Four Christmas Treats. Jessica Hart

no!’

      ‘So it’s not true? You’re not this James Connaught?’

      Silas’s mouth compressed. Why the hell hadn’t he followed his own instinct and his heart and told Tilly the truth earlier? ‘I do write as James Connaught, yes.’

      ‘And you also moonlight as an out-of-work-actor, hiring yourself out as an escort?’

      The bitterness in Tilly’s voice made him want to hold her as tightly as he could, until he had absorbed her pain into himself.

      ‘No,’ he told her quietly. ‘It was my half-brother Joe who was supposed to come here with you. He asked me to stand in for him because he’d had an accident. At first I refused, but then when he mentioned Art—’

      ‘You changed your mind.’

      It wasn’t in Silas’s nature to lie, especially not to someone who was as important to him as Tilly. ‘Yes.’

      ‘And when you accused me of hiring you for sex you were just testing the water, were you? Seeing how far you’d have to go to get what you wanted?’

      ‘That had nothing to do with my hope that I could get closer to Art. I was concerned for Joe. He’s young and impressionable, and I wasn’t convinced that the outfit he was working for was as above board as he claimed.’

      Silas took a deep breath. What he had to say to her now was going to be the hardest thing he had ever had to say. He knew his honesty was going to hurt her, but the truth had to be told, so that they could move on from today.

      ‘That first night here, when you threatened to end our “engagement”, I did think in terms of establishing a relationship with you to ensure that I stayed.’

      ‘You used me,’ Tilly accused him, her voice flat and devoid of the emotion she was desperately afraid might overwhelm her. ‘You deliberately lied to me, pretended that you were falling in love with me, when all the time I meant nothing to you.’

      ‘No, that’s not true.’

      ‘You’re right,’Tilly agreed. ‘The fact that I was falling in love with you was quite important to you. After all, it made everything so much easier for you, didn’t it?’

      ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it. You can’t really believe that I would lie to you about loving you?’

      ‘Why not? You’ve lied to me about everything else, haven’t you? If you’d really cared about me, Silas, you would have told me the truth.’

      ‘I intended to.’

      Tilly laughed mirthlessly. ‘When? After you’d got your story?’

      ‘I should have told you. I admit that. But I felt…I didn’t want to risk spoiling what was happening between us.’

      Tilly could hardly bear to listen to him. The rawness in his voice made her eyes sting with fierce tears. He sounded so genuine, but of course he wasn’t.

      ‘As a matter of fact, I was about to tell you earlier—just before your mother interrupted us.’

      Tilly frowned, her heart missing a heavy beat as it clung desperately to the fragile hope of his words. She remembered that he had been on the verge of saying something to her. She ached with longing to be able to believe him, but she wasn’t going to let herself give in to that weakness. Not a second time. Her was using her, manipulating her vulnerable emotions, just as he had done all along.

      ‘If you had really loved me you would have been honest with me right from the start.’

      ‘Life is not like that, Tilly. I didn’t know I was going to fall in love with you. I didn’t even realise at first that was what I was doing. By the time I did, it was too late. You’d already accepted me as what you believed I was. And, rightly or wrongly, I felt that our love was still too new and too fragile to bear the weight of the kind of revelations I would have had to make. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t plan to tell you everything. I did. I love you, Tilly, and you love me. Surely that love—our love—deserves a chance?’

      Tilly gave him a cynical look. ‘You really think you can go on lying to me, don’t you? I may have been stupid enough to fall for your lies the first time round, Silas, but I’m not stupid enough to fall for them again now. You don’t love me. And as for me loving you—the man I thought I loved doesn’t exist, does he? You’ve still got the hire car here. I think the best thing you can do now is pack your things and leave. There’s nothing here for you now.’

      Silas felt the shock of her rejection slicing through him, snapping the chain with which he had been leashing his own emotions. ‘Nothing? Then what exactly is this, then?’ he demanded.

      He was still holding her wrist, and so he was able to catch her off balance enough to drag her into his arms and then cover the furious protest she made with the fierce heat of his mouth.

      She wanted to resist him. She fought to do so. But something stronger than pride or pain was wrenching control of her responses from her, so that instead of closing into a tight, hard line against him her lips were opening under his, to return the full fury of his anguished passion. Somehow it was as though this was the only way she could show him the damage he had done—by violating the memory of what he had told her was love but what she now who knew was a lie.

      This was all they had shared. Not love, not tenderness, and most certainly not the kind of almost spiritual emotional bond she had so stupidly deluded herself into thinking they had. Just this ferally savage physical need, poisoned with bitterness and deceit. Let it have its way, then; let it take her. Let it take them both and destroy itself as it did so, Tilly decided furiously.

      Somehow he would break down Tilly’s anger and resistance. Somehow he would find the right way to show her that their love was strong enough to survive the damage he had inflicted on it and on her. He had to find it. Because he couldn’t endure the thought of losing her, Silas acknowledged as he tried to gentle the fierceness of his need and bring tenderness back into their intimacy.

      He wanted to take Tilly and show her everything he felt—his remorse and regret, his pain and despair, his sorrow that he had hurt her and his reasons for having done so. He wanted to hold her in his arms, body to body, skin to skin, and to kiss the tears from her eyes. He wanted to beg for her forgiveness and to heal the wounds he had inflicted with the salve of his true love. He wanted to wipe away everything that had gone wrong and give them a fresh start. But most of all he wanted her to know that his love for her was hers for ever.

      And this wasn’t the way to show her that, Silas warned himself as he fought against succumbing to the drug of his own need. If he took her now, like this, when she was acting out of anger and bitterness, he would be damaging them both. He knew that, and yet at the same time he ached to take the chance that somehow he could mend things between them by showing her physically how much she meant to him.

      The fire was dying out of her anger now, leaving behind a void that was filling with pain. Tilly shivered in Silas’s hold.

      ‘Tilly…’

      ‘Just go, Silas. Please, just go.’