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er reaction.
A frown line appeared on her brow. ‘He’s nobody,’ she said. ‘Not any more.’
His fingers fisted on the steering wheel. So he did have something to do with Cassie. ‘But he was someone once,’ he said. ‘So who was he?’
And what was he to you?
She sighed, turned to look back out of the window as the darkened shops along Kingsland High Road whipped past. ‘We were engaged to be married,’ she murmured. ‘Until I found him doing the bare-butt boogie on my sofa with one of his ex-girlfriends.’ She huffed out a little laugh, but there was no humour in it. ‘I should have dumped him for being such a cliché, even without the cheating.’
‘Is he the relationship that came to a bad end?’ he asked, unable to keep the edge out of his voice as his knuckles whitened.
Loser was right. What kind of lowlife did that to a woman? Especially a woman as sweet-natured and generous as Cassie?
‘Yes, that would be Lance.’ Her affirmation sounded resigned and touched something deep inside him that hadn’t been touched in longer than he could remember.
The urge to comfort and reassure came from nowhere. Reaching across the console, he put his hand on her leg, squeezed. ‘He was obviously a total jerk.’
‘I know.’ She sighed heavily. ‘My problem is that I seem to be a magnet for total jerks. Even my dad was a total jerk.’
‘Yeah, how’s that?’ he asked, not sure he really wanted to know the answer. He knew what it was like to be screwed up by a parent. Thinking of Cassie having to go through that wasn’t the best way to keep his anger under control.
‘He didn’t do anything that terrible,’ she said carefully. ‘I’ve always been oversensitive about it.’
He doubted that, given the way she’d let Lance the Loser off the hook. ‘What did your father do?’
‘It’s not what he did. It’s what he didn’t do.’
He waited for her to elaborate.
‘My parents got divorced when I was four,’ she began. ‘He’d found someone else, and started a new family with her. He hurt my mum terribly but she maintained contact with him because she wanted me to have a relationship with him. Only problem was, I don’t think he was ever that interested. He felt guilty and obligated, so he went through the motions.’ She gave a soft sigh and he felt the pulse of anger beat in his temple.
He’d never considered becoming a father because he knew he wouldn’t be any good at it. His own role models had been atrocious and he didn’t like to rely on anyone, or have them rely on him. But even he couldn’t imagine being uninterested in your own flesh and blood.
‘He’d say he was going to take me to do this and that,’ Cassie murmured, her voice so quiet he almost couldn’t hear it. ‘We’d make arrangements, I’d get all excited and then …’ She paused. ‘Mostly, he didn’t show. He’d ring at the last minute with some excuse. And the few times he did show, usually because my mum had pressured him into it, he’d be preoccupied, talking on his mobile, or getting irritated with me if I asked too many questions. He was a busy man and he let me know that he didn’t have time for me.’
‘Good thing he didn’t show up more often,’ Jace said forcefully, thinking what a waste of space the guy must have been.
‘What?’
He shrugged. ‘Sounds like you were well rid of him. Who wants to spend time with a jerk like that.’
‘Do you know something? I’ve never even thought of it like that.’ She laughed, but this time the sound had the light tinkle of real amusement. ‘But you’re right. Whenever he didn’t turn up, my mum would take me out instead. We’d go ice-skating or swimming, or one time she took me and Ness to the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park and we had a great time. She was always more fun than him anyway.’
The genuine pleasure in her voice had the uneasiness prickling up his spine again.
‘There you go,’ he murmured, lifting his hand off her knee.
Time to back off. You don’t get involved, remember?
‘What were your parents like, Jace?’ she asked softly.
He flinched. Where had that question come from?
He flipped up the indicator, then gripped the gear shift as he accelerated past St Paul’s Cathedral, the silence in the car suddenly deafening.
Cassie listened to the quiet hum of the powerful car’s engine and watched Jace’s jaw tense.
‘Why do you ask?’ he said, so evasively her heart pummelled her chest. She should probably let the subject drop, but his defensiveness was so unlike the confident man she had come to know, she didn’t want to back down. Had his parents been the thing he had wanted to escape?
