He laid a hand on her wrist, turning her to face him and noticing the telltale redness in her eyes.
‘I have upset you.’ He frowned. ‘I’m just trying to say that you always have a choice, Nicole. You choose to care. You choose to value everyone else’s opinion of you more than your own.’ He spoke softly, lifting her chin so that she would look at him.
‘Their opinions have always had to matter more,’ she whispered. ‘It’s hard to form a high opinion of yourself when you barely even know who you are.’ She stepped away from him, hiding her tears from him once more. ‘I’ve played a part for so long, it just became natural to let others dictate who I should be.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about me, Rigo.’ She sighed. ‘How could you want to marry me when you have no idea who I am?’
‘I know enough,’ he said coldly.
‘That’s just it. You think you know enough but really you know nothing at all.’ She shook her head. ‘Rigo, I’ve been a walking sham for most of my life. A persona created by my mother and her publicist,’ she continued, refusing to look at him while she spoke. ‘I’ve never broken out of rehab, or slept with married politicians, or done half of what the crazy rumours out there say I have. I was publicly provocative, but once the cameras were gone...I could never follow through. I could never trust anyone enough.’
She looked up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time since their kiss.
‘Until that night with you I had never even... I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’
Rigo let a harsh breath escape his lungs. ‘You had never even what, Nicole?’ He watched as she visibly tensed at his words. He didn’t care if he was being cold. What she was saying was so absurdly far from what he knew about her he found it impossible to believe.
‘You were the first man I actually slept with.’ She shrugged self-consciously. ‘The others were all lies and scandals, drummed up for publicity.’
‘Excuse me if I find that hard to believe. You were hardly innocent that night.’
She bit her lip. ‘I almost told you—just before we got to your apartment. But then you were saying such wonderful things I just lost my nerve. I was selfish. I worried that it might make you stop, and I didn’t want you to see me differently just because of one small detail.’
‘That “detail” being your supposed virginity,’ Rigo said coldly.
His memory of their night together surfaced painfully. She had been nervous. The revelation of what she was telling him now made his stomach clench. Her unashamed response to their lovemaking that night had driven him wild...the way she had been so amazed by her own pleasure. He had been surprised at her shyness about her body, her seemingly unpractised explorations of his body. But once he had found out who she was he had assumed it had all been just a part of her act.
‘You’re telling me that you were a virgin?’ he said incredulously, his voice harsher than he’d intended.
‘Don’t say it like that.’ Nicole tugged her wrist out of his grasp, walking away from him into the dim light of the suite’s dining room.
‘Dannazione, Nicole,’ he gritted, stepping inside and shutting the door hard behind him.
She turned around, eyes wide at his sudden display of anger.
‘Don’t just walk away from me after all that.’
‘“All that” is my life, Rigo. My truth. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, or gain sympathy. I just needed to talk about something real for once!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you know what? Let’s just forget this conversation ever happened and you can go back to whatever you thought of me before. Whatever makes you feel better.’
‘You honestly think I could forget knowing that I took your virginity and then threw you out on the street?’ Agitated, he ran a hand through his hair. ‘You walked away that morning after I practically called you a whore. Then, even when you knew that the child you carried was mine, you walked away again.’
‘Oh, no. You don’t get to turn this around on me just because you’ve realised how callous you actually are. I walked up to you in the middle of a crowded nightclub, Rigo, because you refused to answer any of my calls. I was honest about my pregnancy. The only reason I chose not to push any harder was because you made it brutally clear what you thought of me—and of the child I carried.’
Her words were like cold water over his temper. He had been abrupt and forbidding, refusing to entertain her from the moment she had shown up unannounced at his favourite club. The thought suddenly filled him with cold shame.
‘You laughed at me, Rigo. You humiliated me in front of all your rich, sophisticated friends. It’s probably best that this sham doesn’t go ahead, because I don’t think I could survive being married to a man I know doesn’t respect me.’
‘Nicole...’ He shook his head, needing her to stop talking so that he could process the reshuffling of the facts in his mind.
‘I need to leave, Rigo. Please don’t follow me.’
He caught a glimpse of the tears in her eyes for a split second before she turned and walked away, disappearing through the suite in a blur of long legs and pale blue silk.
With every passing second he felt his temper ebb and the cold realisation of his own actions set in. He had made presumptions about her character from the moment they’d met, just as she had accused him of doing. But was it entirely his fault when she had worked tirelessly to make the media believe she was someone else?
He thought of the woman he had bedded that night, of her hushed moans and the momentary cry of pain that he had presumed was some sort of theatrical move. He had been so blind, and he had coldly brushed the intense feelings from their lovemaking aside once he’d learned her name the next morning.
He had rushed things. He hadn’t known her from the English tabloids so he had powered ahead, giving in to the ridiculous heat that had burned between them. He knew that his reaction on finding out who she was had been exaggerated. But after being fooled by a woman once before on such an enormous, soul-wrenching scale, his pride wasn’t something he took lightly. He had called her a gold-digging whore. And then he had humiliated her.
The memory sat heavily in his gut.
This arrangement was proving more complicated than he had ever imagined. The waters had grown murky and he didn’t like it one bit. He would have to find a way to make peace with his wife-to-be or this marriage was never going to work.
* * *
Nicole sat cross-legged in the middle of the nursery. Anna’s chubby legs kicked hard in the air as she tried to roll over on the carpet. It was already midmorning and there had been no sign of Rigo coming home since last night. She tried to focus on folding Anna’s belongings into her small case, hoping it might calm the storm of emotions going through her brain. She hadn’t planned on letting things get so personal last night. And she hadn’t meant that kiss.
What on earth had been going through her head to let Rigo know that she had been a virgin? It didn’t really make a difference to their situation. It had been her own private secret, along with the memories she held close of the one night when she had trusted a man enough to completely let go and take her own pleasure. She didn’t know why she had waited so long, but there it was. And now the look of horror on his face would ruin that memory for her forever.
Anna squealed, looking at a spot directly behind her. Nicole knew she would find Rigo standing at the door even before she smelled his cologne on the air. His hair was wet, as though he had just stepped out of the shower. His blue eyes were darker than usual—or was it the faint shadows under his eyes that