AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I was a good girl.’
‘Really?’ He topped their glasses up with more wine.
‘Do you have to sound so surprised?’
He studied her as he sipped his wine, his own plate pushed aside too. ‘No. I am not surprised.’
‘Because I was a virgin?’
There. It had been said. The elephant that had parked itself between them had been acknowledged and the knot in her stomach loosened because of it.
The knot had become like a noose.
‘It doesn’t suggest a wild past,’ he said slowly, his gaze on hers as he put his glass to his lips.
‘I never had the chance to be wild,’ she admitted. ‘My mum was diagnosed with cancer when I was thirteen. I had Violet to look after—she’s seven years younger than me—so I guess I supressed any teenage hormones that might have been primed to unleash. I comfort ate a lot. I never felt comfortable in my skin. It’s funny because my mum was beautiful. Honestly, she was stunning. She’d be hooked up with drips and machines all around her and the doctors would flirt with her. Mind you, she flirted with them too. Men loved her.’
‘Were you jealous of her?’
‘No.’ She shook her head as she thought about it. ‘No, I felt sorry for her. She was married twice and had a string of boyfriends. None of them treated her well.’
‘And you thought all men were like that?’
‘No. I just thought she had terrible taste in men.’
Andreas laughed into his wine but his eyes read something other than amusement. There was compassion there, and something baser, the same something that had been there from the very start.
Carrie hadn’t spoken about her mother for a long time and it felt good to do so now, brought her memory alive. Her darling mother had been a princess in Carrie’s eyes, a woman who adored her two daughters and never shied from showing her love for them.
‘There are some good men out there,’ she said softly, staring into the hypnotic gaze that no longer frightened her. The meaning she read in it…it was nothing that she too didn’t feel. She wanted Andreas, with a burning yen that had seeped into her soul. ‘My grandfather was a good man. He was poor. Humble. Not flashy like the men my mother went for. She was like a magpie, always wanting the shiny pretty things. She could pick a rich man at ten paces and have him eating out of her hand with the flutter of her eyelashes.’
‘So your father is a rich man?’
‘Actually, he was the only poor one. He didn’t even have a job—they were at school when they got together. Mum gave birth to me when she was seventeen.’
‘You were an accident?’
‘My mum always said I was the best accident in the world.’ She would say it while planting kisses all over Carrie’s face and tickling her ribs until they were both crying with laughter.
Andreas listened to Carrie open up about her life, watched those plump lips talking, feeling as if he had a fist pushed against his chest, pressing against his heart. Her hazel eyes shone in a way he had never seen before, her love for her mother shining through, dazzling him.
What would it be like to have those eyes shining with love for you…?
‘They married when they discovered she was pregnant but split up not long after I was born,’ she continued in that same, slow cadence, those shining eyes fixed on him, an openness in them he had never seen before. ‘My dad moved away after they split up so I’ve never seen much of him but he’s always remembered my birthday and makes a point of visiting a few times a year. I’ve always known he loves me.’ A look of mischief flittered over her face. ‘He’s head gardener at the real Hargate Manor.’
He burst into great rumbles of laughter at this unexpected twist. ‘It is a real place?’
Her lips puckered with sheepish amusement. ‘I’ve been there a couple of times. It’s a beautiful estate.’
Andreas drank some more wine and continued to stare at her. She mesmerised him. She’d mesmerised him from the moment she’d stepped into his office.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said throatily.
She tilted her head and smiled, a smile that stole his breath and made a man feel he could fly to the moon. ‘You make me feel beautiful.’
A long, breathless moment passed between them as he gazed into eyes that shone with a hundred emotions.
Then she straightened, put her hands on the table and pushed her chair back.
She stood up, the wrap that had covered her shoulders sliding off and falling into a puddle at her feet. She didn’t notice, a whole range of emotions flittering in hazel eyes that burned into him.
Slowly she trod towards him.
