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‘I do love you Jay.’ It was the truth, after all.
His kiss was so sweet and tender, so loving and giving—so very precious when she knew it could be their last.
‘I recently opened a letter thanking me for my substantial gift. I take it that donating money to a charity that aids prostitutes was your way of underlining my offence, firstly in misjudging you and secondly in thinking I could buy you?’
It would be easy to be a coward and agree, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. She took a deep breath and stepped out of the protection of his arms, fixing her gaze on the wall and not on Jay.
‘Actually, I donated your money to that particular charity because of my mother. She was a prostitute, you see, and a drug addict.’
Silence.
‘She’s dead now. She died when I was twelve. Like mother, like daughter—that’s what the great-aunt who took me in after her death used to say to me. It’s what people think, isn’t it? I feared at one stage that I could grow to be like her myself. She often said to me herself that I would.’
Still silence.
‘You’re shocked, of course. And disgusted. People are—it’s only natural. What kind of responsible parent would want their child playing with a child whose mother sold her body to buy drugs? Certainly the parents of the children I was at school with didn’t, and who could blame them? And what kind of man would want to take the risk of having a relationship with a woman whose mother had sex with men for money? You won’t want me now, Jay. I know that. You have a responsibility, after all, to your name and to your position.’
‘Was that why you stayed a virgin? Because of your mother?’
His question surprised her into looking at him. The silver-grey gaze was filled with something that looked close to pity. Pity? Shouldn’t he be regarding her with contempt?
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Keira wanted to refuse, but somehow she discovered that instead she was telling him how she had felt—the pain of her childhood with its conflicting and confusing feelings, the love for her mother that had sometimes been more like anger and sometimes filled with despair.
‘Once I was old enough to understand, I hated what she did,’ she told him. ‘And sometimes I hated her too, for being what she was. As I grew up we would quarrel about it. During one of our quarrels I told her that I was ashamed of her, and that I would never let myself end up like her. I probably hurt her, although I couldn’t see that at the time. She laughed at me and told me that I wouldn’t have a choice. She said that since I was her daughter I had inherited her promiscuous nature and that sooner or later, as she put it, some lad would come along and I’d open my legs for him. She said it would be expected of me, and that—like her—I’d love the wrong kind of men for the wrong kind of reasons.’
Keira had to stop talking to swallow against her own sadness. Her mother must have felt so alone and unloved, but she had never seen that before. She had been too young and too emotionally immature herself then to see it. If nothing else, loving Jay had taught her to view her mother in a different and surely a fairer light.
‘What she said left me feeling both frightened and angry. I swore to myself that if I had her nature then I would make sure I controlled it.’
‘By never having sex?’ Jay guessed.
Keira nodded her head.
‘Yes. It was easy until I met you. I never guessed…I had no idea…’
‘I made you feel that you were like your mother?’
Keira shook her head.
‘At first, yes. But then later, once we were lovers, my physical hunger for you showed me that I could never be like my mother. I wanted you so passionately, so exclusively, that I knew I could never give, never mind sell to another man, what I only wanted to give to you. I thank you for that, Jay—because knowing that has freed me from my fear of my own sexuality. My great-aunt and my mother both warned me that I would end up like my mother, but I know now that that will never happen. You won’t want me now, of course.’
‘On the contrary. If anything, what you have just told me makes me love you even more.’
Keira couldn’t believe her ears.
