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There was sincerity in his stare but she knew to her cost that Diaz was as capable of lying with his eyes as with his mouth. Actions spoke louder than words and his actions had come close to breaking her.
Blinking back tears, she shook her head. ‘How can it possibly work when we’ve spent half our lives hating each other?’
His jaw clenched then loosened with a low laugh. ‘We’ve also spent half our lives fighting this thing between us. We’ve both fought it but always it refused to die, and you cannot pretend it isn’t still there.’
Fresh mortification burned through her veins.
How could she deny this when she had literally just lost complete control of herself with nothing but his touch?
‘Is it not time to stop fighting and see if we can create something good out of it?’ he asked, intensity returning to his gaze. ‘I don’t know if we can make it work but I know we owe it to our daughters to try. If we can’t make it work by the end of the summer and you want to take the girls back to Devon then I will not stop you, and as a sign of good faith I will give you their passports now.’
She could have laughed. There hadn’t been an ounce of good faith between them in fourteen years. ‘You can still stop me leaving the country with the girls, even with their passports.’
‘That works both ways.’
‘I’m not a billionaire with all the power.’
‘Stay married to me and you will be.’
Despite all the churning emotions wrecking her, a short burst of laughter did break free, an amusement briefly matched in Diaz’s stare, and for one tiny breath of a moment, lightness cut through.
But only for the breath of a moment.
He brushed his thumb across her cheek. ‘You agree to try?’
Her stomach plummeted.
Oh, but her thoughts were a muddle of confusion, her heart feeling as if it were being yanked on a yo-yo.
How could she possibly say no when she’d been so successfully backed into a corner?
More importantly, how could she look her daughters in the eye when they reached an age to question why their mummy and daddy didn’t live together? How could she tell them she’d been the one who’d refused to even try to create a proper family unit?
But how could she live even for a few short months as Diaz’s wife? she wondered with something close to desperation. To share his bed and his life knowing that if not for their daughters, she would never have seen him again, that their wedding certificate would already have been replaced with divorce papers and that he’d be getting on with his life forgetting she existed?
He must never suspect that she would never have been able to do the same, and it was with this thought and their daughters’ faces lodged in her mind that Rose fortified her spine with steel.
Heart beating fast, she summoned her courage to meet Diaz’s dark, questioning stare. ‘Okay. I agree we owe it to our girls to try and make a go of our marriage, and I know exactly what you mean by it, but…’ She swallowed. ‘Don’t expect miracles. I promise to try but I can’t promise more than that.’
His stare continued to bore into hers.
‘What I’m trying to say is don’t push me.’
The tension of his features finally loosened. The sides of his eyes crinkled as he gave a short laugh. ‘As if I have ever been able to push you into doing anything you don’t want to do.’
She thought of all the years of his fury at her unbreakable friendships with his sister and grandmother, and shook her head with a small smile. ‘My refusal to comply with all your demands over the years must have driven you crazy.’
His lips made a wry twist. ‘You can have no idea.’
‘Oh, I think I can.’ She’d taken bitter satisfaction from never letting him drive her out of the lives of the women she’d loved.
He expelled a long breath then captured a lock of her hair and gently pulled down its length. ‘When I return from Sweden I’ll be taking a few weeks off. Let’s use that time for making peace.’
Peace? How could there ever be peace between two people who’d spent half their lives at war?
Reading her thoughts, he gently caught her chin. ‘Our past doesn’t have to determine our future, Rose. Not unless we let it.’
Trapped all over again in the stare that had haunted her waking and sleeping dreams for so long she couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been a part of them, she whispered, ‘Can you really let it all go?’