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‘When we were at school, I overheard Ms Tremall saying you came from a bad home,’ she said. ‘I always wondered what on earth she meant.’
‘I guess she meant it wasn’t good.’ He laughed, the sound brittle. ‘But it wasn’t that terrible. And it’s so long ago now, it doesn’t matter.’
Why did she have the feeling it did matter, then? She thought of the unguarded look of surprise and pleasure on his face when he had unwrapped her gift that morning, and realised it mattered a lot.
‘How bad was it?’
He looked at her as the car braked at the traffic lights along Fleet Street, his expression carefully blank. The sound of his thumb tapping a rapid tattoo on the steering wheel cut through the evening quiet. ‘You know what?’ he began, his voice tense. ‘How about we skip this conversation?’
Cassie studied the stiff set of his shoulders as he pressed his foot to the accelerator. ‘Why do you want to skip it, if it doesn’t matter?’
He accelerated as the lights changed, and hitched his shoulders. ‘Okay, fine,’ he said, his voice clipped. ‘If you really want to know, my mum married a guy when I was eight who had a violent temper and didn’t make much of an effort to control it.’
Cassie’s stomach tensed, the faded scar across his left eyebrow illuminated by the lights of Charing Cross Station. ‘He hit you?’
‘Not too much. I got very good at staying out of his way. And eventually I got big enough to fight back,’ he replied, in a tense monotone. ‘My mum took the worst of it.’
‘Jace,’ she whispered, covering the hand he had wrapped around the gear shift. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids at the thought of what he must have witnessed and endured. ‘That’s hideous.’
He stared at her briefly in the half-light.
‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m all grown up now and it’s over.’
He pulled his hand out from under hers, rested his palm on her knee.
‘How about we change the subject—’ his hand trailed up her leg ‘—and concentrate on something a lot more interesting?’
She forced a weak smile to her lips, swallowed the tears down, as the familiar rush of heat sizzled up her thigh where his hand wandered. ‘Okay, Mr One-Track Mind,’ she joked, trying not to let her wayward emotions overwhelm her.
But as they drove round Trafalgar Square the light flurries of snow framed the giant Norwegian Spruce at its centre and made the view from her window as the car sped past look as picturesque and magical as a Christmas card. Her heart thundered and her mind raced, unable to let go of the image of Jace as a boy and the miserable home life that had been exactly the opposite of a Christmas card.
He didn’t need a friend. He needed so much more than that. Something she knew in her heart she could give him. As soon as the thought registered she tried to push it down and bury it deep. But it was already too late.
She turned to look at the man next to her as he negotiated the steady stream of traffic on Piccadilly Circus. She considered the harsh line of his jaw, the dark concentration on his brow and the closed expression on his handsome face that gave so little away even when they were making love—then pushed out a ragged breath.
Nessa was right. She was falling for Jace. Or why would she have been so devastated by that brief insight into the horrors he’d suffered as a child? And why would she believe she could fix it?
She pushed her head into the deep bucket seat, listened to the purr of the powerful car and struggled to calm her heart’s frantic leaps and pirouettes.
So she was falling for Jace. But what the hell did she do about it?
Should she tell him? Or would that complicate things even more?
‘That’s it, Cassie. Come for me again,’ Jace rasped, sweat popping on his brow, the corded muscles in his arms and neck straining as her hot slick flesh tightened around him. He drove deep, clung onto sanity, the exquisite torture pushing him to the brink. Her eyes glazed over, her body bowed back and the ragged sobs of fulfilment echoed in his ear as he crashed over right behind her.
He drew out slowly, the dull ache in his groin from the intensity of his climax nothing compared to the raw rush of emotion clutching at his chest as she gazed up at him.
Her palm cupped his cheek, her eyes alight with an emotion so pure and elemental a muscle in his jaw clenched. As always her expression was as open and easy to read as a children’s picture book.
Don’t say it, Cassie.
He placed a kiss on her lips before she could speak. ‘That was terrific,’ he said, keeping his voice deliberately flippant. ‘Merry Christmas, Cassie.’
Shifting off her, he slung his arm round her shoulders, tucked her against his side and braced himself to hear the words he feared she was about to say.
She wouldn’t be the first woman to tell him she loved him. He’d seen that look in a woman’s eyes dozens of times before. Women often got sentimental after great sex and—after his momentary lapse in the car when he’d told her about his stepfather, and the dumb way he’d reacted to her present, plus the fact that he and Cassie had been having great sex for nearly a week—it was kind of inevitable that someone as romantic as Cassie would fall into the familiar trap. What did surprise him, though, was that he hadn’t seen it coming, and he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do about it.
She was the first woman he’d ever been scared to hear say it. Because for the first time ever, he knew the usual ploys he used to deal with the dreaded ‘I love you’ moment wouldn’t work.
