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Carmen frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Dad knew. He knew I wanted you, and he knew we were attracted to each other. When he confronted me, I told him I didn’t want to be a big brother to you. I told him I was going to ask you on a date. He forbade me, in no uncertain terms.”
“But I don’t understand. We heard him, on the day you left. We heard him shouting after you. Mum and I were in the drawing room and the door was open and we heard. He said that if you walked away from him—him—you wouldn’t ever be part of Burlington Manor.”
It was hard. He didn’t want it to sound as if it was her fault, because it wasn’t, but there wasn’t an easy way to tell the tale without old wounds being opened up. “He’d already warned me off you, but I guess him doing so only made it worse. After that one time in here—” he paused, gesturing toward the spot where she’d been sitting moments before “—I knew I had to speak to him, tell him I was serious about you. He wanted us to play the happy family, and in his mind that meant we were as good as blood relatives, when that wasn’t the case. He called me a freak, a deviant.” The anger he’d harbored toward his dad was rising fast. “He said it would be incest. Moron. He was a fucking control freak living in a dreamworld of his own making.”
Now that the wound was open his repressed feelings on the matter spilled out. “The old bastard wouldn’t let his new dream family be shattered. He said that I was only doing it to make us all unhappy. He even told me that if I pursued you, your life here would be ruined. I knew he would make sure of that, and I couldn’t do that to you.”
“Are you saying you left because of me?” Her expression said it all. She was incredulous.
There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”
“Rex, no.” She looked shocked, disturbed even. She turned away, looked back. “We wondered why you left, and I thought you got fed up because...” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Well, you know, we’d taken over your home.”
“I tried really hard to be what he wanted me to be, for your sake. I didn’t want him to punish you just because I couldn’t play your brother. Right until the end of the year I stuck it out, then I lost it. I did try. At that age, I felt I could deflect it by being with someone else. But no other woman could drive you out of my mind for long.”
She shook her head. “That Christmas was your last visit,” she whispered.
Rex nodded. That Christmas, when he’d told his father he would not participate in his fake family scenario any longer, and then he’d bedded Amanda out of sheer frustration. “I talked to him again. Told him I didn’t care whether he liked it or not. He was angry. He said that I’d ruin your life. I had to walk away. I didn’t want him to reject you, as well, because it was more than a stepdad for you—you’d have lost your mum, as well, and he told me he’d make sure Sylvia knew. It spilled out, right through the house.”
“You never came back. Because I’d seen you with Amanda, I thought it was because you wanted other girls instead of me.”
“No.”
Her hands went to her face, and she covered her mouth. It twisted the knife inside him. She was shocked. More shocked and upset than he thought she would be.
“Rex,” she whispered. She looked shattered. “I’m so sorry. I never knew that it was my fault, that I’d come between you and Charles.”
“Christ, no, it wasn’t your fault. The old man ruined everything for everybody.” He sighed. “It’s ironic, but I never expected him to leave me any part of it, not after I walked out on him that way. But he must have come to terms with the fact that it was you I had to leave, not him. None of this meant anything to me, not without you.”
He swallowed hard. In saying it aloud he’d admitted things he’d never truly acknowledged before. “I couldn’t live with those boundaries, not when it came to you. I refused to compromise, refused to play the happy family.”
He was going to say more, but suddenly she was right there in front of him and her hands were resting on his chest as she looked up at him, her lips softly parted as she studied his expression. “Rex.” Her voice faltered when she reached up and stroked his hair back. “Oh, my God, Rex. I had no idea.”
The contact was good, and she was soft and warm. It made him want to share it all, the deep subconscious thoughts he’d refused to acknowledge over the intervening years. “Walking away from him was about walking away from what he wanted—the ideal family he’d never had. With you and Sylvia here, he got closer to something he’d always dreamed of, and when I came back I was expected to fall in line and play the dutiful brother. But believe me, that was the last thing I wanted to play when it came to you.”
He gave a gruff laugh. “Selfish bastard. He couldn’t impose his will on me that way. All he cared about was having the perfect family and he didn’t care whose emotions he screwed with.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You should have told me back then. When you walked away you didn’t even say goodbye. I thought you didn’t care.”
“I cared too much. That was the problem. And I didn’t want to say goodbye. Not ever.”
She’d reached out for him. The way she touched him, the way she looked at him, made him want more.
“It was my fault.” Her frown deepened, her expression deeply regretful.
“No, it wasn’t. It was his fault.”
The way she stared up at him, lips softly parted, expression disbelieving, moved him, and he closed one arm around her waist. “I was crazy for you.”
“That’s why you never came back?”
He nodded.
“Oh. Rex.”
“It’s okay. I got over it. Although I never got over wanting you, but you know that already.” He smiled at her.
