AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her words spoke volumes about her own outlook, but then, he already understood this facet of Lucinda. From the moment she’d arrived, she’d lobbied hard to give Evie her dream wedding. She’d fought hard for a woman she’d never met, because of the connection of being without parents. How deeply did this experience define Lucinda?
‘Whereas you prefer to make people happy.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
He put his hand over hers, staring at the visage they made. ‘Nothing.’ His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat, focusing the conversation back on less tenuous ground. ‘Did you love this man?’
She bit down on her lower lip and his abdomen tightened. ‘I thought I did. Looking back, I think I was just desperate to be in love, and, more importantly, to be loved by someone in return.’
‘After your father died, was there no one besides your stepmother who could have raised you? Grandparents? Aunts and uncles?’
‘No. No one.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said with sincerity.
Lucinda’s smile was uneven, a failed attempt at the gesture. ‘I didn’t really want to move out, anyway. It’s the only home I’ve ever known, and to think of my stepmother and stepsisters living there, without me, without Dad.’ She shook her head, her eyes shifting as though searching for words. ‘It was like a bomb had gone off right in the middle of my life,’ she said quietly, with no idea that she was speaking to someone who’d lived through an actual explosion, and knew exactly what a detonation sounded like, smelled like, tasted like. He tried to push away the memories, seared into his brain, and focus instead on her words. She’d invoked an expression, that was all. ‘One minute it was just Dad and me. The next, he’d fallen madly in love and was getting married.’
‘And you supported him in this.’
‘Of course,’ she responded instantly. ‘He was my father and I wanted him to be happy. I thought she’d make him happy.’
‘And did she?’
Lucinda hesitated. ‘I don’t have enough experience of relationships to say for sure. Perhaps it was a different kind of happiness. More complex, maybe more rewarding? I don’t know.’
He lifted his hand to her cheek, pushing some hair behind her ear then returning it to her hand. Just the simple contact stirred heat in his veins, renewed desire. ‘Did they argue?’
‘Not really. They just didn’t seem to “click”. Maybe I had romanticised ideas of what a great relationship should be like. I was only fifteen and, to that point, had watched a heck of a lot of Disney movies and read my fill of romance novels,’ she said with a soft smile. ‘I thought he’d stepped into a fantasy and that our life was going to be everything I’d always wanted. A real family, at last.’ She shook her head. ‘But instead, I kind of...’
‘Yes?’ he prompted, when she tapered off into silence.
‘I sort of just lost my dad, from the moment they were married. All of the little rituals we had stopped overnight. My stepmother seemed to resent anything that he and I shared. I wanted to include them, but she preferred to start new traditions.’
‘That’s insensitive.’
‘Yes.’ Lucinda’s features tightened, her face showing pain, so he wanted to ease it, to push it away for her. He’d known enough of those torturous inner feelings to wish to free her from them for life. ‘I don’t know what happened to my stepmother to make her the way she is. I used to want to try to know, to understand her and even help her, but...’
‘She pushed you too far.’
Her eyes flared wide at his perceptive comment. ‘Yes,’ she agreed softly. ‘Now I just want her out of my life.’ She flipped her hand over, capturing his, her fingers brushing the skin between his thumb and forefinger. ‘I wish her well. I want her to be happy. I just don’t want her to be anywhere near me.’
‘And your stepsisters?’
‘Them too.’
He could imagine what it took for a woman like Lucinda, who was all kindness and goodness, to express such feelings about anyone. ‘How old were you when this man left you for your stepsister?’
‘Nineteen. It feels like a lifetime ago.’
‘Did they stay together?’
She shook her head. ‘It was never really about that. Sofia seduced him just to take him away from me. I had something good in my life, I was happy and felt loved for the first time in a long time, and I guess she didn’t like that.’
He bit back the curse that came to mind. ‘What about him?’
‘He was...not the man I thought him to be. He didn’t even fight for what we shared. I meant nothing to him,’ she added, the last words said so calmly and yet he felt the tension emanating from them, the importance of that phrase to her being, in some way.
‘And so you swore off men and relationships?’
‘It wasn’t so dramatic as that.’ A smile tugged at her lips and something in the region of his heart glowed warm. ‘More than anything, I just couldn’t imagine getting close to someone, only to have them leave me again. So I focused on the business.’
‘And that became your life.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘And it’s enough for me. It’s all I want, Thirio. It’s all I’ll ever want.’
