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“That’s a play,” he laughed.
Claudia’s cheeks flashed pink.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said softly, reading the shift of emotion in her eyes, seeing sadness where moments ago there’d been pleasure. “I’m saying that in spite of that you remind me of him. That you are smart like he was smart, and interesting, and funny.”
Her heart flipped in her chest. She liked hearing him talk about her in that way.
She loved it, in fact.
“Perhaps it’s why I find you so easy to talk to.”
“To yell at?” She supplied, the words still thready with the depth of her emotions.
“I do have a bad habit of that,” he said softly. He expelled a sigh. “I never understood why he chose me as your guardian.”
“He adored you.” She didn’t manage to keep her bitterness from showing but she softened it with a tight smile.
“He loved you,” Stavros offered, understanding intuitively how she felt, wishing he could offer her something better. Something more concrete. “He was proud of you.”
Claudia sucked in a breath and shook her head. “Don’t say that. You don’t need to lie.”
Stavros’s stomach swooped. He hated that he had been lying. He hated that Christopher had never once spoken glowingly about Claudia. He portrayed her as a perpetual work in progress, and Stavros had believed that. Yet she’d achieved so much – in her own way.
“You did a wonderful thing tonight.” He reached forward and laced his fingers through Claudia’s, squeezing her hand. “You have a real gift for fundraising.”
Her eyes were enormous when she lifted her gaze to his face. The compliment spread like warmed butter through her soul, filling all the gaps that years of never feeling good enough had caused.
“Thank you.” A hoarse whisper.
“I never really knew that about you.”
“I think we’ve established there’s a lot you didn’t know about me.” She pointed out, thinking that the biggest secret of all was one he would never, ever find out. “You met my dad at college?”
Stavros frowned a little at the quick conversation change. “Yeah. He was guest lecturing.”
“And you were doing creative writing?” Claudia teased, truly surprised at the fact, though.
“I’d been a huge fan of your father’s books all my reading life,” he said. “As a teenager I used to take them onto our yacht and read all day. I would have changed majors just to get in his class. Hell, I would have changed colleges,” he laughed.
But a prickle was making its way sharply down Claudia’s spine. “You love to read?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I always have. I don’t get as much time now but as a child and a teenager I never wasn’t reading a book. Usually a Christopher La Roche.”
Claudia’s smile was tight. “But you became friends.”
“At first, I could barely speak in front of him. I was in awe.”
“You?” Claudia’s disbelief was obvious.
“What? Why is that hard to understand? The man was a legend. He redefined the horror genre in modern literature. Over ni
ne of his books have been made into blockbuster films. He still comes in on the New York Times bestseller charts. He’s a goliath.”
Claudia nodded, staring out of the window, watching as snow fluttered down, so beautiful, so whimsical.
“Eventually I forgot about the legend and got to know him as simply Christopher. We had a lot in common. He was interested in investing and I had a knack for shares.” He shrugged.
“He thought of you like a son,” she said, the words a little croaky.
