He was asking her, now, how she had become an astrophysicist, and she answered readily.
‘I fell in love with science at school, because it explained everything about the world. And physics and astronomy just captivated me,’ she said. She paused, then heard herself add, ‘My family was less enthusiastic.’ She frowned, her mouth setting. ‘My father came round, because he’s always been very indulgent with me, but my mother—’
She broke off. She was saying more than she wanted to. More than she ever said to people, admitted...
‘Wanted you to marry and settle down to be a wife and home-maker?’ Nic finished for her. The name of the rejected former fiancé hovered in his head but he pushed it aside.
Fran nodded heavily, taking a mouthful of her strawberry daiquiri. ‘Yes,’ she said briefly.
For all that her home would have been a vast medieval castello, and she would have been a contessa, Nic had nailed it.
She took a breath. ‘Oh, they’re proud of
me now, but my mother hasn’t forgiven me for ditching Cesare—’
She broke off, and Nic did not pick her up on it again. He didn’t want her remembering the man she hadn’t married.
She was speaking again, and he realised she’d turned the conversation to him. That was something he didn’t want either. But it was too late to halt her.
‘What about you, Nic? How did you come to be where you are in life now?’
He paused, his tequila mid-way to his mouth. He lowered it again slowly, his eyes veiled.
‘Well, it wasn’t thanks to my schooldays,’ he heard himself saying.
His voice sounded grim. Bleak, even to his own ears.
‘What I learnt at school was how not to get beaten up or corralled into running drugs for the gangs.’ His mouth tightened and he looked across at Fran. ‘I left as soon as I could and went to work. It was a fancy hotel and I was way down in the basement!’
His expression changed now, his eyes clearing.
‘But it changed everything for me,’ he said. ‘I was earning money—not much, but it was my own, through my own efforts. And I could see, for the first time, a future for me. Something I could make for myself, of myself. Out of the nothing I’d been handed at birth, despite all the expectations that I’d amount to nothing!’
She heard the vehemence in his voice and it resonated with her—their defiance of what had been expected of them, each in their very different ways.
‘What about your parents?’ she asked. Her voice was sympathetic, admiring of the way he’d fought and won his grim battles.
Nic’s mouth twisted, and he reached for his tequila, taking a deep draught. ‘My father wasn’t there—I never knew him. He cleared out before I was born. And my poor mother—’
He broke off again. Took another mouthful of tequila.
‘Well, let’s just say that she had a bad time with men. The final man landed her in hospital.’ His eyes darkened. ‘I put him in hospital too—and never regretted it!’ His expression changed again, the darkness lessening. ‘Although she was an invalid she lived long enough to see me make good, and I’ll always be grateful for that.’
He took a final slug of his tequila, finishing it and getting to his feet. The air of grim darkness had dropped from him and he wanted it gone. Wanted only to focus on the now. He held his hand out to Fran, the woman he wanted for this very enticing now.
‘Time to eat,’ he announced.
She took the outstretched hand, liking the way he was wanting to join the present again.
She smiled at him as she stood up. ‘Sounds good,’ she said.
Without conscious realisation she walked with him into the restaurant, not having dropped his hand. His strong fingers closed around hers, warm and reassuring.
The ‘now’ of their being together seemed very good.
Yet across her consciousness slid the thought that they had exchanged more about themselves, about what drove them, what they’d overcome, in their brief time together than so casual an acquaintance would usually expect.
Maybe, she mused as they took their places at the table in the motel’s restaurant, casting a pondering look across at Nic picking up the menu, it was because they were so new to each other that they could speak like this? Or was it because they seemed to resonate with each other, despite their very different backgrounds?