He realised he’d been staring at the hats for far too long.
‘I had an awesome beanie collection a few years ago,’ she added.
‘Beanie?’ He couldn’t resist running his hand through her tresses. ‘You lost your hair during treatment?’
His heart ached as she nodded.
‘You’d never know,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’s so thick and beautiful now.’
Pleasure sparkled in her eyes. ‘Thank you. I like it too.’ She bit her lip and amusement deepened. ‘In fact, I’m really vain about it. My hair appliances take up most of the room in my bag. That’s why I don’t have many clothes.’
He chuckled and ruffled her hair. He loved the silkiness of it—and the way she responded.
‘Hey.’ She ducked, only to then reach out and rumple her fingers through his. ‘How do you like it?’
‘I like it a lot.’ He caught her close. ‘Go ahead and mess me up a little. I deserve it.’
‘Do you think?’ She grew serious and he knew she was thinking about the baby. ‘I don’t blame you. I was there too. Don’t diminish my responsibility. I’m every bit at fault—in fact, I think I was the one who started it.’
She gave him a little push, turned and walked away from him through the pretty market. But Roman still didn’t look at the stalls. He followed her, thoughtful, aware he’d just disappointed her in a deeper way than he’d intended. Her little flare told him something more about her. Something she’d been trying to tell him from the moment they’d met.
I don’t need you to rescue me.
Now he needed to understand why she’d assumed he’d even been trying to. She assumedeveryonehad that in mind where she was concerned. Maybe she had reason to. Frankie had wanted to rescue her. Hell, Roman also wanted to protect her. Of course he did. But what was so wrong with that? She didn’t want to be treated as less than responsible or less than capable. She asserted her independence, repeatedly insisting she didn’t need protecting. She was afraid of him being too powerful and exerting too much control over her life. Was that something she was used to?
‘Tell me about it,’ he said as he caught up with her as she passed a stall selling hot spiced wine.
‘About what?’
‘Your family. Why they’re so over-protective. Why you don’t want to go home even now you’re in “trouble”. Was it because of the cancer?’
Violet walked to a gap in the line-up of wooden stalls through which she could view the lake gently lapping the shore. She probably needed to explain everything so he’d understand why she wasn’t exactly thrilled about his whole ‘I’ll marry you and take care of everything’ vibe.
‘It started way before the cancer,’ she said bluntly. ‘I was premature. An unexpected fifth child and the first and only girl. I was born five years after my youngest brother. I was precious and wanted and loved. And I appreciate that, I do.’
He faced away from the lake. Faced her. ‘But?’
‘I was small from the start, of course, so they were super-protective, super-worried. But that worry never eased—not even when I was bigger and healthier. At the first sign of any cough or cold, they’d keep me home. I didn’t go to pre-school or anything. Later, a lot of the time I didn’t go to school.’
‘Because you were sickly?’
‘I was always undersized but not as sickly as they thought. I could have...’ She could have gone to school more. She could have played outside more. She could have strived and then thrived a little more. Instead she’d been cosseted and constrained and, even when she’d been older, healthier, the limits had remained. ‘They worried about me. A lot. Too much.’ She drew a breath. ‘They treated me like a porcelain doll.’ And she’d hated that. She hated being petite, being thought of as incapable or lacking in strength. ‘But in missing a lot of school I slipped behind academically. And in never doing much sport I didn’t get very strong.’
He nodded slowly.
‘My brothers are all engineers. They’re super-smart guys. Successful in other ways too. Like sports. But I wasn’t like them, and they all always said not to worry, it didn’t matter... But in reality Mum did so much worrying, she stopped me from...’ She gazed at the lake and felt that old frustration begin to burn. ‘They stopped me from doing everything. This might go wrong, or that might go wrong—they were full of all the “if”s and “but”s and “you shouldn’t”. She saw so many possibilities—all the risks that were never worth taking. I didn’t have the resources or the strength, and then I didn’t have the smarts...’
‘Violet—’
‘I know I’m good at some things,’ she interrupted. ‘I can talk to anyone about anything and I’m curious about everything. And now I want to see everything. Do everything. I want to soakeverythingup,’ she said fiercely. ‘I want to feel free and travel and live. I love that they love me, and I know it sounds so ungrateful to moan about them, but...’
She inhaled deeply and admitted at last, ‘In my teens I started to lie about how I felt just so they wouldn’t stop me from doing something. Because I wanted to go out, you know? I wanted to go on adventures with my friends. But they wouldn’t even let me go on school camp. They said I wasn’t strong enough to carry the damned pack. And then...’
She hated remembering this time.
‘The cancer,’ Roman said softly.
‘Ishouldhave told them sooner.’ She shook her head as her eyes stung. ‘That was the lesson. I’d hidden that I’d been feeling lousy. That I’d lost some weight without intending to. Then I found a lump on my neck—a bit more than the usual swollen glands, you know? I was sure it was just going to be some other virus but it turned out it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma.’