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‘And that’s largely lies and exaggeration.’
She shrugged and smiled briefly as their glances met and held for an instant. ‘I wouldn’t know, would I?’
A long moment passed, and then Roman said, ‘My adoptive mother died—my blood mother too...of the same illness.’
‘Fate can be very cruel sometimes,’ she said gently, treasuring his confidence in telling her what he had.
‘I still can’t believe it all these years on.’
Roman seemed lost to her for a moment. ‘It was a terrible coincidence,’ she said quietly, not wanting to intrude on his painful memories.
‘I still blame myself,’ Roman revealed as he stared out across a deceptively placid-looking ocean.
‘You can’t blame yourself for their illness.’
‘I blame myself for causing them the stress that might have provoked it,’ Roman explained. ‘I grew up the trophy son, praised to high heaven by my adoptive parents, but when I found out the truth about my birth on my fourteenth birthday, all I wanted was to be accepted by my blood family, but when I went to find them, they shut the door in my face.’
‘It was too late and your mother had died?’ she guessed.
Roman’s smile lacked any humour. ‘Worse. It was the day of her funeral, and having her fourteen-year-old son turn up out of the blue was the last thing her grieving family had expected. She bore more children after me, and it was just too much for them, my turning up, and at the worst time possible. They told me to my face I had no place there.’
‘So you believed you didn’t belong anywhere.’
‘My adoptive parents took me back without question and with open arms.’
‘But that was good, surely?’
Darkness still lurked behind his eyes. ‘They had never shown me anything but love—and how did I repay them? By becoming increasingly cold and unfeeling.’
‘But you were so young. You must have been so full of anger and bewilderment.’
‘And now it’s too late.’
‘It’s never too late,’ she whispered.
‘All I wanted was to make them proud.’
‘And don’t you think you have?’
‘I should have loved them more at the time, and then thought about making them proud of me. My adoptive mother fell ill, but I didn’t even notice I was so self-obsessed.’
‘Most teenagers are,’ Eva pointed out. So this was what had put that haunted look in his eyes. Her heart ached for him. ‘You’ve never forgiven yourself, and yet you must have been broken-hearted too. What a terrible shock for you, and teenage boys don’t deal too well with emotional upheaval—’
‘Which of course you know all about,’ he snapped, resenting her intrusion into his hidden world, she guessed.
‘I do know, as it happens. I have a brother, Tyr, remember? I only have to think back to remember Tyr rampaging around the house, yelling at everyone when he was young because he had no other outlet for his feelings.’
‘So that’s how you learned to shout,’ Roman said, slowly coming out of his black mood.
In that moment, things changed between them. An understanding grew that hadn’t been there before. ‘My personality has nothing to do with my brother, Tyr—though, like most sisters, I blame him for lots of things, but not that.’
‘So you just grew this way?’ Roman suggested, a smile curving his lips.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, acting menacing.
‘I think you do know, Eva.’
This was too much—too much emotion—too much understanding of what made her tick. She chose not to meet Roman’s penetrating stare, and stared out to sea instead, to where the heat-bleached horizon met the intense blue-green of deep water.
Perhaps if Tyr had stayed home rather than answering the wanderlust that had always plagued him, things might have turned out differently, but like Roman she couldn’t turn the clock back. She didn’t want to. Things were as they were, and she was as she was, and for once in her life, sitting here next to Roman, that didn’t seem such a very bad thing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
STANDING UP, HE held out his hand to Eva. She hesitated. Then she smiled and reached out to him. He drew her with him, pausing only at the counter to pay.
‘We’ll be back.’ Roman narrowed his eyes when it struck him that the gaze of the smiling waiter taking his money was fixed longingly on Eva’s face.
