His eyes flickered to her. “Yes.” He expelled a rough breath. “On the one hand, I loved them with all my heart, and on the other—,” he stopped, shaking his head, as if to dismiss his thoughts.
“On the other,” she prompted gently, her voice husky.
“I hated them,” he said after a beat. “I hated them for what they did to her. If they’d been kinder to her, if they’d loved her even half as much as she deserved, she’d still be alive. I struggle with knowing how to forgive them for that.”
Skye’s heart turned in her chest and she moved closer to him, lifting her hands to his chest. “You want to hurt them for that, don’t you?”
His eyes flashed to hers, his handsome face a picture of tortured acceptance. “I love them.”
She made a growling sound of agreement. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” she said gently. “And they’re not rational, either. When my dad got sick, I was so angry with him. I just wanted to shake him, whenever he’d talk about a time when he’d be ‘gone’. But God, I loved him, too.”
Matthieu ground his teeth together, spearing the space behind her shoulder with glitteringly black eyes. “My dad wasn’t cut out to be a single dad. He was okay, but the day-to-day parenting stuff fell to either my boarding master, or my grandparents. As I got older, our relationship improved. I could talk to him like an adult, play golf with him, taste wine at his side.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple pressing against his thick thatch of stubble. “But I never let myself love him. Not like I loved Lucien and Anais. They hugged me when she died. Anais lay beside me as I slept, as I had nightmares, as I woke, reaching for my mother before remembering the awful truth. They hated her, but they didn’t break her heart in the way my father did.”
“Oh, Matthieu,” she pressed her cheek to his chest, listening to the rapid beating of his heart, concealing the way her eyes were shimmering with sympathy for the little boy he’d been—and the man who still bore that pain.
“But they didn’t help her either.” The words rumbled, low and gruff, and she wasn’t sure if she heard them through the air or from his chest. “They didn’t comfort her, they didn’t go to her, they didn’t even speak to her, except to arrange when to pick me up for their custodial visits.” His hand patted her back absentmindedly, running from between her shoulder blades to low down, then drifting up again.
“You must have been so confused.”
“I was angry.”
“You’re still angry,” she surmised.
“Yes.”
And like a burst of lightning on the horizon, a certainty gripped Skye that she couldn’t ignore. “Is that why you asked me to do this?”
His hand stilled. “What do you mean?”
She grimaced. “You could have chosen anyone to be your fake fiancé. Any woman in the world would have jumped at the chance—for the money, sure, but also to be close to you and your family.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
She didn’t move; didn’t look up at him. She had to hold her train of thought.
“But you didn’t want the kind of woman who moves in your social circles. You didn’t want someone sophisticated and elegant, someone they’d instantly love. You didn’t want to bring home the kind of fiancé that would truly please your grandparents.”
He said nothing, but with her cheek pressed to his chest, she felt his breath hitch, and her voice wobbled as she put two and two together. “You chose me because I’m different. Like your mum was different.” She forced herself to shift, to look up at him, but he kept staring resolutely ahead. “You wanted to go home with a fiancé they’d disapprove of, to make them pay for how they rejected her. Yes?”
He dropped his eyes to hers, meeting her gaze with quiet appraisal. “When my grandmother came to me with the ultimatum, that was my first thought, yes.” Her heart stammered and ice filled her veins. The world tipped completely off her axis. She went to pull away from him, but his hands formed a loop at her back, holding her where she was. “You were different to anyone I’d ever met. I wanted them to see me with someone like you.”
“Because they’d hate me?”
“No.” His frown was reflexive. “It was never really about you, Skye. It’s true, I knew you were different to the kind of woman I thought they wanted me to marry, but that was my judgement of them, not you. Never you.” His lips formed a deeper groove. “The truth is, I was fascinated by you from that first afternoon at the winery.” He pulled her closer, so their bodies melded. “I wanted to get to know you better and my grandmother’s ultimatum presented an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.”
Her heart stammered, trying to burst back into a normal rhythm. But she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d been used. Years of never being good enough were hard to walk away from.
As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, he moved one hand, catching her chin and lifting it, so her face was angled to his. “Since Clare, I’ve been with only three women, and only for one night. You got under my skin that afternoon, cherie.”
“Then why didn’t you just ask me on a date?”
“When Clare and I broke up, I swore that would be the end of normal relationships for me. But with you—knowing your heart is in Australia, that you’re leaving after Christmas, made you—safe.”
She nodded slowly, wondering why her heart didn’t feel that it was in Australia at that point, knowing, deep down, that it was beating just for this man.
“Safe because there’s a guaranteed end point,” she said, her voice cracking.
He nodded without hesitation. “It keeps this simple.”