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‘I’m not sure I could eat.’ A shaky smile formed on Tansy’s lips. ‘You probably don’t understand but I love Posy as much as though she was born to me. I was the first person to hold her after her birth and she’s been mine to care for ever since.’
‘What sort of stepfather was Calvin before your mother died?’ Jude asked her, surprising her with that question.
Tansy compressed her lips. ‘Absent, uninterested. Mum and him just led their lives and I got on with mine at school and when they went on holiday I moved in with my aunt Violet.’
‘And your mother. What was she like?’
Her sense of wonder lingered, along with a growing pleasure that he was keen to know such facts about her. She wasn’t used to talking about herself but there was a heady feeling of satisfaction inside her at being the sole focus of his interest.
‘She was wrapped up in Calvin and very conscious that she was ten years older than he was,’ Tansy confided wryly. ‘That’s why she was overjoyed when she fell pregnant. Neither of them had expected that but I could see he didn’t share her enthusiasm. He never wanted a child. I think he married Mum because she struck him as a good financial bet. She owned her own home and business. But if you can believe what he told me, they were living well above their means and he’s currently facing bankruptcy.’
‘What did you inherit?’
‘Nothing. Mum left everything to Calvin. If he hadn’t needed someone to look after Posy, he would never have allowed me to stay on in the house for so long,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘I mean, it’s not like he or I were ever close or that there was any family tie.’
‘And your own father?’ Jude prompted.
Tansy ate the last delicious bite of the starter and set down her cutlery, surprised by how hungry she had been. She lifted her champagne glass. ‘He was an accountant and he died in a car accident when I was a baby. He was a lot older than Mum. I have no memory of him at all, but he left Mum quite well off. She opened up a beauty salon and lived well on the income…well, at least until she and Calvin got together.’
‘A beauty salon?’ Jude was disconcerted because there was nothing remotely artificial about Tansy and, to his way of thinking, artifice flourished in beauty salons.
‘And it made no impression on me… I know.’ Tansy laughed, her small straight nose wrinkling. ‘But if you’d met my mother you’d soon have guessed what the family business was. She had every beauty enhancement on the market and wouldn’t have opened the front door without her false eyelashes on. I was a huge disappointment! She wanted a daughter who was just like her and, although I did all the training courses to please her and worked at the salon whenever I was needed, it never interested me the way it did her.’
The main course arrived, and Tansy realised she had been chattering nonstop about herself and she flushed and fell silent.
‘I was saving the main question until last,’ Jude murmured softly as he watched her, entranced by her pale porcelain skin and delicate features, the strap of the top she wore sliding off one slender shoulder. ‘Why was such a beautiful girl still sexually innocent?’
Tansy dragged in a long, quivering breath, unable to accept that he saw her as beautiful, suddenly plunged into horrible awkwardness by such a query. ‘I’m not going to talk about that on the grounds that it makes me feel like a fool and as days go, this has already been a very long and trying one.’
As her voice fell away Jude simply spread long fingers in an accepting gesture, although he knew that he would be revisiting that topic. ‘You’ll be reunited with your sister tomorrow. My yacht is travelling here overnight.’
‘Your…yacht?’ Tansy repeated.
‘The Alexandris—my twenty-fifth birthday present from Isidore,’ Jude told her flatly.
‘Pretty over the top as gifts go, but then, as you said, he is that way inclined. But even so, he’s enormously attached to you. I could see that.’
Jude glanced across the table with startled dark golden eyes. ‘You could?’
Tansy marvelled at his inky black lashes and the length of them and stiffened at that abstracted thought, shifting in her seat and feeling the soreness at her still-tender core, the legacy of that new experience he had mentioned. Her face burned as she fought to concentrate on the conversation. ‘Yes, it’s obvious. He’s proud of you. It shines out of him every time he looks at you,’ she muttered ruefully.
Jude had never thought of Isidore, his grandfather, as being personally fond of him. For most of his life, albeit secretly, he had viewed his family history from his mother’s side of the fence and had seen both his father and his grandfather as ruthless, often cruel predators with few saving graces, who saw in him only that all-important necessity: the heir to the Alexandris wealth to be groomed to follow in their footsteps. Had he been blind or was Tansy naive and mistaken?
He shook off that wandering thought, acknowledging the armour he had put on from childhood once he’d understood that his father, Dion, didn’t expect him to get emotional about anything because an Alexandris male only expressed violent anger. Dion had been unable to control that anger as Isidore did, and Jude could remember his father raging at staff, at office workers, at his cowering mother, in truth at anyone who ignited his hair-trigger temper. Dion Alexandris had had all the self-control of a spoilt and indulged toddler and, having witnessed that, Jude had learned young to control his anger. In a real rage, Jude turned to ice.
As they ate the main course, Jude talked about the yacht and Tansy giggled at some of the revealing extras that his grandfather had thought to include, like a stripper pole, a giant hot tub and mirrored ceilings. ‘Not really my style,’ Jude insisted. ‘But Isidore and my father were the ultimate playboys back in the days of their youth.’
Unimpressed by the claim, Tansy rolled her bright eyes. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re not that innocent.’
‘I’m not, but I was only a man-whore for a couple of years after Althea when I was wrapped up in being bitter as hell,’ Jude admitted. ‘I’m an adult. I got over it eventually.’
‘But by the sounds of it, your father never did,’ Tansy slotted in before she could think better about getting that personal.
‘That’s how he was raised. Any woman he wanted he should have, regardless of whether or not he was married or with anyone else. He bedded my mother’s sister, her maid, my nanny,’ Jude enumerated drily.
Tansy was truly shocked but fought to hide the fact. ‘I don’t think much of a sister that would do that.’
‘You’d be surprised how easily tempted people can be to do unforgivable things,’ Jude murmured very seriously. ‘I should’ve been less honest…you’re shocked.’
