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Nate ran his hands through his hair. ‘He punched me. And he kept on punching me, until Maria came running into the bedroom in her nightdress and pulled him off me. I don’t remember much after that. She patched me up, and begged me not to tell my grandfather.’ He bunched his fingers into a fist, bumped it against the wheel. ‘It makes me sick to think of it, even now. She was pleading with me, while Zane glowered in the corner, his knuckles bleeding and the fury in his face something I’d never seen before or since. She was terrified she’d lose her job. I don’t think she would have—my grandpa was an autocratic, old-fashioned guy, not an easy man by any means, but he understood about responsibility. Unlike my father.’ He dropped his head back on the seat, the sinews in his neck stretching. ‘I found out years later that Maria had been working as a kitchen maid at the place in Bel Air. She was sixteen and beautiful and my father got her pregnant. My mother fired her as soon as she started to show—I guess having my father’s bastard around would have spoiled the party atmosphere,’ he sneered.
Tess’s stomach twisted at the casual cruelty of two people who had only ever thought of their own pleasure.
No wonder Nate had once paid for another man’s child. And been so angry with Marlena’s lie about the pregnancy. And no wonder he was so determined to live up to his own r
esponsibility towards this baby. But where did that leave her, and her child? Were his feelings towards them both nothing more than payment for a debt he had never really owed? And why did that suddenly feel like not enough?
‘What did Maria do?’ Tess asked, swallowing down the little blip of panic. She wasn’t Maria. She wasn’t that young and had never been that innocent and she hadn’t been taken advantage of by Nate. And she didn’t need more from Nate than he was prepared to give her, not emotionally anyway. She was perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet—give or take the odd housing crisis or junked Impala.
‘She had the good sense to ask my grandfather for work. Without references she didn’t have a lot of options, but he hired her on the spot. I don’t know if he knew then she was carrying my father’s child, but he probably suspected.’ He choked out a harsh laugh. ‘I doubt Zane’s my only half-sibling. My father was...’ He hesitated, his face grim with barely concealed contempt. ‘Careless,’ he said eventually. ‘In every respect. And he liked to seduce women he employed. It made it that much harder for them to say no, or to cause a fuss when he got bored with them.’
‘I’m so sorry, Nate,’ Tess said, her heart beating a steady tattoo of regret and sympathy. How dreadful it must have been for him, someone with so many scruples, to live in the shadow of a man with none at all.
‘What have you got to be sorry about?’ Nate asked, puzzled.
‘I’m sorry that your dad was such a scumbag!’ she said forcefully, and then winced a little when he frowned.
Way to go, Tess, why not make him feel even worse about his heritage?
But then his brows lifted and his lips quirked. ‘I never thought of him as my dad,’ he said. ‘But you’re dead right about him being a scumbag. They both were.’ He rolled his shoulders, his face relaxing into a smile. ‘I can’t believe I told you all that,’ he murmured, his gaze rolling over her face. ‘Thanks for listening. I guess I needed to tell someone, and you got stuck with the job.’
The odd note of embarrassment was endearing. ‘We need to get to know each other. You said so yourself. I guess talking about our terrible childhoods is as good a way as any.’
He touched his thumb to her bottom lip, and she felt the shiver of reaction that was never far from the surface. ‘I can think of a better way,’ he said, the shiver becoming a definite spark.
She brushed his hand away, but couldn’t hide her response to the suggestive tone. ‘So you’ve said.’
He eased back in his seat, the slow seductive smile as devastating as always. ‘So your parents sucked too?’
She shook her head, sobering considerably. Guilt wasn’t something she did very well. ‘No, they didn’t. My mother was...’ She hesitated. How did you describe a person you had grieved for a lot longer than you had ever known? ‘My mother was funny, and sweet. And totally devoted to my dad and me. And she died when I was twelve years old in a car crash.’
Nate took her hand in his and rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. ‘I’m sorry.’ The gruff condolence and the tender gesture made the long-ago grief sharp again.
‘For years I was so angry,’ Tess murmured, seeing it all so clearly for the first time. ‘I missed her. I wanted her back. The truth was I was an only child and she’d spoiled me horribly. Nothing was as good as it used to be and it wasn’t fair. A few weeks after the funeral, I remember giving Janey Prisley’s mum the evil eye and wishing she would die instead so I could have my mum back.’ She shot Nate a wry look. ‘I didn’t like Janey very much.’
His lips quirked. ‘Or her mom by the sound of it.’
‘Her mum was actually very sweet.’ If not that intuitive. ‘She was forever asking me how my father and I were doing. But I hated her for it, because it made me stand out.’
‘So you wished her dead. Sounds fair enough to me,’ he said amicably.
‘It’s not, it’s awful,’ Tess countered, remembering all the very inventive ways she’d imagined killing off Janey’s perfectly sweet mother.
‘No, it’s not,’ he said. ‘I never wanted to be the only kid in school whose parents didn’t bother to show for Little League games or science fairs or parent-teacher conferences. So I hated all the kids whose parents did bother. But that was pretty much all of them, which eventually made it too damn exhausting.’
Tess laughed, as she was sure he had intended her to.
‘Kids are egocentric—putting themselves first’s a survival instinct,’ he said, quoting her own advice back at her. ‘Losing your mom takes a lot of surviving. You’ve got nothing to feel bad about.’
‘I suppose not,’ she said, impossibly grateful for his vote of confidence, even though she knew he was putting a better spin on her behaviour than she probably deserved. ‘But what is awful is the way I treated my dad. I went totally off the rails for three years. I smoked, I drank, I got my nose pierced, I stayed out all night, dated boys I knew he would hate.’ She’d always admitted she’d been a little wild, but the truth was she’d been totally out of control. ‘I even got a tattoo!’
‘A tattoo?’ His eyes lit up. ‘Where? I haven’t spotted one.’
She giggled, gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. ‘Don’t get excited. I had it removed years ago.’
‘What was it? And where?’ he asked, his prurient sexual fantasies apparently undimmed by the truth.
‘Guess?’ she said, unable to resist playing up to the wicked gleam in his gaze.
