AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She glanced round to see Rye sitting beside her, his injured leg stretched out in front of him.
‘Nothing,’ she replied, not about to relay her thoughts.
A casual fling was a casual fling and it was a little lowering to realise that she hadn’t quite been able to accept it at face value, even though she knew she should.
He laid a hand on her knee, rubbed gently. ‘Are you sure?’
She sent him a rueful smile—for a sex machine, the man could be quite sensitive. ‘Positive.’ She covered his hand with hers.
He looked down at their joined hands and she felt him stiffen almost imperceptibly.
She lifted her hand, knowing she’d crossed some invisible barrier without meaning to.
He looked away but, just as she felt a prickle of unease, he spoke. ‘You shouldn’t let what your parents did matter,’ he said, his voice distant but sincere.
His eyes met hers and for one brief moment she thought she saw a pain so raw and so all-consuming it took her breath away.
‘They can screw you up,’ he said, the tone dull and flat, the flash of pain gone as if it had never been. ‘But only if you let them.’
‘I see,’ she replied. But she didn’t see, not really. And suddenly she wanted to. Maybe this was only a casual fling, but he’d probed into her past this morning; why shouldn’t she probe his? ‘What were your parents like?’
‘Mine?’ His eyes widened. ‘Who knows?’ He gave a careless shrug. ‘I hardly remember them. They died when I was twelve.’
‘Oh, Rye, I’m so sorry.’ Sympathy assailed her. ‘That must have been terrible.’ Her own parents had been selfish and self-absorbed but, whatever their shortcomings, it would have been harder to be without them. ‘Did you have brothers or sisters?’
‘No. My grandfather took me in. That’s how I ended up in Cornwall at Trewan Manor.’
‘Where did you live before that?’ she asked, unable to control her curiosity at her first insight into his life.
‘All over. Hawaii. California. Cozumel for a while.’
So that explained the odd American word or phrase, the lazy cadence of his speech.
‘My parents didn’t do conventional,’ he said conversationally, slipping on his loafers. ‘We lived out of a camper van and followed the surf. Dad called us the three spirits.’ His eyes had gone dark with memory. ‘It was a stupid joke, but it made her laugh every time he said it.’
Maddy’s heart pounded. He sounded so matter-of-fact. So detached. But why had he lied, saying he barely remembered his parents when it was obvious the loss still hurt?
She touched her hand to his back. ‘You still miss them?’
‘What?’ The shadow cleared from his eyes as he twisted round, dislodging her hand. ‘Hardly. They died nearly twenty years ago.’ He pushed himself up, steadied himself on his injured leg. ‘Believe me, I’m not that sentimental.’
He said the word as if it were offensive.
‘Let’s go.’ Offering her his hand, he hauled her up. ‘Before Phil starts banging on the door.’
As he escorted her out of Phil’s office, his face carefully blank, it occurred to Maddy that she had a hundred and one questions she wanted to ask him. How had his parents died? Had his grandfather filled the gap? And what had it felt like to be cast adrift in Cornwall, in that austere, forbidding house on the cliff after a warm, loving childho
od spent with parents who even she could tell from those two brief sentences had adored him and adored each other?
Was it harder to have what she’d always dreamed of—a warm, loving home and parents who cared about you—and then have it torn away, than never to have it at all?
‘Maddy, you’re not doing that thinking thing again, are you?’ he said lightly, his hand settling on the small of her back as they walked down the corridor towards the café.
She sent him a weak smile. ‘I’m just wondering how I’m going to look Phil in the eye,’ she said, knowing she couldn’t ask any of the questions buzzing in her head. She had no right to ask them. And she doubted he would answer them anyway.
‘We’ll have to come up with a convincing story about what we’ve been doing all this time,’ she added. ‘Or he’s never going to let me forget it.’
‘Phil will have figured it out. And, anyway, it’s not a secret.’
