Pride & the Italian's Proposal by Kate Hewitt

Author:Kate Hewitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-11-23T14:26:12+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

LIZA DIDN’T KNOW what had made her decide in that moment to be honest. Perhaps it was because she was so tired of feeling sad. Or maybe she was just trying not to care any more, when it had become so very hard to keep disliking Fausto, no matter how many reasons he gave her.

Either way, for the last two months she’d had to drag herself through every day, and all because of this man. Even before that she’d been out of sorts, everything a tangle of longing and outrage and uncertainty. She was tired of feeling so much, and yet she felt the recklessness of her words, their implicit challenge. She stared at him now, daring him to reply.

‘About me,’ he repeated in that voice of cool reserve she knew so well that gave nothing away, and she let out a half wild laugh.

‘Yes, you. Are you outraged, Fausto? Disgusted? Or is it just par for the course that a woman would shed tears over you?’

‘I would never wish any person to cry over me,’ he said stiffly, and she sighed wearily and wiped her face.

‘No. Of course not.’

He sat down next to her, his elbow resting on one drawn-up knee. The nearness of him brought a tingle of awareness, even in her teary state, along with a rush of longing still.

‘Last night you acted as if you hated me,’ he said after a moment, sounding cautious. ‘Yet it seems unlikely you would cry for someone you hate.’

‘That’s just the problem. I want to hate you. I want to dismiss you from my mind, and instead I let myself be hurt. Again.’ Her heart tumbled over at the blatant confession. What would he do with it? Why was she making herself so vulnerable, when she already felt so low? She didn’t think she could bear his disdain now.

Fausto was silent for a moment and Liza risked a look at him, sitting so near to her. His brows were drawn together, his eyes so dark they looked nearly black. He looked so troubled and yet so handsome, and her heart ached because she knew she was halfway to falling in love with him, and the thought was terrifying.

No, she told herself rather frantically, she couldn’t actually be anything close to in love with him. It had to be infatuation. That was all it could be, surely, considering how little they knew each other, how difficult every encounter between them had been...

‘Again?’ Fausto asked after a moment, and Liza shrugged.

‘It was a long time ago, with someone else.’ Even that was putting too much emphasis on what hadn’t even been anything close to a relationship. ‘Stupid of me to still be hurt, but it seems I never get these things right.’

‘I have never wanted you to hate me,’ Fausto said after a moment, his voice low, his head bent.

‘I don’t,’ Liza confessed.

‘And that is why you were crying? Because you can’t hate me?’ There was a lilt of humour in his voice as well as a flicker of sadness in his eyes, and both made her ache.

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