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‘If I wasn’t a figure skater what would I be?’
‘Whatever you want to be. You’re the only one who can set limitations on yourself.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s just it. I don’t want to be anything else, but I was never given a choice of what I could be. Does that make sense?’
His fingers trapped in her hair. ‘Sí, it makes sense. But I don’t understand what this has to do with what happened three years ago.’
A flicker of shame singed her. ‘My father was against me coming to New York with Maria and Draco. He wanted me to return to Tuscany with him for the two-week break, like always. We...fought badly, but I refused to back down. But every minute I was away I was terrified of what he’d do.’
‘What do you mean? Did he physically hurt you?’
‘No, but he...had his ways when I disobeyed him.’
Javier flipped their positions and reared over her. ‘What ways?’
‘He would have my trainer double my training, or my favourite horse would suddenly be lent to a neighbour’s daughter for the summer.’
His jaw tightened. ‘He wanted to show you he was in control.’
‘Sì. But three years ago, I turned twenty-one. And I challenged his authority by taking my two-week break without him. But that wasn’t all I did. I called my mother and begged her to intercede with him on my behalf over his controlling behaviour.’ Her voice broke, the emotions she’d held in check for so long bubbling to the surface.
A firm hand cupped her jaw, his thumb trailing over her cheek. ‘What did he do?’
‘He called me...during your party. He told me he was disappointed in me. That I shouldn’t have got my mother involved in our lives again.’
‘Again?’ he queried.
Carla swallowed. ‘She left when I was ten. I won the regional skating championship when I was nine, and had been scouted for the nationals. My mother thought I was too young for the intensity of the training. My father disagreed. They fought for a solid year and, towards the end, their arguments got more intense. My father never physically abused her, but I could tell he was close to it.’ She shuddered in remembrance of the latent violence that had lingered in those confrontations. ‘The week before she left, she cried every night. When she told me she was leaving, I was shattered, but I was also relieved.’
Javier’s eyes darkened with quiet fury. ‘She never contemplated taking you with her?’
‘My father would never have allowed her to do that. He worked in a factory when I was a child. The moment he realised my potential, he gave up his job. I was his ticket to a dream life and he wasn’t about to let it go.’ Bitterness and sorrow duelled for supremacy within her. Javier saw it, leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on her lips.
Tears prickled her eyes but she blinked them away.
‘So you reached out to her when you turned twenty-one...?’
‘My father had planned out my life for the next five years, and I was suffocating.’
‘You could’ve walked away, started afresh with a new management team.’
She shook her head. ‘We’re locked into a management agreement that ends when I’m twenty-five. Or at least we were. Once this new deal goes through, I’ll be free of him.’
He swore under his breath. ‘So your mother was your only option?’
Her heart shuddered, regret biting deep. ‘She agreed to talk to him. She was on her way to Tuscany when I came to Miami. He called me during your party, and I’d never heard him so angry. Something in his voice scared me, but I convinced myself it was nothing.’
‘That’s why you got drunk?’
She gave a shaky nod. ‘I wanted to drown him out...to drown everything out.’ She risked a glance at him and fou
nd his steady, intense gaze on her. ‘I didn’t regret what happened to us, but...’
‘But?’ he bit out.
‘But, I would’ve done things differently if I’d had another chance.’
‘How differently?’
