Daniel Harrington was no good for her—time spent with him seemed to have somehow frayed her entire Lady Kaitlin persona around the edges. Worse, she wasn’t sure she cared. Because he was a good man—good enough that she was sorely tempted to take him at his word. To tell him about the incident that had changed her whole life’s path, intrinsically altered her from the inside out.
But to do that she would have to take trust a whole skyscraper further.
He picked his drink up and lifted his broad shoulders. ‘I understand if you can’t trust me enough. That is a decision only you can make.’
As she picked up an olive and took a small bite she remembered what he had told her of his family—information she knew was personal to him. She remembered that he hadn’t gone public with Barcelona, remembered how he had helped her these past days, allowed her a chance to experience Venice in a way that would have been impossible otherwise. She recalled how he had been in Scotland, with the teenagers. If she couldn’t trust this man, who had such a sense of integrity, then all her remaining belief in human nature would shatter.
‘I do trust you enough,’ she said quietly. ‘And I appreciate your offer to listen—maybe it will help.’
She swirled her drink round the glass, gazed down into it, unable to face him, to see his expression when she told him.
‘Hey. Look at me. Whatever you tell me I will respect your confidence. And I won’t judge you and I won’t pity you.’ Leaning over the table, he placed a gentle finger under her chin. ‘I promise.’
Drawing in a shaky breath, she closed her eyes. Then opened them and forced herself to look into the deep blue depths of his.
‘When I was thirteen I was kidnapped. I wanted to go to a concert and my parents said no. One of the staff, Natalie, offered to help me—I trusted her, and she helped sneak me out of the manor. Turned out it was all a plan to kidnap me.’
Daniel sat very still, but she could sense the anger that emanated from him, saw his hands clench into purposeful fists. ‘You must have been terrified.’
‘It took me a while to truly comprehend what was happening. To this day I don’t know where they held me—but I was there for ten days whilst they negotiated with my parents. The longer it went on, the more frustrated they got and the worse it was for me. Especially after I tried and nearly managed to escape.’
Kaitlin couldn’t contain the shudder.
‘Did they hurt you?’
Now there was no mistaking his anger, and that fury made her feel protected in a way she never had before. Her parents’ anger had been directed at her, not at the kidnappers. The blame had been handed to her and she’d borne it for the past fourteen years.
‘They threatened me. Natalie told them about my fear of water and they exploited that. Held me under in the bath. They also—’
Her voice broke as memories crowded in. The taste of sheer humiliation, the clammy sheen of bone-deep terror at the realisation of her powerlessness and her kidnappers’ strength.
‘They made me pose for photographs—threatened my parents that they would release them.’
‘Oh, hell, Kaitlin. If I could get my hands on them I swear to you I’d make them pay.’
He rose and moved round the s
ecluded table, sat next to her so he shielded her from anyone’s view.
‘I’m OK. It happened in the past. I was shaken today because that bearded man reminded me of one of the men who held me. Mostly I face forward.’
‘You can’t face forward if the demons are constantly at your back. First you have to deal with them.’
As she saw the determination on his face she wondered if he had dealt with whatever demons lay behind him. ‘I have dealt with them. For the most part.’
‘By yourself. I still don’t understand why your parents didn’t get you some help?’
‘They couldn’t risk the publicity—they were terrified of what the kidnappers would do with those photographs, and they were furious with me. If I hadn’t sneaked out to go to that concert the whole situation wouldn’t have arisen. It cost them a lot of money to get me back.’
Hearing the bitterness in her own words, she shook her head.
‘No. That makes them sound terrible. Of course they were glad to have me back in one piece. But as far as they were concerned I’d messed up, there had been terrible consequences, but they had sorted it out and we all needed to put it behind us and move on.’
‘But they must have realised the experience had traumatised you—would traumatise anyone.’
‘No, they didn’t. They didn’t want to talk about it, forbade me to tell anyone, ever, and that was that. So I figured out how to deal with it myself. As I got older I did some research into panic attacks and I have worked out various strategies for how to deal with it.’
Strategies that had worked just fine until Daniel had entered her orbit.