to me,’ he ordered as he wound his arms around her. ‘Just listen.’
Mia ignored him and struggled to free herself.
‘Mia,’ he warned, ‘since when did you think you could beat me in a damn fight? Be still and listen.’
‘There’s nothing you can say I want to hear,’ she gasped.
He eyed her narrowly, her flushed cheeks and her eyes dark with pain, her hair coming loose. ‘OK.’ He shrugged. ‘Then how about this?’
And before she had a chance to identify what he was leading up to, he bent his head and claimed her mouth with a kiss.
She went limp in his arms, from sheer surprise about the way he did it, the way he moved his hands on her body. The feel of him, steel-hard against her softness, was mesmerising. And her lips parted beneath his because she simply couldn’t help herself.
When it was over her head was resting on his arm, her hair flowing over it, her eyes huge, very green and stunned, her lips parted in sheer shock—shock that he had done it, shock that she had responded after his news of what had to amount to a betrayal.
‘Don’t look like that,’ he said.
‘Why did you do it?’ she whispered.
‘It’s a traditional way to stop a fight between a man and a woman,’ he said dryly. ‘Didn’t you know?’
Her lashes fell and it occurred to him that he’d hurt her again—like some ham-fisted clod, he thought with distaste. ‘Mia, I would never have warned you off because you were the housekeeper’s daughter.’
‘Oh, Carlos, you may be able to deceive yourself but—’
‘Listen,’ he broke in savagely, ‘yes, I’d have told you there was no future for us then but it had nothing to do with who you were. I have never,’ he said through his teeth, ‘shared my mother’s delusions of grandeur.’
It flashed through Mia’s mind, an image of herself during the day and how, once again, she’d keenly felt her position on the sidelines, despite her designer clothes and her undoubted skills. How she’d proven to herself today that she still had a long way to go in the self-confidence stakes, how she might always be a fringe-dweller compared to the O’Connors and the ubiquitous Nina French.
But above all how much it hurt to know that Carlos would have warned her off himself…
As for his proposal?
‘I think you must be mad,’ she said with bitter candour, ‘if you really believe I’d want to get engaged to you. After all that—have you any idea how cheap your mother made me feel?’
He closed his eyes briefly, then released her and handed her her glass. She blinked and took a sip of brandy.
Carlos stared at her for an eternity, then he said abruptly, ‘How old are you now?’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Why?’
‘Why not—twenty-five?’
She nodded.
‘Has there been anyone?’
Two spots of colour entered her cheeks and she put her glass down on the trolley with a snap. ‘That’s none of your business, Carlos.’
‘I think it is. I think it must have been a ghastly experience. My mother—’ He gestured and shrugged.
‘I’m a little surprised you believe me,’ Mia broke in.
‘My mother,’ he repeated dryly, ‘has persistently meddled in all our lives but not in a way that’s actually hurt anyone like this before. What happened to my father came as a big shock to her too and may have made her…may have unbalanced her a bit.’ He paused and grimaced. ‘Whatever, I can’t let this go.’
‘There’s nothing you can do. I…one…gets over these things.’
‘That’s the problem, I don’t think you have. I strongly suspect you’re a twenty-five-year-old virgin, Mia.’
Mia gasped and jumped up. ‘Will you…will you just go away?’ she flung at him. ‘To…to think,’ she stammered, ‘that I thought you were the nicest of the O’Connors.’
He lifted a wry eyebrow. ‘The best of a bad bunch?’
‘Yes! No. Oh!’ Mia clenched her fists and ground her teeth and suddenly it was all too much for her again and she kicked her shoes off and ran out onto the veranda, onto the lawn and down towards her cottage.
Of course she came to grief—it was that kind of day.
She didn’t see the sliver of glass she stepped onto although she yelped in pain.
Carlos was right behind her, and he said her name on a harsh breath and simply picked her up and turned as if to take her back to the big house.
‘No, no,’ she said raggedly. ‘I don’t want to bleed all over the house.’
‘Where