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He tensed, his face tautening into an implacable mask. ‘If you’re trying to get on my good side, this isn’t the way to go about it.’
‘Please. I’m just trying to understand why you
hate me so much.’
He vaulted off her, his breath escaping in harsh exhalations. Locks of hair hung in unruly waves, but even that dishevelled look lent him a rakish air that threatened to reignite her thawing senses.
Sitting up, she swung her legs to the floor and kept them firmly, unwillingly closed. She watched him stride to the drinks cabinet and pour himself a stiff drink. Tossing it back, he poured a glass of water and returned to set it down on the table next to her.
All without speaking.
She sighed. ‘Clearly something happened to make all this torturing of me necessary. The least you can do is tell me the reason for my suffering.’
A harsh bark of laughter cracked across the room. ‘You think you’re suffering?’
She caught his meaning when her gaze dropped below his belt. Her blush was furnace-hot and deeply embarrassing. ‘You know what I mean.’
He sliced his hand through his hair, unsettling the strands even more. ‘And you think understanding where I’m coming from will free you to give yourself permission to accept my touch?’ he snarled.
‘Why do you act as if I’ve treated you like a leper?’
His smile was terse and cruel. ‘You were singularly memorable in your urgency to get away from me the morning after we had sex, querida.’
She shook her head. ‘I can tell you until I’m hoarse that I slept with you because I wanted to. I just didn’t deal very well with the aftermath. And you’re changing the subject.’ She firmed her voice, meeting his blazing gaze without flinching.
Slowly he sauntered towards her. Instead of taking the seat next to her, he sat down on the large teak coffee table that complemented the rest of the earth-toned, conceptually stunning décor. His thighs braced on either side of hers, he leaned forward on his elbows, another hard smile showcasing his impressive cheekbones. ‘You want to know what havoc your father’s little digging expedition wreaked?’
She held firm and nodded.
‘Muy bien,’ he grunted. ‘My mother was seventeen and on her way to church one day when she caught the eye of a rich man in his fancy car. To most people that sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale. From my mother, it was the beginning of the end, only she didn’t know it at the time. She’d led a strict, sheltered life and had no idea she’d caught the eye of the son of the baron from the neighbouring town. A married son of a baron twice her age. He seduced her, alienated her from her family, who eventually disowned her, and set her up in a run-down house on the edge of his estate. That was where I was born six years later. I was delivered by a retired midwife because my father didn’t want anyone to know he’d fathered a bastard, which was a standing joke because everyone knew, of course.’
Carla’s chest tightened at the pain etched on his face.
‘There were complications with my birth. My mother survived, but she was never completely whole. She should have been in a hospital with medical professionals not in a shack with an old woman to birth me.’ The hands dangling between his legs tightened into hard fists. ‘I grew up knowing he was the man who had wilfully sacrificed my mother’s health on the altar of his reputation. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only unsavoury trait he possessed. He strung my mother along with the usual empty promise to leave his baroness for her, even while she supplied him with heirs and spares on a regular basis.’
‘So you have half-brothers and sisters?’
One masculine eyebrow cocked. ‘Of course not. I don’t exist, remember?’
She flinched, and barely resisted the urge to touch him. ‘You exist. If to no one else you must have done to your mother.’
‘She home schooled me at his insistence—private school was never on the cards on account of his many children needing his every euro. I was only allowed to play in the garden of the house. While boys my age were bonding over football, I wasn’t even allowed to climb a tree in case I hurt myself and I had to suffer the presence of the village doctor.’
Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away quickly before he spotted the helpless empathy that blazed in her heart for him. Just for something to do, she picked up her water glass and took a sip, her heart tripping frantically as he continued.
‘The upside of all that cloistered existence was that I excelled academically. If nothing else, she was quietly proud of me for not letting her down the way my father had.’
‘Did she ever leave him?’
A haunted smile touched his lips, as if he was caught in a despondent memory. ‘I bought her several homes around the world, had the best horticulturists recreate her beloved garden in each home. She didn’t stay in any property for more than a few weeks, a month at most. It was almost as if she couldn’t physically stand to be away from that godforsaken ramshackle house, waiting for that bastard to spare her a crumb of his time.’ His voice was an edgy sneer, his jaw clenched tight.
‘Did you two ever interact?’
‘I didn’t actually see him up close until I was nine years old. I broke my boundaries and snuck off to the big castle on the hill—it was surprisingly easy. I hid in the bushes and watched him playing tennis with one of his other children. I wanted to walk up to him, announce who I was and spit in his face for making my mother cry late at night when she thought I was asleep.’
A light shudder quivered through him and she knew he was caught up in memory. This time, she ventured a light touch.
The moment her fingers grazed his knuckles, he jerked away. Springing to his feet, he paced to the window. Carla curled her fingers, berating herself for being hurt by his rejection when all the hurt in this situation belonged to him.
