She looked away, trying to hide the fact she was growing teary over old conflicts that would never be resolved. Her stepmother cared nothing for her while she, Sirena, loved her father and sister. There was nothing that could be done except manage the situation.
After a few seconds, he inquired in a stiff tone, “What about Amber? Why didn’t you call her, if you’re such good friends?”
“She’s in a wheelchair.” She cleared the huskiness from her throat. “Which isn’t to say she wouldn’t have been a help, but my flat is a walk-up and she has other health problems. That’s what brought her to London. She’s seeing a specialist then heading straight home.”
His silence rang with pointed surprise. “I really don’t know anything about you.”
She wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole.
They ate in silence for a few minutes until he asked, “Your father wasn’t worried about you?”
“Of course, but he remarried because he didn’t know what to do with a little girl. He wasn’t about to play midwife to a grown woman.”
“And your sister? She can’t make her own decisions?”
Sirena let out a poignant sigh, bristling at his judgment because if he didn’t understand Ali’s vulnerability and how much she needed support, he’d never understand why she’d taken his money for the young woman.
“Ali’s young for her age. She struggles in school, so exams are a real issue for her. Pitting her against her mother has never seemed right, no matter how much I’ve wanted to. I adore her like I can’t even tell you and I miss her terribly. I practically raised her. Faye wouldn’t change a nappy if I was around to do it. Homework was me, running flash cards and spelling lists. The questions about puberty and sex and buying her first bra all came to me. But they left nearly eight years ago and I haven’t seen her since. Faye had been cooking up the move the whole time I was applying to school, never mentioning it until my plans were sealed. Tell me that’s not small-minded and hurtful.”
“You could have gone to see them.”
“Oh, with all my spare time working two jobs while studying? Or do you mean after you hired me? Go all the way to Australia for one of those generous single weeks you’d allow me? Every time I asked for more than five days you’d get an expression on your face like you were passing a kidney stone. I tried taking a stretch after that trade fair in Tokyo, but the database melted down in Brussels, remember? I had to cancel.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “You might have explained the circumstances.”
“To what end, Raoul? You never once showed the least bit of interest in my private life. You wanted an extension of your laptop, not a living, breathing woman.”
“Because you were my employee,” he bit out, pushing away from the table in a minor explosion.
She’d seen him reach the limit of his patience, but usually within the context of a business deal going south. To have that aggressive male energy aimed at her made her sit very still, but he wasn’t throwing his anger at her. He paced to the edge of the pool, where he shoved his hands into his pockets and scowled into the eerie glow of the blue-green depths.
“You have no idea what it’s like to lust after your coworker, knowing that’s the one person off-limits.”
I beg to differ, she thought, but swallowed it back because... She shook her head. “How can you say something like that when you made it quite clear—”
“I know what I said that day. Stop throwing it in my face,” he growled. “Why do you think I let it go so far so fast in Oxshott? I’d been thinking about it for two solid years. And the next day—” he gestured in frustration “—the very next day, I found you’d been stealing. You betrayed my trust and you used me. What the hell was I supposed to say? Admit you’d hurt me? It was too humiliating.”
She’d hurt him?
No. She didn’t let herself believe it, not after all these months of scouring the joy and tenderness from her memories, reframing it as a meaningless one-afternoon stand. Maybe in her mind their day in Oxshott had been special, but all he was saying was that he’d had sexual feelings for her while she’d been employed by him. That was only a fraction more personal than being handy. His ego had been damaged, not his heart.
“I was trying to behave like a professional as well,” she said thinly. “Not dragging my personal life into the office. I don’t see the point in sharing it now.” She plucked her napkin from her lap and dropped it beside her plate. “You still don’t care and I still can’t see my family.”
“What makes you think I don’t care?” he swung around to challenge.
His naked look of strong emotion was a spear straight into her heart. She averted her gaze, tempted to dissect what sort of feelings underpinned his intense question, but refusing to. That way lay madness.
“Don’t,” she said through a tight throat. “You hate me and I’m fine with that because I hate you, too.” Liar, a voice whispered in her head, but she ignored it along with the hiss of his sharp inhale. “Let’s just keep things as honest as possible. For Lucy’s sake.”
It was hard to look at him, but she made herself do it. Made herself look him in the eye and face his hatred with stillness and calm while she wrapped tight inner arms around her writhing soul.
“I wish it was that simple.” He surged forward to grip the back of his chair. “I want to hate you, but now I understand why you felt you couldn’t come to me. You didn’t know I was acting uninterested to curb my attraction, but it was there all along.”
She recoiled, swinging from disbelief to heart-pounding excitement to intense hurt that he had treated her the way he had regardless of having feelings for her. They weren’t very strong if he could behave like that, were they?
Speaking very carefully, crushing her icy fingers together in her lap, she stated the obvious. “Lust is not caring, Raoul.”
He straightened to an arrogant height.
“No, listen,” she rushed on, fearing he thought she was begging for affection. “I didn’t think one hookup meant we were getting married and living happily ever after. I’m just saying I thought you had some respect and regard for me. But even a dismissal slip would have been better than having me arrested without speaking to me. That was...”
She faltered. He was staring at her with an expression that had gone stony. Steeling herself, she forced herself to continue, even though her voice thinned.
“Discovering I was pregnant, knowing they’d take the baby from me in prison—” She stood in a shaken need to retreat, very afraid she was going to start to cry as the memories closed in. “Even my stepmother didn’t go that far to hurt me.”
“I didn’t know you were pregnant,” he reminded her ferociously.
“Exactly! And if you did, you would have gone easy for the baby’s sake, not mine. You didn’t care about me. Not one bit.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
RAOUL FELT AS though he was pacing in London’s infamous fog. The walls of his penthouse were clear enough, the sky beyond the windows dull with a high ceiling, but his mind wouldn’t grasp a lucid concept. He kept replaying everything Sirena had said last night, which had him writhing in a miasma of regret and agitation.
Lucy squirmed in his hold.
He paused to look at her, certain she must be picking up his tension. That’s why she was so unsettled. He was pacing one end of his home to the other trying to soothe her, but neither of them was finding any peace.
How peaceful would Sirena have felt pacing a twelve-by-twelve cell?
His stomach churned.
He hadn’t let himself dwell on that picture when he’d been trying to put her away, but now he couldn’t get it out of his head. Vibrant Sirena who craned her neck with excited curiosity from the airport to the business center in every city they visited, locked in a cage of gray brick and cold bars.
You hate me and I’m fine with that because I hate you, too.
“What are you doing in here?”
Her voice startled him, causing a ripple of pleasure-pain down his spine. He blinked, becoming aware he’d wandered into the small flat off the main one. It was meant for a housekeeper or nanny, but stood empty because his maid service came daily to his city residence.
“Just something different for her to look at.” He stopped rubbing Lucy’s back and changed her position so she could see her mother. “She’s fussy.”
Sirena’s brow crinkled as she took in the rumpled clothes he’d been wearing since their unfinished dinner by the pool.
His neutral expression felt too heavy on his cheekbones, but he balked at letting her see the more complex emotions writhing in him—uncertainty and yearning that went beyond the simply sexual. Pain. There was a searing throb inside him he couldn’t seem to identify or ease.
“Have you been up all night? You should have brought her to me.” She came forward to take the baby and was greeted with rooting kisses all over her face. She laughed with tender surprise, a sound that his angry attempt to jail her would have silenced forever. His heart shriveled in his chest.