Rebecca was actually trying to be sincere.
“Yeah. I’m a prize.”
They were silent a moment.
He looked into her beautiful eyes and felt only impatience.
She swallowed. “That speech at the wedding... it was about her, wasn’t it?”
“Yep,” he said shortly.
Rebecca leaned back against the seat. She sighed. “Look,” she said softly. “I want to lay it on the line right now. I know I blew it, Johnny. I confess I had an ulterior motive when I came here—I thought maybe we could talk about starting again. I couldn’tbearseeing you with someone else, and that’s when I knew how wrong I’d been. What we had was unforgettable and... I should have tried harder. I shouldn’t have bailed. We just have to—”
“Here’s the deal, Becks. I don’t love you.”
He saw her take that like a blow.
He was in too much of a rush to feel too sorry.
“The best thing you ever did was dump me in Cannes, and for that I owe you a debt of gratitude. We are simply never going to happen that way ever again. That’s a fact. There will be no discussion. Are you hearing me?”
She stared at him in mute shock.
“I’m sorry to say it that way. I just needed to get it said and fast. Because God knows I don’t want you to miss your jet.”
She was staring at him, apparently frozen in shock. She’d gone white.
“Come on. You don’t actually love me either, do you?” he demanded softly.
She gave a short, incredulous laugh. And then all at once, her big round blue eye were brimming with tears.
She gave her head a sharp toss and she sniffed, her nose already going pink.
Which is how he knew the tears were real.
She probably did love him. Or thought she did. He sincerely doubted she really knew.
He sighed. No matter what, he couldn’t relish hurting her.
“I’m going to do you the favor of assuming you can be a rational, detached professional when it comes to me, and that’s based on no evidence whatsoever, and you’ll tell them I was held up and y’all will wait for me to get there. But if not, I’m okay with that, too. You can tell them that John Tennessee McCord hasn’t changed one bit, and he’s the unreliable ass of ten years ago. Your call. We can make a great movie and I think you know it. When it comes right down to it, caring about that kind of thing is what we have in common. And that’s about it. But right now, all I care about is Britt. And I never liked it when you called me Johnny.”
He had a sense he was bludgeoning her with the words, but primarily it was because she was unaccustomed to unvarnished honesty. No one except him had ever told her the truth about anything, particularly herself.
“Bastard.” The word lacked oomph. She’d said it to him too many times. He’d heard it too many times.
“They should probably invent a new word for me,” he sympathized.
She jerked her gaze from his. And she stared stonily out through the windshield. Her jaw was taut.
There were a dozen things he could have said in the following silence. But only one thing seemed important right now, and she was just waking up and feeding the cat, and putting the coffee on and maybe watering the plants... and damn, but he wanted to be there. For every little thing.
“Leave the truck in the airfield parking lot, Rebecca, and hand the keys off to the guy at the front desk, tell him I’ll be along for them later. Or you can just set the truck on fire when you get out of it, if that’s what you feel you need to do. I’m insured up the wahoo.”
He’d miss that truck, if she did that. But sometimes it was good to know when to let go.
He slid out and shut the door hard behind him and started walking. Quickly.
He didn’t look back.
