AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I had no idea you were at that museum gala. I had no idea who you were when we first locked eyes. I just felt a connection. I only knew when you introduced yourself—but everything I was feeling in that moment was so strong, so compelling, that it just got pushed aside.’
The impression of her words made his heart pump harder as she took a breath, her eyes resting gently on him, as though testing his response. He made sure to betray nothing of his conflicting feelings.
‘It wasn’t until later that night, maybe even the next morning, that it really hit me. I considered not going to the party at the chateau, but the thought of not seeing you again was.... I had a bad experience with a boyfriend. So these last few years I’ve avoided dating and relationships. But when I met you and felt such an instant connection I didn’t want to walk away.’ She sucked in a razor-sharp breath. ‘I didn’t set out to deceive you, Damon. I planned to tell you as soon as I arrived at the chateau. I wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you.’
‘You tried?’ His thick brows slammed into one another in condemnation of the fact that she had onlytried. ‘You didn’t try very hard, did you?’
It should have been the very first thing she’d said to him. She should have made him listen—said it over and over again until he heard her.
‘I did try,’ she insisted, with a quiet and steady strength, and suddenly he had a flash of forgotten memory.
‘There is something I should mention,’she had said, with a tiny flare of anxiety in her eyes.
Only he hadn’t let her speak, not wanting to hear anything that would get in the way of what he wanted—her. His heart quickened with the disquieting recollection.
‘And what about when you were so desperate to leave and I asked why? Did you try to tell me then? Because all I remember is you saying it was “complicated.”’
‘I wanted to tell you, Damon.’
For the first time Carrie’s composure slipped. Her voice cracked with emotion, a stripe of colour bloomed across the tops of her cheeks, and the hands resting on her knees curled into fists. She pressed herself forward, her breasts swelling against the line of the dress, and the sight had fire licking a path through his stomach.
‘I didn’t want to keep it from you, but by that point it already felt too late. We’d connected...you’d opened up to me...and I... I was scared that once I told you Sterling Randolph was my father the only way you would look at me was the way you’re looking at me right now.’
The anguish burning in her olive eyes made a knot form in his stomach—because, romantic dreamer that she was, she had imagined something that could never be. She’d craved something it was impossible for him to give and she would never truly be able to understand why. Because the truth of that day was something that very few people knew.
‘You are the daughter of the man who got my father murdered,’ he intoned huskily. ‘You’reCaroline Randolph. How am I meant to look at you?’
‘I am not Caroline Randolph,’ she asserted, in a tone that was far more venomous than anything he’d previously heard her use.
It made him wonder. Wonder why she lived her life under her mother’s name. Wonder why she fought so hard against the name of her birth—a name that signalled privilege and wealth among other things. Wonder if that reason, like so many bad things did, originated with her father.
‘The only person who calls me Caroline is my father. To everyone else I’m just Carrie. Carrie Miller. And with regard to my father, and being a Randolph—’
Damon held up his hand, cutting off her protest. Silencing his own curiosity. ‘It doesn’t matter. Whatever you call yourself, you’re still Sterling Randolph’s daughter.’
The daughter of the monster who had caused his father’s death. Hungering for her didn’t change that. Nothing could change that, however much he was wishing differently in this strange moment. And it was in that moment that Damon recognised that whilst it was the lie that had spurred his initial anger, it was not what had sustained it. It was what the lie had been about. She was a Randolph. That precluded anything from ever happening between them again, and his feelings on that were not quite so clear-cut.
‘His actions put my father in a grave, Carrie. It’s just that simple.’
She fought the emotion that was changing her expression. ‘So that’s it? What happened between us in Paris goes to the top of your list of regrets?’
Damon started to shake his head, but then stopped. He would never regret that night, but admitting it aloud would accomplish nothing. Ithadto be consigned to the past. Didn’t it?
It felt as if his future hinged on this moment—this answer. He would either continue traversing the path he had started down long ago, storming towards his revenge, or lean into this sudden bend, leading goodness knew where. Back to all that she had made him want in Paris? But that, too, would inevitably end in loss and pain.Morepain.
Clearly interpreting his contemplative silence as his answer, Carrie folded her arms across her chest. ‘And the child we made together? Do you have any interest in knowing it?’
‘It is not that simple,’ he stated through his tightly clenched jaw, avoiding looking too closely at the dark emotion flaring in the green depths of her gaze. ‘For the reasons we’ve just gone through, our circumstances are...complex.’
‘I’ll take that as a no.’
She was angry. The look on her face told him that. But she was also not surprised. She’d known his answer before he’d even issued it, just as she had known how he would look at her upon learning her given name, and her expected disappointment settled on him like a ton of bricks.
But what was the alternative option? They raised the child together, a Randolph and a Meyer? That was ludicrous.
‘I will have an account set up in your name,’ he said, surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice. ‘Neither of you will want for anything.’
Carrie pushed herself to her feet. ‘There’s no need for you to do that. I’m perfectly capable of providing for us. I didn’t come here to obligate you. I just wanted you to know.’
