AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She gave a sudden smile that lightened her expression as she responded to the tip of his head and walked towards the exit. ‘That would be something. I can’t swim.’
‘I’ll teach you.’ She was looking as startled by the offer as he felt.
‘Don’t be nice to me or I’ll cry.’
‘Relax, I’m never nice. Ask anyone. Living on an island, swimming is a necessary survival skill.’ As was keeping women like this one an emotional mile away, women who couldn’t believe that sex could be just that, women who wanted something deeper and more meaningful, women who needed an emotional depth he simply didn’t have.
* * *
It was an exaggeration to say the hotel was next door to the airport, but it was conveniently close.
‘It’s very nice,’ she said, keeping up the same flow of polite conversation she had during the car transfer. It helped maintain the illusion of normality but was, she realised, starting to sound desperate.
Actually, the hotel, part of a luxury chain she had vaguely heard of, was extremely nice in a plush, upmarket way.
‘Thank you.’
She threw a questioning look up at Zach’s austerely handsome profile. ‘The chain is a relatively recent purchase. It was a bit tired, but it’s amazing what a refurb can do.’
‘You own it?’ Well, that explained the manager who was rushing out to greet them before personally escorting them to the private entrance to the penthouse floor, where the elevator door was flanked by men wearing suits and dark glasses who spoke into the headsets they were wearing.
Kat hesitated before she stepped inside the lift, taking a moment to pull her shoulders back and lift her chin.
Stepping in after her, Zach felt a twinge of admiration. It was impossible not to. She looked as though she were walking into a lion’s den, but, my God, she was doing it with style!
The swishing upward ride took seconds and then the doors were silently opening.
‘He is as nervous as you.’
Kat lifted her eyes. ‘I seriously doubt that. I feel like I used to when I hid.’ She had always had a hiding place ready when the loud voices had started, a place to crawl into and try to be invisible.
No hiding place now, Kat! Just do it!
He sensed she had not even realised what she had said, words that might not have made sense to many but, as someone who had tried very hard to be invisible, he knew that she was talking of an experience similar to, but he really hoped not the same as, his own.
He found himself hoping grimly that the mother who had abandoned her had retained enough motherly feeling to protect her child from violence, the sort that had scarred his own youth.
The golden eyes lifted to his. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop myself, that I’ll say something really bad—I’m so angry,’ she whispered, pressing a hand to her breastbone as if to physically hold in the storm of emotions raging there.
‘Don’t be afraid. You’ve a right to be angry.’ Maybe she would have the apologies and explanations he’d been robbed of.
‘I thought you were team Alekis.’ He has a beautiful mouth... The thought drifted through the tangled knot of thoughts in her head as she stared at the sensually carved lines... Had he really kissed her? The memory, like everything else, had an unreal quality.
‘You won’t say anything to hurt him. You’re too...kind.’ He allowed himself the comment because he spoke as an objective observer. He was not here to get involved in the relationship between grandfather and granddaughter. He carried the inescapable taint of his own family with him through life without getting involved in someone else’s family conflict.
The way he said kind, he made it sound like a defect—not that Kat felt kind as her attention narrowed in on the figure seated in a large chair that made her think of a throne, placed centre stage in the room.
She’d seen photos online, but this man was older, much older, yet even with a craggy face, drawn, with fatigue deepening the shadowy bags beneath his eyes, you could sense the power coming off the man. Then, a second later, she saw the eyes beneath the thick white eyebrows were filled with tears.
The wave of emotion that hit her was so unexpected and so powerful that all the other emotions seething inside her were swallowed up. This was her grandfather—her family.
‘Katina?’
She pressed a hand to her trembling lips as the figure in the chair held out his arms. ‘I am so s-sorry, Katina.’
Zach watched her fight to hold on to her antagonism and fail.
Even the relatively short time he had spent in her company meant that it didn’t cross Zach’s mind that her capitulation had anything at all to do with personal gain. This was about her generous spirit, and her longing for a family, or at least her idea of what a family was.
