I’m not your enemy. I never have been.”

Payton’s heart felt brittle. “You hated me for getting pregnant.”

“I didn’t hate you. I liked you. A great deal. But there were logistics.”

“Ah, logistics. Right.” She felt her mouth tremble and she bit into her lower keep to keep her emotions in control. “You and Princess Marilena worked things out and I was in the middle.”

He sighed. “We’d been involved for years, Payton.”

“I know.”

“I owed it to her.”

“Of course. You loved her.” She swallowed around the lump filling her throat. “And you didn’t love me—”

“It’s not that simple.”

“But you didn’t love me. You said you liked me. And it’s true. I was convenient and fun. I was a…fling.”

He swore beneath his breath. “I hate that word.”

“It fits,” Payton replied.

“It has ugly connotations.”

“And that fits, too, doesn’t it?” she said, holding his gaze.

CHAPTER FIVE

HIS dark eyes met hers and held. He looked at her as if he could see all the way through her and this time there was no coldness, no anger, no mockery.

He looked at her as if looking back to the way it had happened, the two of them, as if he could see the black-tie party and Payton trying desperately to avoid the drunken advances of another designer twice her age.

“I had good intentions,” he said after a long taut silence, his jawbone almost white, his tension palpable. “I only meant to help you.”

She struggled with the clash of the past and present, of the knowledge that in that moment he assisted her he’d changed both their lives forever. “You did help me.”

Marco’s intense gaze never wavered. “Maybe you were better off—”

“Ravished by your arch rival?” She attempted a laugh. It came out thin, rather stricken.

He nearly smiled. “You made me laugh that night. I was so angry with Carlo, so angry that he’d tried to take advantage of one of my young interns, but then you made me forget my anger. We talked. We danced—” He broke off, shook his head. “We were naive.”

His smile faded. A small muscle popped in his jaw. “We should have known there’d be repercussions. Should have known that even a dance can be dangerous. At least I should have known.”

Payton knew Marco had been set to marry the princess, had planned it a long time before that night at the Trussardi’s, back before they’d ever talked, danced, kissed.

She’d heard Marco was promised, no official engagement, just a long-standing agreement.