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The cup jumped in his hand, sloshed coffee on his slacks. “My mother? What does she have to do with it?”
“She worked in a play with Draco.”
“Your mother’s an actress?” Carly angled her head.
“She was. She retired years ago. Before I was born.” He set his cup down, rubbed ineffectually at his slacks. “Leave my mother alone. She hasn’t done anything.”
“Did I say she had?” Nerves, Eve thought. He couldn’t keep his hands still for them. “You know then, that she had been intimate with Draco at one time.”
“It was nothing. It was years ago.”
“Your mother and Richard?” Carly drew back to study his face. “Oh. Sticky.” And there was sympathy in her eyes. “Don’t let it rattle you, sweetie.”
But it had, obviously. “Look, she had a bit part, that’s all. She wasn’t a serious actress. She told me. She and my father have been together ever since…She wouldn’t have told me except she knew I admired him, that I was going to audition for his stand-in. He used her. He liked using women.”
He looked steadily at Carly now. “She got over him. Smart women do.”
His mother, Eve decided, or maybe women in general, was his weak spot. “Yeah, he liked using women. Young, pretty women. They were toys to him, and he got bored with his toys fairly quickly. Your mother gave up her career, her hopes for it, because of him.”
“Maybe.” Michael blew out a breath. “Maybe that was part of it. But she made a new life, she’s happy in it.”
“He hurt her.”
“Yeah.” His gaze flashed up, ripe with bitterness. “Yeah, he hurt her. You want me to say I hated him for it? Maybe I did, on some level.”
“Michael, don’t say any more,” Carly warned.
“The hell with that.” His voice took on conviction as well as anger. “She’s talking about my mother. She wasn’t some cheap tramp, some toy he picked up then tossed aside. She was a nice, naive girl. He took advantage of that, of her.”
“Did he give her illegals, Michael?” Eve asked. “Did he give her a taste for them?”
“No. He tried. The son of a bitch.”
“Michael, you don’t have to answer her questions.”
“I’m going to straighten this out, right now.” Heat rolled off him in violent waves. “She told me that she came into the room and he was putting drops of something in her drink. She asked him what it was, and he just laughed. He said…my mother doesn’t use hard language, but she told me exactly what he said. It would make her fuck like a rabbit.”
Muscles quivered in his jaw as he stared at Eve. “She didn’t even know what it meant. But I knew, when she told me, I knew. The bastard tried to slip her Wild Rabbit.”
“But she didn’t drink it?”
“No, it scared her. She told him she didn’t want anything to drink, and that’s when he got mad. He called her names, tried to make her drink it. She realized then what kind of man he was and she ran. She was crushed, disillusioned. She went back home. She told me that was the best thing that ever happened to her, going home.
“He didn’t even remember her,” Michael added. “He didn’t even have the decency to remember her name.”
“You spoke to him about her?”
“I wanted to see how he’d react. He didn’t even pretend to remember. She meant nothing to him. No one did.”
“Did you tell him? Remind him?”
“No.” He deflated, the heat evaporating. “No, I didn’t see the point. And if I’d pushed it, I’d have lost the job.”
“Don’t. Don’t let it hurt you.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed in speculation as Carly slipped her arms around him, soothed. They stayed narrowed and cool when Carly shot her a burning glare. “Leave him alone. Do you get your kicks picking on people weaker than you?”
“It’s what gets me through the day.” You’re not weak, Eve thought. Did the people who made you form you, she wondered. Or the people who raised you?
