‘Really we were both victims, weren’t we?’ she mused, feeling an odd sense of calm spread through her. ‘Of something we didn’t have the strength or maturity or understanding to deal with.’ She paused. ‘Of course you topping things off by going and sleeping with someone else didn’t exactly help.’
As her words hung between them Kit paled beneath his tan. ‘I’ll never forgive myself for that,’ he said, his voice cracking a little. ‘There’s this nugget of guilt that’s always there and I’m so sorry, Lily. For everything. But particularly for betraying your trust like that.’
‘You’re forgiven.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course.’ She took a quick sip of champagne. ‘Five years is too long to be angry and resentful and I think I forgave you ages ago. I get now that you must have been feeling lonely and isolated and all those other things you said at the time,’ she said, remembering the endless evenings she’d spent going over it all. ‘That doesn’t mean what you did didn’t devastate me, because it did. But I can sort of see how it happened. I mean, we hadn’t had sex for months, had we? And we were barely speaking. We were virtual strangers. Something had to give at some point.’
His jaw tightened and shadows flickered across his face. ‘Nevertheless I made that choice to cheat,’ he said gruffly. ‘I was the one that trampled all over our marriage vows.’
‘True.’
‘I’ve regretted it ever since.’
‘Did you ever consider not telling me?’
‘For about a nanosecond.’
She tilted her head and looked at him. ‘Was it really just sex and a one-off?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then maybe it would have been better if you hadn’t.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Although our marriage was dead in the water long before that, wasn’t it? So the end result would probably have been the same.’
‘If I’d thought there was any hope of salvaging it I’d never have done what I did,’ said Kit.
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘No. Not that it’s any excuse. Nothing excuses it. Certainly none of the justifications I came up with.’
Lily winced as everything he had accused her of—self-absorption, surliness, lack of understanding among others—all came back. ‘I guess we both said things we probably shouldn’t have.’
‘Probably,’ he said with a nod. ‘But I’ve had time to think too and I was too quick to absolve myself of any of the blame. Whatever was happening to us, I should have made us deal with it together. I regret the fact that I didn’t.’
For a moment they lapsed into silence, the space between them no longer filled with regret but a sort of tentative understanding.
‘Listen to us,’ she said softly, ‘each trying to take the blame for the way things turned out.’
‘Unlike when it actually happened when all we could do was blame each other.’
‘Exactly.’
Kit smiled, his eyes glittering in the candlelight. ‘Who’d have thought we’d get so wise?’
‘Well, I’ve had a lot of time to think and I ended up figuring that for me it was like someone—you—had died or something because the man I knew would never have done something like what you did. So I kind of went through the whole grief thing, starting with shock and rage. It took me a while and a lot of wine to get round to the acceptance and forgiveness stage but I got there. And here we are, I guess.’
Kit didn’t say anything to that, but just looked at her for several long, heavy moments, his eyes darkening and the expression on his face changing into something that made her heart thud and her throat tighten.
‘What?’ she asked, her voice husky.
‘You’re incredible.’
‘No, I’m not,’ she said, trying to tamp down the surge of heat rising up inside her and the thudding of her heart. ‘Just a bit older maybe and appreciating the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight. Anyway, it isn’t all one-sided. Didn’t you say you’d been thinking too?’
‘I’ve had my moments.’
She shot him a rueful smile. ‘And it’s not like I didn’t do things I regret.’ Her smile faded and she bit her lip as a familiar wave of shame rolled through her. ‘I’m sorry about cutting up your clothes and keying the Porsche, Kit.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘And the email was truly unforgivable. I should never ever have done that.’
Kit shrugged. ‘Water under the bridge.’
Not for her. Once the initial surge of triumphant satisfaction had faded she’d felt sick and hollow and riddled with guilt. Still did a bit. ‘Did it make things very difficult?’
‘Pretty tough.’
She inwardly cringed. ‘What did you do?’
‘Having been informed of my questionable integrity none of the British banks would lend me anything and the venture capitalists wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole so I went to the States.’
‘I read that your first hotel was in New York. I wondered about that. Will you tell me how you did it?’
* * *
And so, over the course of dinner, Kit did. He told her how after New York he’d moved to Paris and set up a hotel there. And then, most recently, London.
He told her of the satisfaction he felt of realising the dream he’d had ever since his jet-set parents had taken an apartment in Claridges, the dream that had sustained him through his degree in hotel management and his swift climb up the ladder. He shared the obstacles he’d faced and the successes he’d had.
And in return Lily told him how she’d come to start her business, how shortly after their divorce she’d resigned from her much-loved marketing job. How, needing the distraction of a new challenge, she’d hit upon the idea of offering a range of products to help businesses improve their customer experience. She’d put it to Zoe, who’d been keen, and that was that.
She asked after his parents, and he learned that Zoe was engaged. They discussed a few previously mutual friends with whom only one of them had stayed in touch, the places they’d lived, and caught up on as much as they could while skirting round the subject of lovers in her case and lack of them in his.
Dinner was delicious. At least Lily had told him it was. Personally Kit couldn’t taste a thing. He was too busy reeling from everything she’d admitted between their aperitifs and the arrival of the food. Too busy recovering from the mind-blowing discovery that she’d forgiven him and that the second chance he’d so badly wanted might be closer than he’d dared hope. Too busy revelling in the sound of her voice and her laugh, watching her expressive face and losing himself in the depths of her mesmerising eyes. And too busy realising that there was no longer any doubt about whether or not he loved her.
He was absolutely nuts about her. She was the strongest, toughest, most beautiful woman he’d ever met and he was a fool to have ever let her go. He’d never fallen out of love with her and he was going to do everything in his power to win her back.
But he couldn’t barge in and tell her what he wanted, he thought suddenly, watching Lily drain the last of her coffee and stifle a yawn. He couldn’t carry on with the strategy he’d employed up until now. He was going to have to tread carefully. Their relationship was so fragile,