‘No. I know she had postnatal depression. I know her and my father were having troubles.’
Aidan moved beside her as her very real distress pierced deep inside him. ‘Cara, you didn’t make her leave.’
‘I just said I know that.’ She threw her hands up between them as if to ward him off. ‘She wanted a different life and I wouldn’t have fit into that. It’s fine.’
Like hell it’s fine. He reached out and gently drew her chin around so that she was looking at him. ‘You didn’t make her leave, Cara.’
She batted his hand away and crossed the room. ‘You don’t know that. If I’d been better, if I’d been prettier …’
‘If you’d been smarter, or stronger. If the world had been square …’ He watched myriad emotions chase themselves across her face. Pain, despair, loss … hope? ‘It’s not logical, Cara. Your mother was an adult with six other children. No one knows why she left but her.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t me, then why couldn’t my father stand me, either?’ she asked challengingly. ‘Why could he never look at me? Oh, I know the answer to that. Because I look like her and he hated that she left.’
Aidan thought about the ways she turned in on herself when she was really hurt. The way she revamped her image every now and then.
It was an attempt to hide, he realised, a way of protecting the little girl who had grown up with selfish parents.
‘I loved him,’ she said almost too quietly for Aidan to hear. ‘I still love him.’
It took Aidan two strides to reach her and then he stopped thinking and drew her into his arms. She stiffened for a heartbeat and then buried her face against his neck. ‘I wasn’t going to cry any more.’
‘It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re okay.’
A broken sob caught in her throat and Aidan reached down and kissed her. It was the most natural thing in the world to do. ‘You’re okay,’ he murmured gently.
The kiss was soft. Tender. And he steadfastly ignored the way holding her made his heart clench inside his chest. This was about her, not him.
You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.
Aidan’s soft words went round and round inside Cara’s head like an out-of-control merry-go-round picking up speed.
A horrible ball of mixed emotions grew inside her and threatened to engulf her. She felt sick. Unsteady. The urge to pull out of his embrace making her feel like she had live ants crawling all over her skin.
Inadvertently Aidan had hit on her worst fear. The fear that once someone looked inside of her, once someone saw the real her, they would find nothing worth keeping. Nothing worth loving. She had discovered that changing her looks and pretending she didn’t care what others thought was easier. Easier to cope with her parents’ rejection. And how Aidan was holding her. Kissing her. Making her feel special. Making her feel wanted. Her stomach twisted painfully. She couldn’t stand his touch because it made her want things she knew she couldn’t ever let herself want.
‘Aidan?’ Cara said his name shakily and placed her hands on his chest. ‘Stop, please.’
Slowly he raised his head and stared down at her.
Cara held perfectly still, afraid that if she moved she might actually break.
‘I know what I should do,’ he said huskily, ‘and I know what I want to do. They’re two entirely different things.’
His raw admission made her pulse quicken and her face feel hot. She experienced the same heady rush of emotion she did on a roller-coaster and it was as if she was back on one now and about to go over. She could see the crashlanding below, but, oh, the soft press of his mouth … The hard press of his body … She knew he would be the type of lover who cared about his partner and just once she’d like to experience what it would be like to be with a man like that. Just once she’d like to experience what real chemistry felt like.
Only she knew it was a chemistry that he didn’t want to feel and some deep instinct told her that this man had the potential to truly hurt her as she had never been before. That already she had made him more important than she should have and that right now she wasn’t in control of herself enough not to make the physical attraction between them more than it actually was.
The last man she had been intimate with had ripped the stuffing out of her when he’d told her that she was too needy and she could feel those same feelings rising up inside her again. Those same feelings times one hundred.
She’d imagined herself in love with her last boyfriend but he had walked away and she hadn’t thought about him since. She suspected if she went any further with Aidan, she’d think about him for ever.