COUNTERPOINT
An original romantic serialFrom Alina Adams the author of "When a Man Loves a Woman" (DELL 4/00), "Annie's Wild Ride" (AVON 8/98), "Inside Figure Skating" (METROBOOKS 11/00 & 9/99), "Thieves at Heart" (AVON 12/95) and "The Fictitious Marquis" (AVON 6/95)
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CHAPTER 33
Actually, Victoria knew exactly what she should do. She suspected she'd known it from the start. Robin was too intimately acquainted with each of his wicked habits, he was on too friendly of speaking terms with every single one of his demons to ever grow enraged with anyone else for pointing out his misdeeds. Victoria would never be able to manipulate Robin into dropping her by making him furious.
Her only remaining option was to hurt him.
Deeply, and grievously, and irrevocably.
By striking at his single, visible area of vulnerability.
She told him, "Do me a favor and drop the flowery language, would you, Robin? It's starting to get on my nerves."
He shut his mouth abruptly, as startled by what she's said as by how she'd said it. "Victoria?" He might well have been asking who the hell she was.
"Look." She selected a speck on the wall somewhere above his left ear, and stared at it with all of her might. Because Victoria knew that if she tried to look Robin in the eye for even a fraction of her pronouncement, she would never be able to finish it. "I'll be straight with you. I went in thinking that, you and I, it could really be fun. I mean, you're good-looking, you're wealthy, you've got that dashing, jet-setting thing going for you. I figured, this should really be a swell ride. But, see, I didn't realize how damn high-maintenance you were. One minute you're trying to break your neck, the next you're stumbling in, drunk, smashing glass. I don't have time for that nonsense. You have me running around, cleaning up after your tantrums. But, where the hell were you when I needed help? That morning in the clinic, you just disappeared. And last night, well, your solution to my anxiety over Gabriel's predicament was certainly pleasurable. But, in the long-run, hardly helpful." The spot on the wall blurred in front of her eyes, until Victoria counted two, four, no, eight of them spinning in a deranged diamond pattern. She prohibited her concentration to wander from watching... watching... you keep watching the speck. Watch the speck and, by all means, keep talking.
"I need someone I can count on to be there for me in both the good times and the bad. Someone to be my lover, my friend, and my partner." Victoria said, "But you, Robin, you don't need a lover. You need a keeper. And that's not a position I'm keen on filling. Even with all your money, you're just not worth the aggravation."
She hadn't dared to so much as sneak a peek at him during the entire duration of her speech. But, Victoria knew she'd have to do it eventually. She couldn't continue addressing the spot. She had to at least check and see if her words had achieved an impact. She hoped to God they had. Because Victoria most certainly did not own the strength or the courage to repeat even one of them.
She inched her head, ever so hardly, in Robin's direction. He stood in the same spot where she'd left him, hands thrust deep into his pockets, chin pointed up at the ceiling, eyes closed. A muscle twitch in his right cheek proved the solitary indicator that he was even still awake. For an instant, Victoria wanted to grab him by the shoulders, and shake him until he looked at her, looked through her and through all her lies. Didn't he know her by now? Couldn't he tell that this never was, never could be the real her? Victoria didn't know what she would do if he so gullibly believed the worst about her. And she didn't know what she would do if he refused to.
After a moment of silence, Robin lowered his chin. He opened his eyes. He took his hands from his pockets, and glanced briefly at his nails, before surveying Victoria from head to toe. "I wish you'd told me all of this earlier, darling. It would have saved me the trouble of faking good manners."
She'd seen this side of him before. The exaggerated courtesy, the contentious indifference, the facade of control on the outside, while on the inside, Victoria call practically feel the fusion heat building, burning, blackening. She'd felt it emanating from him in Nicole's presence, once around Douglas, and, briefly, with Gabriel. It frightened her precisely because Victoria suspected it was only the tip of a long fuse that, once lit, could prove incinerating to everyone in its path, an inferno so potentially cataclysmic, even Robin was terrified to find out just how hot it could burn if ever allowed expression. And so he swallowed it totally, slipping into nonchalant sarcasm the way a cop slipped on his bulletproof vest, refusing to become angry because Robin knew that, in the end, the anger would become him.
Victoria understood why he felt compelled to act in that way. Yet, her insecurity naturally obliged her to wonder if the outward ambivalence might not be faked at all, if Robin really didn't give a damn one way or the other. After all, why should a man known for his international harem care if a girl or two fell by the wayside?
She hated herself for feeling that way, but a part of Victoria did wish he might look a touch more... pained... by her words. Not that she wanted Robin to suffer, she didn't want that at all. But, Victoria was feeling ripped apart by the knowledge that they could never, ever be together again. And, selfishly, she wanted Robin to be feeling at least something about it.
She told herself that this was wrong. She knew it was wrong, and, in an effort to set their karma right again, Victoria offered up a quick prayer to the Gods -- Hades, included -- that, just as long as Robin didn't ask any more questions and left her alone and returned to Nicole and Gabriel wiggled out of the mess he was in -- Victoria was willing to shoulder all the pain of their breakup on herself. Robin could walk away scot-free and never grant Victoria another moment's thought as long as he lived.
The Gods must have heard her, or Robin read her mind, because, in the next instant, he brushed a hand through his hair, beamed the same devilish grin that first shanghaied her attention in his hotel suite what felt like a lifetime ago, and with a blithe, "Guess I'll go find myself another keeper, then, love," strolled out the door.