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“Did your family always live in that same house?”
“Since I was a toddler. My father’s family came from money all the way back to the Civil War. I’ve never spent too much time studying his pedigree because I’m sure some of that wealth came from dubious sources.”
“And your mom’s family?”
“Comfortable, but not rich. She took quite a step up when she married my dad. But it came with a steep price. Along with the Harrington multigenerational fortune was a deep streak of alcoholism.”
“I’ve never seen you drink a lot.”
Harry’s eyes were closed now. He wasn’t asleep, but clearly the pain meds were zoning him out. “Sometimes I want a second shot of whiskey or a third glass of wine,” he said. “But I never let myself have it. I’ve always been afraid.”
Cate pondered those words. Harry was quiet. How terrible to always live in the dark shadow of his father’s DNA. At last, she asked the question that had bothered her the most. “Did your father hityou?”
Harry shifted again. Now he was all the way down in the bed on his side, his posture mirroring Cate’s. He took a strand of her hair and wrapped it around his finger, playing with it absently.
His gray gaze met hers. “Not often. Only when it could be categorized as well-deserved punishment. He enjoyed dishing out retribution when I broke the rules.”
“And how did your mother deal with that?”
Harry’s gaze shifted beyond Cate’s shoulder as if he didn’t want to look at her. “She didn’t. I don’t recall her ever trying to protect me from him. My father was a mean drunk. That’s when he wrapped cars around trees and came home raging. All the local law enforcement guys back then knew him well. But my daddy greased so many palms, he never faced the consequences of his actions.”
“Why didn’t your mother leave and take you with her?”
Now Harry met Cate’s questioning gaze head-on. “It’s really very simple. She likes living in the lifestyle to which she has grown accustomed. For years I heard her make excuses for my father. He was under a lot of stress at work. Or he didn’t sleep well the night before. Maybe I had left my bike in the driveway, or my mother had forgotten to carry out some trivial task.”
“Poor Georgia,” Cate said. “She must have felt trapped with no way out.”
Harry’s beautiful, masculine lips twisted. “You’re a far nicer person than I am, Cate...giving her the benefit of the doubt.”
“What do you mean?”
“The week I turned eighteen, I could finally taste freedom. Even without my father’s money, I had earned a prestigious scholarship. I was going away to college at the end of the summer. I quietly and secretively began packing my things. I knew my father wouldn’t like me leaving. He would see it as a betrayal, no matter how weird and twisted that was.”
Cate sensed the story was nearing a climax. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what came next. The tug of Harry’s fingers on her hair was disturbing. It was intimate and odd at the same time.
They were sharing a bed, but not anything else.
Circumstances had brought them closer than they should have been, and yet now that Harry was with her here in this house, she felt as if she knew him, really knew him.
Which was why she had to understand this last bit of his life, maybe the part that defined him.
“What happened on your birthday?” she asked.
He shrugged, his gaze for a moment filled with warm recollections. “I left before breakfast,” he said. “Some buddies and I took a boat out on Lake Lanier and spent the day goofing off. Skiing. Tubing. Swimming.”
“But no drinking?”
“Surprisingly, no. My friends knew where I stood on that issue. They had seen the black eyes. Sometimes I think that was the worst. Jason’s parents wanted to help, but there was not much they could do. Everybody in the community, everybody at school,knewwho my daddy was and what he was like. I hated people feeling sorry for me. Still do.”
Cate heard the warning and hid a smile. “Sounds like a fun birthday. Did your family celebrate that evening?”
Harry shook his head slowly. “When I came up the driveway, it was dark. There were cars everywhere. For half a second, I thought they were throwing me a surprise party. Then the fireworks started, and I felt dumb as a rock. My parents weren’t celebrating their only son turning eighteen. The Fourth of July holiday was an excuse to show off the pool and the giant picnic spread and the well-known country music band from Atlanta.”
“Oh, Harry.” He had told her outright he didn’t like people feeling sorry for him. But thinking of that eighteen-year-old boy broke her heart. “So, you’re telling me you were born on the Fourth of July?” she asked with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.
Harry still played with her hair, sending shivers ofsomethingdown her spine. “Yep,” he said.
“Then we should celebrate this Saturday.”
