“A true opposite to my own childhood, then.” He’d spoken without thinking. He never, without exception, spoke of his youth.
But Sophie was fast. “In what way?”
“We are not talking about me,” he attempted to demur, but she wasn’t going to let it pass so easily.
“No, but I’d like to. I presume you mean you were the water. Or at least, that you were flotsam on the water. Rather than the air-bubble,” she clarified, at his lost expression.
He couldn’t help but smile at her quick turn of phrase. “If you exchange water for sludge, then yes. I was detritus in the mud of life, during my childhood.”
She squeezed his fingers. “I am tempted to say that it can’t have been so bad, except that I suspect you are not prone to exaggeration.”
“No,” he admitted grimly. “It was more dire that I would admit to most people.”
“How?” She pushed, in the same demanding way he had employed.
r /> And though he’d brought her to his house to seduce her, and though he believed he had every reason to distrust her, he heard himself say, “It would be impossible to describe.”
Sophie lifted his hand above the table and unfurled his fingers. She placed a kiss in his palm and then closed his fist back up. “I want to know more.”
An exasperated noise escaped his throat without his consent. “I’m not sure it would do any good to speak of it.”
“But would it do any harm?”
He studied her carefully. “You might think less of me.”
Sophie pulled a face. “If you truly believe I am the kind of woman to judge someone on their background or the way they were raised then you don’t know me at all.” She flushed to the roots of her pale, silky hair. “You don’t know me at all. Not really. So let me tell you something. I don’t really care about where you’ve come from, except in so much as it changes who you are now. If you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll let it go. But if you’re hiding it from me because you’re ashamed, then I’m going to be very offended.”
A long beat of silence throbbed between them before Alex found his voice. “You seem to have an ability to unsettle and surprise me.”
“I try hard,” she teased with a shrug of her shoulders.
“It is not something my lovers usually care to discuss.”
And in a flash, the atmosphere began to crackle with tension. It zapped around them, and Sophie didn’t know where to look. Despite the crowd in the restaurant, they were alone, and her chest was hurting.
“What do they want to discuss?” She managed through half-gritted teeth.
“Sophie.” He sighed. “We have gone off-course.”
“Have we?” She simpered, biting into the pappadum and swallowing the piece whole.
“You were telling me about your air-bubble.”
She lifted her water and sipped it slowly. It wasn’t his fault that her emotions were zipping all over the place. Something had slipped loose in her usual resolve and now it was up to Sophie to pick up the pieces.
“It was my mother’s doing. She was determined that we would enjoy a beautiful youth.”
“Why?”
“Because she never had one,” Sophie said simply. “Her parents were poor, and she had to get a job when she was young. She grew up in Manhattan and she got a part time job in a record store, but it took her almost an hour to get there on three different busses. As soon as she found out she was pregnant with us, she drove off into the sunset.”
“To Australia? That seems … both drastic and brave.”
“Yes to both. That was my mum though. Brave and fearless, and determined as hell.” She sipped on her soda water, and told herself that the burning in her throat came from the bubbles and not the cloying threat of tears. “She was diving when she died.” Her eyes were prickling with the sting of unshed salt. “Countless people have said to me, ‘at least she died doing something she loved’.”
Alex made a sound of frustration. “A pointless platitude. Far better to live and spend many more years doing what she loved than to die needlessly.”
Sophie’s heart turned over in her chest. “Yes, exactly. That is exactly as I feel. It almost seems worse that we lost her to diving. As though one of her great loves betrayed her.”