‘What exactly is your IQ?’
Even in the moonlight he could see the heat that flushed her cheeks. Or perhaps he was simply familiar enough with her to know that she was modest—almost to a fault.
‘You don’t have to say if you would prefer not to.’
‘It’s fine.’ She expelled an uneven breath. ‘Around two hundred.’
He let out a low whistle. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘It’s just the way I was born.’
He stopped walking, wrapping his arms low around her waist and looking into her eyes. ‘It’s not a fault, Amelia.’
‘I know that.’
‘You shouldn’t feel embarrassed by it.’
‘I’m not. It’s isn’t the IQ that embarrasses me, it’s people’s reactions to it. It’s being seen to exploit something that I had no hand in acquiring.’
‘How is that different to what a supermodel does?’
She lifted her brows. ‘You’re calling me a brain equivalent to a supermodel?’
He laughed at that. ‘Apparently.’
‘I suppose everyone has different dispositions. Perhaps if my parents hadn’t...’
‘Gloried in your brilliance?’ He was teasing her but she was frowning, a little divot between her brows that he wanted to wipe away.
‘They turned me into someone people knew about. They did interviews and got me in the papers; that was all part of it. For a while, my life felt like a circus. I had no control over where I went and what I did, and while I enjoyed the academic side of my life—I truly love studying and felt most at home when I was absorbing new information—I craved a normal childhood too. Friends, games, fun. Laughter. I don’t think I laughed my entire childhood.’
He lifted a hand, cupping her cheeks, looking down into her eyes with genuine sympathy. ‘You must have felt disappointed in them.’
‘I do. But they’re still my parents. I would have forgiven them—I can understand how difficult it would have been to bypass the opportunity to improve our financial standing—but they’ve cut me out of their life, Santos. I’m persona non grata to them and they did it so damned easily.’ Tears sparkled on her eyes and something inside him shifted painfully.
‘They were so angry with me. At first, I presumed they’d get over it. But they never did. They stopped returning my calls, changed their numbers, blocked my emails. I tried going to their home to speak to them—they moved house. I have no idea where they are now. I presume in London, because leaving it wouldn’t make sense, but I don’t know for sure. I bucked their plans and they cut me out of their life as though I meant nothing to them. To my mum and dad, my only point of merit was my intelligence—and what that meant for them. The realisation was one of the hardest I’ve ever come to.’
Santos was not a violent man. Having a front row seat to his father’s life had taught him that all strong emotions had the potential to be disastrous, so he was generally guarded, but in that moment he wanted, more than anything, to shake her parents for what they’d done to her. Not only in shutting her out of their life but in turning her into their prize performer and neglecting to care for her whole self.
‘You deserve better than that.’
Her smile was lopsided, a ghost on her face, haunted by grief. ‘I felt worthless.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘It was hard.’
She spun out of his arms and began to walk once more, her eyes trained on the Acropolis with its golden lighting. ‘My friend Brent introduced me to the Classics a long time ago. I loved them for their dynamically drawn emotional peaks and troughs, but it was only once I was living my own Aristotelian tragedy that I could see what they were really about.’
Santos waited for her to continue.
‘The purpose of a Greek tragedy is almost to purge you of grief, so, while you may watch the play and feel everything on the spectrum of sadness, there is an inevitable catharsis that comes after that—a relief from the pain that is supposed to result in an emotional lightness.’
He considered that, and in the back of his mind he wondered at her perspective on things, and how much he enjoyed her ability to weigh in on any subject. What did he expect? Intellectually she clearly blew him out of the water, but far from being threatened by that he wanted to absorb what he could from her.
‘Did you feel lighter once you’d gone through the tragedy of your argument with them?’
‘Eventually.’ She said the word with a smile that was more like herself, light and simple, happy. Relief spread through him. ‘It took a long time to accept the finality of what they’d done, and also how earnest they were in wanting me out of their lives. It wasn’t so much their decision as the way their decision showed me that even my own parents thought of me as unimportant. Unlovable.’ She winced a little, and her honesty had him wanting to rush to fill the silence with assurances. But what could he offer?
‘None of this was your fault,’ he said with firm determination. ‘I don’t know them but the impression I have is that your parents are absolute fools to have let such a trivial matter come between you.’
‘The thing is, it wasn’t trivial. Not to me. My vocation is a reflection of who I really am, in here.’ She pressed her fingers between her breasts. ‘I think teaching is one of the most worthy and important professions. In a thousand lifetimes I would always have chosen to be doing this. I love working with children; I love their optimism and potential and the fact they’re little sponges, brains ready to learn and acquire information.’