She made it sound simple. But he wasn’t convinced. Why had she been so dead set on pleasing them?
‘By the time I got to university I was two years ahead of my peers. And I didn’t know the first thing about boys.’ She gave a hopeless little laugh. ‘Plus I think my love of pirate fantasies may have given me some unrealistic expectations. And by the time I got over that, and realised that swashbuckling sex gods are quite thin on the ground in real life, I was stuck in such a huge rut it took someone spectacular to kick me out of it.’
The shy smile she sent him had his heart tripping over. He skimmed his thumb down her cheek. ‘Please tell me you don’t mean me.’
No one had ever thought he was spectacular before. And he knew he wasn’t. So why did it feel so good to hear her say it?
She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. ‘Only in a sexual sense, you understand.’
‘You little tease,’ he said softly, framing her face. Then he kissed her.
Her lips softened, and he fed on the sweet, heady taste of figs and innocence. The soft sigh that issued against his cheek made it hard to focus. But he forced himself to draw back. Not to take her in the quick greedy gulps he wanted to.
‘It’s kind of ironic, don’t you think?’ he said, trying to lighten the mood and dispel the feeling of hopelessness that threatened to engulf him. ‘That you were a good girl and did what your parents wanted, while I was a rebel and did the opposite. And yet we both ended up regretting it.’
Her eyes flickered with something that looked like sadness. ‘Why did you run away from home?’
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, he thought grimly.
‘Was that your question?’ he asked, stalling.
She nodded. He debated giving her a sanitised version. Or making something up that would deflect her from the truth about who he really was. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d lied to a woman after all.
But as he met her trusting gaze he knew he couldn’t lie to her. Better to take the stars out of her eyes, once and for all.
‘When my dad came home from the hospital the night Mum died, I was fourteen,’ he began, the horror of that long ago summer night making his gut churn. ‘I thought my whole world had collapsed. But it hadn’t. Not yet.’
Eva could hear the tension in his voice, see the rigid control in his face and wanted desperately to take the pain away he was trying so hard to hide.
She touched his arm. ‘It’s okay, Nick. You don’t have to tell me.’
‘Yeah, I do,’ he said, the tone gruff. ‘My dad was wild with grief. She’d told him the truth. That I wasn’t his biological son. And he lost it for a while.’
Tears pricked her eyes. She hated to think what that meant—and how deeply he had been hurt by an incident that even now he couldn’t bring himself to describe.
‘He apologised a few days later at her funeral,’ Nick continued, plucking a tuft of grass, flinging it away. ‘He said it didn’t matter. That he still loved me, still considered me to be his son. But I wouldn’t believe him.’
Eva sniffed, scrubbed away the tears.
Nick’s he
ad shot up and he scowled. ‘Don’t you dare cry, Eva. Not for me.’
‘Why not? It must have been dreadful for you.’
‘It wasn’t that bad,’ he said, as if the trauma he had suffered that night had been nothing at all. When she knew how bad it must have been, if he was unable to acknowledge the pain, even now.
‘I made him pay for that lapse for the rest of his life,’ he said grimly. ‘Him and my sister Ruby. I made their lives hell for two years.’ He thrust his fingers through his hair, the gesture defensive and full of frustration. ‘I got into fights, bunked off school, argued with him constantly. And then I ran off and got up to much worse on the streets. And I didn’t go back. Ever. Even when Ruby begged me to. Even when he was dying.’
The loathing in his voice was so intense, so bitter, she didn’t know how to get past it. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ she said, the tears flowing freely now. ‘You were a frightened, confused child.’
‘You think?’ he said, the cynicism brutal and unyielding—and nothing like the warm, wonderful man she had discovered in the last two weeks. ‘I know what I’m capable of,’ he added, his lips twisting in a bitter smile. ‘I’ve known it ever since I was a kid. And now I’ve read Leonardo’s journal, I know why.’
Standing up, he walked back to the picnic basket.
She ran after him, pulled him round to face her. ‘You’re wrong. You’re nothing like Leonardo,’ she blurted out, knowing it was true, wanting to make him believe it, but not knowing how.
He shook his head, his expression closed off and unreadable, deliberately shutting her out. ‘How would you know?’ was all he said—and her newfound courage deserted her.