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Overwhelmed by his generosity, Evie swallowed. ‘Rio—you didn’t have to do this—’
‘I wanted to. As a thank you.’ He slid his hands into her hair and brought his mouth down to hers and Evie immediately responded, wrapping her arms around his strong neck and pressing her body against his.
As a thank you. Of course. What else?
And she knew it was also a goodbye.
After tomorrow, it would be over. She wouldn’t see him again.
He hadn’t said what he wanted to do about ending their relationship in public, but presumably he’d chosen to wait until after Christmas Day so that her grandfather wasn’t upset.
Rio pressed his mouth to her neck and gave a groan. ‘We probably shouldn’t be doing this—’
‘I want to.’ Evie spoke without hesitation, her eyes closing as he slowly unzipped her coat and trailed his mouth lower. ‘I want to spend tonight with you.’ If this was their last night together, then she wanted something she could remember for ever. She wanted memories to keep her warm.
She couldn’t have him for ever, but she could have him for now.
‘You’re sure?’ His voice was deep and husky and she nodded.
‘Completely sure.’
It was only later, much later, when she was lying in the darkness, cocooned in his arms and sleepy from his loving, that she asked the question that had been hovering on her lips for days. ‘Will you tell me why you hate Christmas? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but—’
‘It was never a good time of year for me.’ He tightened his grip on her. ‘Every Christmas was a nightmare. I’m the product of a long-term affair between my mother and a very senior politician who was married with his own family. Christmas Day was the one day he always spent with them. I was eight years old when he finally found the courage to tell her he was never going to leave his wife. I found her body lying under the Christmas tree when I got up in the morning.’ He spoke the words in a flat monotone, the same voice he might have used when discussing the share price.
Evie lay immobile, shock seeping through her in icy rivulets, like melting snow. The vision played out in her brain in glorious Technicolor. An excited eight-year-old dashing downstairs to see if Santa had left presents under the tree and discovering death in all its brutal glory.
She wanted to say something—she wanted to find the perfect words that would soothe and heal—but she knew that such words didn’t exist. She knew from experience that there weren’t always words that could smooth the horrors of life, but she also knew that human comfort could sometimes warm when the temperature of life turned bitter cold. So she tightened her grip on him and pressed her lips against his warm skin, her muffled words intended to comfort, not cure.
‘The doctor had given her tablets for depression.’ Now that he’d started speaking, he seemed to want to continue. ‘She’d swallowed them all, along with a bottle of champagne her lover had given her for Christmas. I called an ambulance but it was too late.’
Evie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘So what did you do? Where did you go?’ She thought of her own loving grandparents and the tears streamed down her face and dampened his skin. ‘Did you have family?’
‘I gave the hospital the number of my father—’ he wiped her tears with his fingers and gave a humourless laugh ‘—that must have been quite a Christmas lunch, don’t you think? I believe it was his wife who answered the phone so he probably had some explaining to do.’
‘Did he take you into his family?’
‘Yes, on the surface. As a senior politician he had to be seen to be doing the right thing and I was effectively an orphan. In practice, they sent me to boarding school and tried to pretend I didn’t exist. His wife saw me as a reminder of her husband’s lengthy infidelity, his daughter saw me as competition and my father saw me as nothing but a bomb ready to explode his career. He told me I’d never make anything of myself.’
‘He should have been ashamed of himself—’
‘His career disintegrated soon after that, so I don’t think life was easy for him.’
Evie pressed her damp cheek against his chest. ‘So now I understand why you were prepared to fight so hard for your little girl. Why you wanted to be a father to her.’ And she understood why every Christmas tree slashed at the wound he’d buried so deep. And yet he’d put his own feelings aside in order to decorate the Penthouse for her. She wanted to ask why he’d done that—why he’d put himself through that. ‘I love you, Rio.’ Suddenly it seemed terribly important that she tell him, no matter what happened when the sun rose. No matter what he thought of her. ‘I love you. I know you don’t love me back—I can understand why you’re so afraid to love after what you learned about relationships as a child, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about you. I want you to know you’re loved.’
He gave a low groan and pulled her onto him, wrapping his arms around her. ‘I know you love me. I saw it in your eyes when you looked at me in the park.’
‘Oh.’ Embarrassed, she gave a tiny laugh. ‘So much for hiding my feelings. Just don’t ever invite me to play poker.’
‘Evie—’
‘Don’t say anything.’ She pressed her mouth to his. ‘This has happened to you a load of times before. I know it has. It’s fine. Don’t let’s think about tomorrow. Let’s just enjoy right now. Right now is all that matters.’
She lay awake in the darkness, holding him, wishing she could hold the moment for ever and stop dawn breaking.
It was the end, she knew that.
For the first time in her life, she didn’t want Christmas Day to come.
