“That’s where I think you’re wrong,” Megan interrupted. She grabbed hold of Katie’s hands and squeezed. “You’re a bright, strong, beautiful, brave, passionate and extremely talented woman, Katie. I know that, Dario knows it. I think Jared figured it out while you were with him. The only one who doesn’t know it is you.”
Katie’s heart bobbed into her throat at the sincerity in her sister’s voice.
Megan studied Katie’s fingers, stained with turpentine and oil paint, and ran her thumbs over the nails Katie had chewed in the last few weeks.
“What do you know about Jared’s past?” she asked. “Did you ask him about it?”
Katie shook her head. “We were only together four days and he’s not a man who it’s easy to ask personal questions of.” She gulped down the guilt that she’d ever assumed she even had the right to ask. “All I know is that he comes from humble origins because that’s what I’ve read in the gossip columns.”
Megan rubbed Katie’s knuckles and then raised her head. “Not humble. I think ‘horrific’ is probably a better description.”
“Horrific, how?” Katie asked, all the empathy and concern for Jared that she had tried so hard to deny for the last two weeks spilling over into her voice.
“I don’t know the specific details, neither does Dario. But this is what I do know... Dario caught him trying to pick his pocket. He was only fifteen, in and out of foster homes, mostly living on the street. Dario took him in that night because he was obviously starving, but sharp and quick, and Dario...” A pensive smile tugged at her sister’s lips. “Well, Dario knows what it’s like to have nothing and no one too. Dario contacted the authorities the next day and helped make sure that over the next few years Jared had all the support he needed. Both financially and, as far as he would accept it, emotionally too.”
Tears stung the back of Katie’s eyes at the thought of how alone Jared must’ve been and how important Dario was to him. No wonder he had been willing to do anything Dario asked of him. Including getting stuck for four days in a luxury villa with a woman who did nothing but annoy him.
“Your husband really is one of the good guys, isn’t he?” Katie said, feeling even more foolish for the reservations she’d once had about Dario when Megan had first become engaged to him.
Megan’s smile blossomed. “Yes, he is, but don’t tell him that. His head is quite enormous enough already.”
Both sisters laughed, but Katie’s felt strained.
“The thing is, Katie,” Megan said, her smile dying, “Dario told me Jared had those night terrors the first night, when he was staying in Dario’s apartment. Dario paid for him to live in a residential home for street kids until he reached maturity, because he couldn’t settle with a foster family. But he had those crippling nightmares at the home too. I have no idea where they come from. And neither does Dario. And Jared refused to do more than a couple of sessions with the home’s therapist. So the fact he even let you comfort him is, I think, a pretty big deal.”
Megan eased a tendril of hair behind Katie’s ear, reminding her poignantly of the last time Jared had touched her. “And the fact he seems to have run off to some remote cabin in Vermont to brood and lick his wounds seems even more significant. Jared has spent most of his life protecting himself. It’s extremely hard to win his trust. Dario managed it, but only after years of friendship, and that clearly has its limits if he can’t talk to Dario now about this. You seem to have won his trust in a matter of days.”
“Did I?” Katie wanted to believe it with all her heart, but she didn’t want to hope. “I’m not sure I did. I thought there was a connection there, something to build on, but I don’t know if he did.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Megan said, her voice as sure, steady and reassuring as Katie remembered it being throughout their childhood.
Stupid to realize, she thought as gratitude made her ribs ache, that she had always believed she didn’t have a mother because Alexis Whitaker had abandoned them as children, when she actually did. And always had.
“What way’s that?” Katie asked, almost scared to ask but even more scared not to act on the hope bubbling back into her chest.
“You’ll have to go and ask him.”
A tear-soaked chuckle escaped Katie’s lips as her sister wrapped her in a hard hug. When they finally broke apart, Megan said, “I’ll get Dario to lend you the company helicopter to get to Vermont.”
Katie didn’t want to mooch off her billionaire brother-in-law, but pride was going to have to take second place to the need to confront Jared before she lost her nerve. “Okay, but what is Dario going to make of the fact that Jared and I slept together? I don’t want to mess up their friendship.”
“You won’t,” Megan said, her eyes shiny with emotion. “I’ll explain everything to Dario. He’ll probably freak out; he’s not super-evolved when it comes to understanding love either. But I know how to handle him. And I should be able to get everything organized by tomorrow morning.”
“But that’s twenty-four hours away. I don’t know if I can wait that long to see Jared,” Katie said, her impulsiveness returning in a rush.
And to think she’d once thought that was a flaw.
But Megan wouldn’t be swayed, insisting that Katie wasn’t going anywhere until she’d had at least twelve hours’ sleep, and Megan had witnessed her eating a three-course meal. With or without radish kimchi.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KATIE WAS GRATEFUL for he
r sister’s mother-hen tendencies at noon the next day when the De Rossi Corp helicopter landed beside the lake on Jared’s ten-acre property. Thanks to the sleep and sustenance Megan had insisted upon, the nervous tension in her stomach was just about manageable, instead of catastrophic.
Nestled amid a grove of towering spruce and pine trees, a strikingly modern cedar-wood house stood beside a traditional redwood barn. The large wraparound porch looked out onto the placid waters of the lake, in stark contrast to the rolling waves of anxiety pounding Katie’s stomach.
Taking a deep breath she jumped out of the helicopter and waved goodbye to the pilot.