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Not that it crossed his mind that in the long run she would reject the fortune. She’d find a way to trick herself eventually into believing she wasn’t betraying her principles. He just had to help her get to that point a little quicker.
‘He was the parent,’ she quivered out. ‘Parents care for their children.’
‘In a perfect world, yes.’ But, as she of all people should well know, the world was not perfect. It took a very stubborn idealist to retain a belief system like hers in light of her personal experiences.
She gritted her teeth. ‘It’s got nothing to do with a perfect world. It’s called unconditional love. Not that I’d expect someone like you to know anything about that.’
‘You’d be right, I don’t,’ he lied, pushing away the image that had materialised without warning in his head. His mother’s thin, tired face, her work-worn hands. The memory was irrevocably linked with pain, which was why he didn’t think about it, ever. ‘Do you?’
The sudden attack threw her on the defensive. ‘I see women willing to lay down their lives for their children every day of my working life.’
‘Does that make up for your own mother abandoning you?’
He ignored the kick to his conscience when she flinched as though he had struck her. The illusion of fragility vanished as her chin lifted and she looked at him with angry eyes.
‘None of this is about my mother.’
‘Are you trying to tell me you’re not angry with her for dumping you? My mother left me because she died...and for a long time I hated her for it.’ They were words he’d never even thought, let alone voiced before, and they came with a massive slug of guilt and anger that her attitude had dredged up memories he had consigned to history. ‘And you expect me to believe that you were never angry that you got dumped on a doorstep somewhere?’ Maybe she genuinely didn’t remember and that was why she was able to continue to lie to herself.
‘It was a car park of a doctor’s surgery. She knew that someone would help me, that I’d be safe.’
Safe...He closed his eyes, trying to banish the poignant image in his head of a dark-haired child standing there waiting for a mother who never came back.
‘Some people should not have children,’ Zach condemned. He had decided long ago that he was one of them. It was too easy for a bad parent to scar their children, so why take the risk?
‘She needed help, she had nowhere to go—’
‘I find your determination to see this woman as some innocent victim slightly perverse. She was the one who walked away from your grandfather. And she was an adult, not a child.’
Unable to argue with the facts the way he presented them, she snapped back. ‘If this so-called grandfather of mine is so anxious to make contact, why isn’t he here? Why send you?’
‘He’s in intensive care.’
It was a slight exaggeration; according to his latest update, Alekis had been downgraded from high dependency to whatever the medical equivalent was. He was the next step up...the walking wounded, maybe?
Her reaction was everything he had expected from someone who seemed to have bleeding heart stamped into her DNA. Like a pricked balloon, her anger deflated with an almost audible hiss.
Her eyes slid from his. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ she mumbled stiffly. ‘But I have no room in my life for someone I despise—’ She broke off as he suddenly leaned back in his leather seat and laughed.
‘That’s it, of course!’
‘What’s it?’
‘It’s just I’ve been wondering who you remind me of.’
The suspicion in her eyes deepened. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Someone who doesn’t understand the word compromise, who can’t forgive anyone who lets them down—in fact, anyone, even family, no, especially family, who doesn’t live up to their idea of what is right...’ He arched a dark brow. ‘Sounding familiar?’
It took her a few seconds to divine his meaning. Her horrified reaction was instantaneous. ‘I am nothing like my grandfather.’
‘Well, that’s an improvement. You admit you have one now. I’ve never put much faith in the whole gene thing. I might have to rethink it—you’ve never met the man and yet in your own way you are as stubborn and self-righteous as Alekis.’
‘How dare you?’
‘Easily.’ He dismissed her outrage with a click of his long fingers. ‘Your grandfather couldn’t forgive your mother so he lost her. You can’t forgive him and you’re willing to reject him when he makes the first move.’
‘A move that was twenty-four years coming!’
