His features showed his lack of comprehension. ‘And so?’
She took a small sip of the wine then pushed the glass away. As delicious as it was, the fact she didn’t drink often meant it was already making her feel a little light-headed and tingly. Or maybe that was San
tos’s proximity and having the full force of his attention.
‘And,’ she continued slowly, to give the words less time to hurt. ‘We were really poor. My dad was a welder, and didn’t have a lot of work; Mum wasn’t qualified for anything so took work when she could but, when I came along, they were paid all this money—’
‘By whom?’ he interrupted, business-like as he honed in on the facts of what she was saying.
‘By the programme conducting research, initially—they were paid annually to keep me enrolled. There was a lot of media attention too and they had an agent who found them interviews and the like. Then, colleges were vying for me to attend, and in the end it came down, largely, to how much they were willing to pay. I didn’t know any of this.’ She shook her head, the words a little scathing even when she’d long ago made her peace with the financial aspects of it. That wasn’t what really hurt.
‘That’s exploitative.’
‘They were very poor, Santos.’ She gently defended them.
‘Perhaps; but, while I don’t think that’s necessarily any justification, I was referring to the universities.’
‘Ah.’ She nodded. ‘I got a lot out of it, though. I hated leaving my parents, I hated being away from home, but I loved the learning. I was challenged and pushed for the first time in my life.’
He nodded thoughtfully, easing back in his chair. Her hand was cold compared to the warmth of his touch moments ago. ‘You were their meal ticket.’
She winced at the phrase, but it was accurate. ‘Yes.’
‘And they came to consider your income as theirs?’
Her face paled a little. ‘They managed my income,’ she said softly. ‘When I began to consult at space agencies, any payment was being handled by dad. He took a management fee.’
‘A considerable one?’ Santos’s voice was flattened of emotion, but not enough. She heard the disapproval there and ingrained protective instincts that had her lifting her shoulders. ‘I’m not really sure.’ It wasn’t true. After they’d argued, she’d taken the reins of her own career and had realised how much money had been flowing through her bank account—both in and out. The reality of that had almost broken her.
‘And so at five years of age you sat through courses designed for—what?—sixteen-year-olds?’
He brought the conversation back to her studies. She lifted her brows in silent agreement.
‘You didn’t have any friends your own age?’
She pulled a face. ‘I didn’t have any friends at all,’ she said seriously. ‘What teenager wants to spend time with a child?’
‘But as you got older?’
‘I was still young and, by then, pretty socially awkward. What I had in academic ability I absolutely lacked socially. But eventually, yes, I met someone—a friend. He was the first person to introduce me properly to the Classics, and through them I learned so much about emotion and motivation.’
‘And you’re still friends?’
‘Yes. We’re close.’ She smiled. ‘He’s very important to me.’
She wondered at the slight shift in Santos’s expression to something like speculation. ‘And yet you and he never...?’
‘Never...?’ she prompted, even when she knew what he was asking.
‘You weren’t intimate?’
‘No. Brent’s like my only family now—there’s no way I’d ever do anything to ruin that.’
‘So you might have been interested in him but for the fact you don’t want to confuse friendship with sex?’
She ignored the jangling of nerves in the pit of her stomach. ‘Until I met you, I’d never known anyone I wanted to have sex with.’
His eyes swept shut for a moment, his expression impossible to read.