AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were being modest.’
He laughed. ‘Fine, I have good instincts, and I worked hard. I worked very hard. I was determined to make a name for myself, outside of my father’s money.’
‘Why?’
His pace slowed, ever so slightly. ‘Isn’t that normal?’
She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t think so. You come from old money. Your father inherited his parents’ business and so on and so forth. To strike out on your own—’
‘I’m Chairman of my father’s company.’
‘But you still refer to it as your father’s company.’
‘He only died six months ago.’
Sympathy shifted through her. ‘I know.’ She moved closer, pulling her hand free so she could put it around his waist instead, needing full body contact to convey the depth of her sympathy. ‘It was so sudden.’
‘Yes.’ He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and brought his arm around to drape over her shoulders. Something clicked into place inside her, so despite the heaviness of their conversation, she was utterly at ease.
‘But it will take me a while—if ever—to stop thinking of those businesses as his.’
‘Before he—before you lost him, you were still hands-off with those companies. Why?’
‘Haven’t I already answered that?’
She frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’
He laughed, but it was a sound without humour. ‘You’re too damned perceptive.’
‘I just have a feeling there’s more to it.’
‘And what gives you that feeling?’
‘I can’t explain it. I just...know you.’ Their eyes met and her heart zinged with the power of a full-blown electrical storm. Her knees went weak. She looked away, and when he spoke his voice was distant, cool.
‘I loved my father, naturally. I admired him a great deal. He was strong and smart and fiercely determined. But I also hated him, Theresa.’
She jerked her face to his.
‘My childhood was spent watching him obliterate my mother’s sense of self, watching them argue like cats and dogs, watching her spiral further and further into misery, and my father never doing anything to help her. I don’t know why. Ego, perhaps? She needed help, and instead he fought with her, again and again. Their divorce should have liberated her from the situation, but by then she was destroyed. Their marriage had taken its toll.’ He paused, swallowing and looking out to sea. ‘When she died, a part of me broke off and went with her. I knew I could never forgive him. For all the ways he treated her in their marriage, and for how he was with her after. She killed herself, but in many ways he killed her too.’
Tessa’s eyes closed, her lashes hiding the tears that were forming.
‘The idea of working with him, enriching his companies further, was anathema to me. He was my father, and I loved him, but it was not an easy relationship, and when he died I mourned more than just him; I felt as though I was losing her all over again, too. We never spoke about her. We never spoke about their fights, their marriage. All I knew was that she’d loved him, violently, and that love had killed her.’ He turned back to face Tessa, his lips twisting in a cynical grimace.
She nuzzled closer, pressing her head against his chest, slowing them to a stop and just standing there, two people embracing on the shoreline as the stars began to shine.
‘And so you see love as bad?’ she murmured.
‘Yes.’ His smile was mocking. ‘I don’t see any upside to it. You open yourself up to someone, and what for? I’m happy as I am.’
Her throat worked overtime as she swallowed hard, trying to remove the taste of bitterness. ‘I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I’m sorry for your mother.’
‘I wanted to save her, Theresa. I wanted to, so badly, but I was too young, and her needs were so difficult to grasp. I didn’t know how...’ He growled, his frustration obvious.
Sympathy washed through Tessa, but so did comprehension, in equal measure. ‘And so you saved me instead,’ she murmured as a pang of guilt tightened her chest. Because unconsciously she’d presented him with a situation he could never say ‘no’ to.
She’d come to him as a woman in distress, a woman who’d been made miserable in her marriage, who’d been emotionally manipulated and abused to the point she’d forgotten who she was and had certainly lost the waypoint to her inner strength. But Alex hadn’t been prepared to let history repeat itself, and so he’d stepped in, to save the day. He wasn’t a child any longer, but a grown man, perfectly able to be the saviour.
It all made perfect sense, and his actions were no less honourable, but she felt a strange heaviness resting in her chest all of a sudden, and she pulled away from him, forcing a smile to her face. ‘Let’s go back and have dinner. I’m starving.’
