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‘I’m serious, Ashley—don’t be so evasive.’
Yet surely he was the one who had made evasion into an art form. Who clammed up whenever she tried to find out anything about his past and blocked any attempts to question him. But he was the boss and she supposed that gave him the right to ask questions—even in a setting like this one. ‘What would you like to know?’ she hedged. ‘You’ve read my CV.’
‘I’m not talking about your qualifications! I want to know more about you. I know your parents are dead but that’s about all. What about brothers and sisters—do you have any?’
Awkwardly, Ashley shifted, wishing that she could just pull away from him and roll to the other side of the rumpled bed—away from the temptation of his body and the questions in his black eyes. Her past was a country she had no wish to revisit and usually she fielded questions about it with a self-protective zeal and for good reason. People tended to judge you when you’d had an unconventional upbringing. But Jack was the man to whom she had just given her virginity—who had just made her feel things she’d never expected to feel. Wouldn’t it be bizarre to withhold information from him when he was just trying to get to know her better?
‘No, I don’t. I’m an only child,’ she said reluctantly. ‘And my mother died when I was small.’
‘What about your father?’
There was a pause while Ashley considered her options. Jack might seem interested in her past but when it boiled down to it—he was descended from a rich and well-connected family. Wouldn’t he be appalled by the truth behind her circumstances? But you can’t hide it from him—for there should be no secrets between lovers. And wouldn’t it be better if he knew everything from the outset—so that he can reject you sooner, rather than later?
‘I never knew my father.’ She forced the words out. ‘In fact, I don’t know if my mother knew him either.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Hadn’t she always been honest with him? ‘One of my foster mothers used to take great delight in telling me that my mother was a… a slut.’ Ashley swallowed, her fingernails digging into the palms of her clenched hands. ‘And that she slept with men in order to buy drugs.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you trying to shock me, Ashley?’
‘No, I’m telling you the plain and unvarnished truth,
Jack—I thought that’s what you wanted. How do I know whether or not it will shock you? You’ve seen more terrible things in your army days than most men would wish to see in a lifetime.’
He gave an odd kind of laugh as he thought how cleverly she had turned the question round and how, unwittingly, she had struck a blow at his conscience. ‘Did someone once teach you the seductive power of truth?’ he questioned, aware that he was skating on very thin ice indeed—but, ruthlessly, he closed his mind to it. Instead he pulled her closer and let her aroused and very feminine scent remove the thoughts which so troubled him.
She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t taught anything of any use.’
‘Oh, yes, you were.’ He took her by the shoulders, his fingers biting into her soft, bare flesh, and his black gaze burned into her. ‘Somewhere along the way you learned how to burrow beneath a man’s skin with quite stunning effectiveness.’
‘Don’t say these things to me, Jack,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t you like compliments?’
‘Only if they’re true.’
‘Oh, they’re true, all right. Every word.’ But he frowned as he heard the suspicion in her voice and thought about what she’d told him. ‘It must have been a tough childhood,’ he observed slowly.
She wondered what it would be like to admit to one of those ‘normal’ households, so beloved of advertisers. Mummy and Daddy and perhaps a sibling, or two. The shiny car on the drive and the shared family meals around a table. Birthday cakes and Christmas trees and a pet dog who would chew their shoes and make them all laugh with careless indulgence.
And yet some instinct told Ashley that she wouldn’t be lying here if she’d had that type of childhood. Because hadn’t the hardship and loneliness she’d experienced—all the stuff which had damaged her—hadn’t that forged some kind of strange bond between them? Because in ways she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she recognised that Jack was damaged too. Was it just his experience in the army which had made him like that?
‘It was difficult,’ she said carefully.
‘How difficult?’
She bit her lip as the memories came rushing in on a dark tide. ‘Where do I begin? I mean, is there really any point in reliving the past and remembering all the foster parents who shouldn’t have been let near a child? The ones who did it for money or to fill up the empty spaces in their own bad relationships? The ones who.’ Her voice tailed off.
His face darkened. ‘The ones who hit you?’
She shook her head. ‘They didn’t hit me.’
r /> ‘Were cruel to you, then, in some other way?’
She remembered the locked cupboard and the sense of imprisonment. The walls closing in on her until she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. The expression of shock on the doctor’s face. The breath caught in her throat as she stared at him. ‘How did you know that?’ she whispered.
‘Instinct, I guess. An instinct which can seek out suffering and can read pain.’ And then he swore very softly. ‘All your life you’ve been taken advantage of,’ he added bitterly. ‘And now I’ve just done exactly the same.’
