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‘You wouldn’t be the first person to get a job because of nepotism,’ he pointed out.
‘No, but it’s not how I wanted to get that job—or any job. It’s not how I wanted to live my life...always having to wonder if I was good enough or if I just had the right name. I wanted to earn it...to be the best. I wanted that job because there was no one else who could do it as well as I could. Not because I was someone’s daughter.’
He heard her resentment and for the first time realised what a weight her father’s name and reputation must have been to shoulder. ‘And that’s why you changed your name?’
She nodded. ‘I just want to be able to be myself, to be free. I don’t want to always have a target on my back. To always wonder if it’s about me or my name.’
Damon frowned at her aggressive phrasing.A target on her back?‘The person who hurt you...the one you mentioned to me in Paris...that was to do with your name, too, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She fidgeted, making it clear she did not want to unlock that box of memories, and for that reason Damon knew that whatever happened had been bad—because she was inherently open. He saw that about her now. Saw how difficult she must have found it to know she had not been telling him the whole truth about herself.
‘Let me get you more risotto,’ she said.
Grabbing her wrist as she tried to rise, he prevented her from running away. ‘You can either tell me yourself, or with a quick call I can have someone else find me the information,’ he said, gentling the threat with a softer than usual tone.
Her agitation skipped up a few levels. ‘Why do you even want to know? Why does it matter?’
‘Because we’re having a child together, and that necessitates us knowing certain things about each other.’
At least that was the convenient explanation. In fact, his desire to know was a lot deeper and simpler than that. He wanted to know. Wanted to knowher. Her hurts, her bruises, her scars, her hopes and fears. He wanted to know everything.
Carrie sent him an arch look. ‘Yet when I asked about your mother leaving you,youwere not very forthcoming. Why should I share with you when you won’t with me?’
Touché.
‘I don’t know how to talk about what happened with my mother,’ he confessed, steeling himself for the searing pain that accompanied any thought or words about her. ‘My father died and it broke her heart. I understand that. But the choices she made afterwards—to remarry so quickly, to send me here—I don’t understand. I’d like to think that she did what she did because she thought it was in my best interests, but I’m not sure I believe that.’
‘Do you ever see her?’
‘She and my stepfather live in the South of France. She comes to the States maybe once a year. We have lunch.’
‘Lunch?’ she repeated, bewildered.
He nodded solemnly, struck again by the realisation that Carrie was as different from his own mother as it was possible to be.
She sighed. ‘His name was Nate. The person who hurt me. He worked for my father and he was ambitious. He saw me as a way he could progress faster. I thought he was charming and kind. I’d always liked the idea of my own fairy-tale, so the thought that he’d fallen madly in love with me at first sight was intoxicating. But then he didn’t get a promotion that he wanted, so he went to my father and attempted to blackmail him. He said he had photos of me that he would take to the press, along with details of our relationship, if he wasn’t given an executive position.’
She paused, twisting her fingers together, her plate of food forgotten.
‘He said he loved me, but all along he’d only cared about himself. I was just a means to an end.’ Giving a tiny shake of her head, she pressed her eyes shut as though the simple act would erase it. ‘I was so stupid not to see it.’
‘No, Carrie.’ Damon hurried to reassure her, hating it that she blamed herself for even a second. ‘People like that are very good at what they do.Youare not stupid.’
It was then that he saw the glisten of tears in her eyes.
‘My father didn’t see it that way. He was so angry that I’d exposed him and his business to humiliation. I’d always known his work mattered more to him than anything, that everyone else came second to the Randolph Corporation, but knowing it and seeing it are two very different things. And that was the day I saw it. My heartbreak and humiliation didn’t even hit his radar. He didn’t even ask if I was okay.’
‘That’s why you don’t have a relationship with him?’ Damon asked quietly, suddenly realising their faces were only inches apart. Without his noticing, their bodies had inched closer together, their knees brushing beneath the table.
Carrie nodded sadly. ‘I wanted to be close with him so badly. When I was younger and he didn’t show up I told myself not to be hurt, that he was a busy man...he did important work. Then Nate happened. All I wanted was to know that he cared about me, but the only thing he cares about in life is business and success. It’s all that matters to him. All he sees.’
Damon’s gut twisted, because he knew the same ugly accusation could be levelled against him, and in the past it had been. It was a comparison that had his stomach writhing and bile climbing up his throat. Because if there was one man on earth he didn’t want to be like, it was Sterling Randolph. A man who had respect for nothing and nobody except the almighty dollar. And it was the second time that day he’d realised he might be more like him than he cared for.
‘The truth is my father doesn’t have relationships. He has the Randolph Corporation. That’s his only meaningful relationship. And waiting for him to open his eyes and see you is like waiting for rain in a drought.’ She sighed, the sound carrying a lifetime of disappointment. ‘And yet I still hope that one day he will open his eyes.’
‘Why?’
