‘I don’t want to admit that I’ve been conned before!’ he exploded, equally angrily. ‘No one ever wants to admit that they’ve been taken for a god damned ride.’
‘For money?’ She gazed at him in amazement.‘How?’
Roman’s tension was unsustainable. He’d slept poorly. Not because he’d been making love with Violet most of the night, but because he’d then been wary of falling deeply asleep and having those dreams again. And he had, of course. And she’d caught him. And now she was looking at him with those big eyes of her and he couldn’t stand it. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Fortunately for you, this train is slow.’
He half laughed but his whole body was aching. ‘Why couldn’t you do even a little Internet search? Just to understand the basics.’
‘Honestly, I don’t want to see the “edible bachelor” photos. They probably have a line-up of potential bachelorettes linked in the article. That would make me feel very grumpy.’
He chuckled again. ‘Oh, Violet...’
The way she could make him laugh... But her jokes were laced with honesty, always honesty, and it mattered to her much more than he’d realised. She deserved full honesty from him. She’d trusted him with her truth. He owed her the same.
‘I was an only child for a long time.’ He sighed. ‘My parents had fertility struggles. I know a kid shouldn’t know too much, but Mum would get sad, and Dad told me it was because there wasn’t a new baby. I tried to be there for her. Be enough.’
But he hadn’t been. She’d wanted more. While he kind of understood that now, his eight-year-old self hadn’t. His eight-year-old self had felt inadequate. And, during those times when his mother had got too sad, he’d gone to stay with his grandparents.
‘Did they struggle to have you too?’ Violet asked.
‘I don’t know. Never had the chance to ask.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Although, probably. They were married ten years before they had me.’ Now he thought of it, the maths was simple and the conclusion pretty obvious. ‘Anyway, it finally happened. Mother got pregnant, and she was so excited. She talked to me all the time about the new baby coming. Dad was happy too and when she finally arrived she was the cutest thing.’
Violet shuffled fractionally closer. ‘What was her name?’
‘Eloise.’
‘So.’ Violet looked wary. ‘Where is she now?’
‘She was in the accident.’
‘The one that killed your parents?’ Violet drew a pained breath. ‘Roman, I’m so sorry.’
‘She was in the back seat with me. Mum and Dad died instantly. But Eloise—’
‘Youwere there too?’ she whispered.
Roman paused. Hadn’t she realised that? He drew a breath. He wasn’t used to explaining that had happened. It was all publicly available information. His acquaintances knew. People who wanted his investment knew, because it cropped up in the due diligence they did on him. But Violet was from the other side of the world and she’d never heard of his family. She’d not put two and two together even when she’d known his name. She’d not looked at the stories on the Internet. She knew nothing. It was an odd feeling. But, though he never discussed it, now he had to. And he found he almost wanted to. He wanted her tounderstand. ‘Yeah.’
‘The scar on your leg. Of course. I should have—’
‘I never talk about it,’ he assured her when he saw the flush slide over her face. ‘Without looking me up, you weren’t going to know.’
She nodded.
‘We were in Scotland. It was late at night and we were going into the Highlands. I don’t remember what happened. But one moment we were driving, the next...’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I flew back to the States on a private jet. I convalesced for a while, then went to boarding school.’
‘You had no family to take you in?’
‘My grandparents had both passed earlier that year. There was no one else.’ He couldn’t look at her as he admitted that. ‘A few months later, there was a formal memorial service. They included Eloise in that. The only explanation they could come up with was that her safety belt hadn’t been fastened properly, so she’d been flung from the car. Only they never found her body.’
‘Never found her?’ Violet looked horrified, and then perplexed. ‘But she was just a baby, right?’
Right.That was the thing. Roman bowed his head. ‘I have snapshots of memory. I couldn’t move. My leg was pinned. Eloise was in the back with me. I know she was there with me. Someone came to help. I couldhearEloise crying. So I know she survived the accident. But they took her and I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t speak. And then...’