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They’d made love, shared the most intimate of moments and yet, because she’d kept Carlos’s secrets to herself, Javier was now judging her for her silence. She could feel it.

‘Javier…’ she began.

Just as Carlos said, ‘It’s time for you to meet my partner, big brother.’ He smiled defiantly, although it was easy for Hope to see the crippling apprehension behind the tight, brittle smile. ‘And don’t even bother lecturing me. Dom! Dominic? Come and meet Javier.’

Dominic stepped out from the kitchen. Hope thought he might have been waiting for his cue to appear, like an actor waiting in the wings for his prompt. As always, he was smiling and perfectly at ease with himself. He moved to hug Carlos, then they stood together, arms around one another and, certainly in the case of Carlos, challenging Javier to open the dialogue.

Hope looked at Javier and she knew that her eyes were pleading with him to understand the predicament she had been in.

‘Thank you for all your help,’ Javier told her coldly. ‘I’ll make sure the money we agreed on is transferred to your account by tomorrow. Now, if you could excuse us? It is time for me and my brother to sit down and…and…talk.’

* * *

So this is what it felt like, Javier thought, as he turned his back on the woman who had held him captive for the past few days. Who had inserted herself into his heart without him even realising it.

This was what betrayal tasted like.

He only had himself to blame. He hadn’t seen the warning signs. She’d been so damned different to every other woman he’d met that he hadn’t stopped to think just how much her laughter, her sense of freedom, the easy way she had of teasing him and of bringing him down a peg or two, would finally get to him.

He knew now.

He knew what hurt and pain felt like.

She’d known all along. Known that his brother was gay, already known everything he was about to find out now, and she hadn’t breathed a word. She’d humoured him. Had she also known where Carlos had been the entire time they’d been looking for him?

He wanted to look back over his shoulder, to see her one last time, to feed the sense of devastation her betrayal had done to him, but instead he clenched his jaw and glanced across at his brother.

Their eyes met.

‘Exuberant decorations for Christmas,’ Javier said wryly, looking at the garlands and bows and the Christmas figures dotted here, there and everywhere. No danger here in forgetting what time of year it was.

‘You hate them,’ Carlos said stiffly. ‘But that’s not my problem. It’s yours.’

‘Yes. It is.’

‘Sorry?’

‘No.’

They stepped into the ridiculously overdecorated sitting room, a room Javier had only been into twice, even though his brother had been living in the house for quite some time.

‘I’m the one who’s sorry,’ Javier said heavily.

He looked at his brother, the peroxide blonde hair, the gaily patterned summer shirt, because it was like a greenhouse in here, the flip flops on his bare feet, and he smiled. How could he have missed the obvious the second he’d walked through the door? His brother was gay and it hurt like hell to think that it was a secret he’d been too afraid to share with him.

Understandable.

He hadn’t made it easy over the years for Carlos to confide in him. And Hope? Just thinking about her hurt him in places he didn’t think could hurt.

She’d betrayed him, he thought, but she’d also made him into a man who could stand here and finally begin dismantling the walls he had allowed to build up between himself and his brother.

He would never forgive her but he would also never stop loving her.

* * *

Hope stood back from the Christmas tree she and her mother had been decorating for the past hour and a half.

The last three days had shot past and yet, how slowly time had moved. As if life was happening through a wall of treacle.