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He captured her finger, his heart battering his ribs so hard now he was astonished that it didn’t jump right out of his chest.
‘He was right about me, though,’ he said.
‘What was he right about?’ She seemed puzzled—as if she really didn’t get it.
‘He called me a wharf rat. And that’s exactly what I was.’
He pushed the words out, and tried to feel relieved that he’d finally told her the truth. The one thing he’d been so desperate to keep from her all those years ago.
‘I grew up in a trailer park that was one step away from being the town dump. My old man was a drunk who got his kicks from beating the crap out of me, so I hung around the marina to get away from him until I got big enough to hit back.’
Even if the squalid truth about who he really was and where he’d come from could never undo all the stuff he’d done wrong, at least it would go some way to show her how truly sorry he was—for all the pain he’d caused.
‘If that doesn’t make me a wharf rat, I don’t know what does.’
Xanthe clutched the sheet covering her breasts, which were heaving now as if she’d just run a marathon. Her mind reeled from Dane’s statement. So it was his father who had caused those terrible scars on his back. She’d always suspected as much. Sympathy twisted in her stomach—not just for that boy, but for the look in Dane’s eyes now that told her he actually believed what he was saying.
How could she have got it so wrong? She had believed his silence about himself and his past had been the result of arrogance and pride and indifference, when what it had really been was defensiveness.
‘I’m sorry your father hurt you like that.’
And what did she do with the evidence that it still hurt her so much to know he’d been abused?
‘Don’t feel sorry for that little bastard,’ he said. ‘He didn’t deserve it.’
Of course he did. But how could she tell him that without giving away the truth—that a part of her had never stopped loving that boy.
‘My father called you a wharf rat because he was an unconscionable snob, Dane. It had nothing to do with you.’ That much at least she could tell him.
‘He loved you, Xan, and he wanted to protect you. There’s nothing wrong with that,’ he said with a weary resignation. ‘If I could have...’ His gaze strayed to her belly and the thin white scar left behind by the surgeon’s incision. ‘I would have protected our baby the same way.’
The admission cut through her, and emotions that were already far too close to the surface threatened to spill over.
God, how could she have accused him of not caring about their child when it was obvious now that he might have cared too much? Enough to blame himself for the things that her father—both their fathers—had done.
She bit down on the feelings threatening to choke her.
‘That’s where you’re wrong. He didn’t love me. He thought of me as his property.’
How come she had never acknowledged that until now? All those years she’d worked her backside off to please her father, to get his approval, never once questioning what he had ever done to deserve it.
‘I was an investment. The daughter who was going to marry a man of his choosing who would take over Carmichael’s when he was gone. My falling in love...having a child by a man he disapproved of and who refused to bow down to the mighty Charles Carmichael...they were the real reasons he hated you.’
Dane cupped her cheek, the cool touch making her heart ache even more.
‘I guess we both got a raw deal when the good Lord gave out daddies.’
She let out a half laugh, and the tears that had refused to fall for so long threatened to cascade over her lids.
She settled back into his arms, so he wouldn’t see them. ‘The baby was a little boy,’ she said, determined to concentrate on their past and not on their future, because they didn’t have one.
‘For real?’
She heard awe as well as sadness in his tone.
‘I thought you should know.’
Their baby, after all, was the only thing that had brought them together. Surely this chance to say goodbye to him properly would finally allow them to part.
