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‘Just your temper.’
He glanced down at the papers again, felt a stirring of regret. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have become so angry.’
‘You must be used to this kind of thing,’ Natalia said, gesturing to the paper. ‘Your family is always featured in the tabloids back in England.’ He knew it all too well. ‘I’ve worked very hard to make sure I’m not featured in—’
‘Which is exactly why you’re so annoyed that you got dragged in this time,’ she finished curtly. ‘Shall I shed a tear? Now you know how it feels.’
He’d been dragged in before, and he hated it, but he wasn’t about to tell Natalia that. ‘Are you saying you don’t go after that kind of publicity? That you’re innocent?’
‘Is that so hard to believe?’
‘You know your own history—’
‘Better than you do.’
‘You’re saying none of what the tabloids print is true?’ Ben demanded. He watched her flush, and with a jolt of regret he realised he’d hurt her.
‘Not all of it is true,’ she said stiffly. ‘And in this instance, no, I didn’t plan it all. Really, you give me far too much credit. I took everyone out to lunch yesterday to be nice. End of story. And when we were coming out of the wine bar I tripped. You saw my broken heel yourself. The press jumped all over it as they always do, and they made it look as naughty as they could.’ Her lush lips curved in a brittle smile. ‘Really, I wouldn’t expect anything less.’
Ben stared at her. Even though she was effecting a careless, relaxed pose, he suspected that’s all it was. A pose. He sensed a deeper, darker sea of emotions churning underneath. Disappointment. Hurt. Fear. Anger too—and he didn’t know if it was directed at him, the press or maybe even the whole world. If she hated the tabloid coverage, he wondered, why on earth did she go out of her way to get it? Granting interviews. Posing for photos. Waving at the cameras. He’d assumed she enjoyed the notoriety.
Now he wondered. Was Natalia just pretending—and why? It was a question he didn’t really feel like examining…or answering.
He straightened, raking his hands through his hair before dropping them to his sides. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I see now that I overreacted a bit because I hate the press.’
‘You hate the press?’ She widened her eyes in mocking astonishment. ‘What a surprise.’
‘Shocking, I know—’
‘Did something happen,’ Natalia asked abruptly, ‘to make you hate it so much? Something specific?’
Ben pressed his lips together. He had no desire to trot out his little sob stories, his mother’s distress at having her private heartache made into public shame, how the press had pounced on his own weaknesses again and again to milk a story. ‘I simply find the entire practice of making money off people’s anguish completely reprehensible.’ He stopped himself from saying anything more, for he knew he’d already revealed too much. Anguish. Yes, that’s what his mother had felt. What he had felt. Yet he didn’t want Natalia to know. ‘I suspect having you volunteer here has challenged me as much as it has you.’
‘As long as we’re both getting something out of it.’
‘When I asked you to volunteer,’ he continued steadily, ‘I didn’t foresee this kind of press coverage.’ That wasn’t, he knew, quite true. He had anticipated something like it, but he’d willfully ignored it, told himself he could handle it. And right now it felt like he couldn’t. ‘That was foolish on my part, I realise.’
Natalia’s eyes flashed, this time with sudden humour. ‘Wait a minute. You asked me?’
Ben felt a flicker of admiration for the way she adjusted, always matching him. And a flicker of something else. He watched her chest rise and fall under that crisp white blouse and he wanted to undo its buttons. ‘Didn’t I ask?’ he said, feigning confused innocence. ‘And you so politely agreed?’ A wry smile tugged at his mouth, and she smiled back, the moment spinning on and turning into something else—something that reminded Ben of how slender and lithe her body had felt last night, how close his lips had been to hers. How much he’d wanted to kiss her.
