Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Ellie knew, from the absolute devastation on Knox’s face, that he had been the father of a daughter, but that daughter was no longer with him.
Because she was with her mother?
Or because she had died?
The pain of grief was in Knox’s chocolate-brown eyes, in the stiffness of his shoulders and the way his fingers tightly gripped the spoon and fork he held.
It took several seconds for him to place those utensils carefully back in the bowl with the rest of his uneaten pasta.
His face was very pale by the time he leaned back against the leather seat of the booth.
“I’m so sorry.” She reached out and placed her hand on top of the one he had left resting on the tabletop.
“You couldn’t have known.”
She released a slow breath. “What happened to her?”
“Bone cancer. Ten years ago, when she was five.”
Just nine words, and yet they conveyed all the heartache and suffering a parent went through when their child was diagnosed with a terminal illness and later died from it.
“What was her name?” she encouraged softly.
“Millie Rose.”
“She liked flowers?” She referenced his comment about the flower tattoos.
Some of the tension eased from Knox’s wide shoulders. “She really did. Roses were her favorite, obviously, but she also loved sunflowers, daisies, buttercups, and other wildflowers.”
“Where are they all tattooed?”
“The red roses are across my chest, the daisy chains are around both my biceps, a poppy, a sunflower, and buttercups are on my back. There are other flowers too, obviously, because it’s been ten years since she…
” He stopped speaking to draw in a long and controlling breath.
“I shaved my head for the first time ten years ago too.”
“Because Millie Rose lost her hair from chemo,” she guessed, glancing at the short growth she could see all over his scalp.
Revealing that it wasn’t that Knox didn’t have hair or was going bald, like so many men who shaved their heads. No, Knox obviously had hair; he just chose to continue to shave it off. In honor of his daughter, Ellie guessed.
He nodded abruptly. “Millie Rose had beautiful, long, red hair. It broke her heart when it all fell out because of the treatment.”
“So you shaved your head too.”
He released a shaky breath. “I wanted her to see she wasn’t alone. In any of it.” He shook his head, his sigh heavy. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that losing a child gets easier with time, because it really doesn’t.”
Ellie squeezed his hand, unable to imagine what pain and despair he had gone through, was still going through. “This is the reason you were reluctant to talk to Karen about her pregnancy or visit with her and Geoff alone today to see the babies.”
He closed his eyes briefly, his gaze all the more intense when he looked at her again. “It shouldn’t be,” he acknowledged gruffly. “It’s been ten years, and it’s fucking selfish of me to react this way, but I-I still find it difficult—”
“It’s your pain, Knox, and don’t let anyone else ever tell you what you should or shouldn’t feel or for how long. Does Karen know?” Ellie didn’t doubt for a moment that Karen, if she knew, would have understood Knox’s disinterest in her pregnancy.
“No,” Knox said, confirming what Ellie had already suspected.
She knew Karen had been Knox’s PA for over a year now, since he had taken over the New York office from Magnus Wynter, and yet he had just admitted he hadn’t ever confided about Millie Rose to her.
But he had known Ellie for only four days, and he had just told her.
What did that mean?
That Knox really was serious about being attracted to her?
Ellie still wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
Flattered, obviously. Knox wasn’t a man that any red-blooded woman would ever be able to ignore or resist.
But she had never been into having brief flings with people. In fact, meeting Andrew when she was only nineteen had pretty much ensured she had only dated a couple of guys before him, and not for any length of time or with any depth of feeling. There had been no one else during or since Andrew.
Knox Wilder wasn’t just next-level compared to those other younger men, including Andrew. He was up in the stratosphere on his own unique plane.
And Ellie would be lying, to herself, mostly, if she denied the warmth that spread from her chest to between her thighs, just thinking about making love with this man—
No!
This was neither the place nor the time in her life for her to become aroused just being in the company of a dangerously attractive man.
She straightened her shoulders. “Did your marriage to Millie Rose’s mother break down…after or before?” She knew the relationships of many couples who went through the trauma of losing their child often didn’t survive that death.
“During.” His smile was bitter. “Maggie walked out on both of us the day the doctors told us Millie Rose had bone cancer.”
“What?” Ellie couldn’t believe someone, let alone a mother, could do that to her sick child or her husband.
He shrugged stiffly. “The prognosis wasn’t good, and Maggie said she didn’t want to spend months at the hospital for Millie Rose’s treatments and in the end have to watch her daughter die anyway.”
“So she just left?” Ellie still couldn’t believe anyone could be that cruel to their own child or leave their husband to go through that heartbreak alone.
“Yes, she just left,” Knox echoed evenly. “I haven’t seen her again since the day she walked out on both of us.”
“She didn’t go to Millie Rose’s funeral?”
“I didn’t tell her when it was,” Knox revealed bleakly.
“She’d had months to change her mind, to come back and be supportive of her child who was sick and dying, but she never did.
She didn’t even call, not once during that time, to see how Millie Rose was doing.
I didn’t, still don’t, believe Maggie deserved to attend Millie Rose’s funeral and play the grieving mother,” he bit out harshly.
“She gave up that right when she abandoned her daughter, left Millie Rose to face having to go through horrible treatments before dying anyway, and her mother wasn’t there for her during any of it.
She let her daughter down in the worst way possible. ”
“And her husband.”
“I don’t matter—”
“I disagree.” Her fingers tightened around his hand. “I am so sorry you had to go through all that alone.”
He grimaced. “You were alone when you went through the end of a relationship that broke your heart and affected your business.”
She snorted. “It isn’t the same thing at all. Andrew is still very much alive. It’s the man I thought he was who died.”
He sighed. “Same with Maggie. Difficult, isn’t it?
” he mused. “We have this image of them in our heads and our hearts, and although they are still physically alive, the person you thought they were is very much dead. Not only that, but you realize that they probably didn’t exist in the way you saw them anywhere except inside your head and heart.
It took me a long time to come to terms with that dichotomy. ”
Ellie knew she was still trying to do that where Andrew was concerned.
Outwardly, he still looked like the same person she had fallen in love with.
But Ellie now knew that on the inside, he was nothing like the man she had thought he was: a kind, loving, faithful man she had one hundred percent believed would always be there for her, in the same way she was for him.
Instead, Andrew had been shallow, selfish, unkind, and definitely not faithful.
As Knox said, it was a dichotomy that was hard to comprehend, let alone accept.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about Knox confiding in her about his daughter and wife. Privileged, obviously. She also felt a warmth inside her at having him trust her with something so personal and painful.
Having Knox share those things with her with such raw emotion made her feel emotionally closer to him than she had to anyone else for a very long time.
Even Andrew?
Until six months ago, she and Andrew had been together for nine years. She had never thought there was any reason to doubt him or his love for her during that time. Not outwardly, at least.
She had asked herself since their breakup, once the shock had worn off, whether a part of her hadn’t always known about Andrew’s true nature but had been willfully blind to it because if she allowed herself to see the truth, she wouldn’t be able to hide from it. From the real him.
The answer to that question, unfortunately, was yes.
She had always felt sad that Andrew saw so little of his parents or his two sisters. She had lost her parents, but Andrew’s were still very much alive, and the few times she’d met them and his sisters, she had liked them all very much.
But no matter how much Ellie had encouraged Andrew to see and enjoy his family, he always came up with an excuse for the two of them not to attend any of his family’s get-togethers.
One of the reasons could be that his sisters, both older than him, still liked to tease him, as they obviously had when they were children.
Andrew considered their teasing beneath the status he felt he now held in the world.
As an only child Ellie knew she would have welcomed rather than avoided that affectionate teasing.
Looking back now, Ellie could only rebuke herself for not acknowledging that Andrew’s standoffish behavior toward his family was a conscious decision on his part to keep his distance from them, both physically and emotionally.
As if they weren’t quite good enough to be a part of the life of the wealthy businessman he now saw himself as being.
God, she had been so stupid, so understanding of even the things about Andrew she hadn’t liked. Not just that distance from his family, but his dismissal of the family Ellie still had. Like Karen and Geoff.
Oh, Ellie had still met up with them both for lunch occasionally, but never with Andrew. She realized now she had done the same with her other friends from university, because Andrew considered them to be a load of wasters trying to hang on the coattails of their success.
Thank God Karen and Geoff and several of her school and college friends had been loyal and still there for her once the blinkers had finally fallen off and she was able to see Andrew for exactly the small man he was.
Stupid didn’t even begin to describe how naive she had been where Andrew was concerned, for not realizing that he was the one who had used and abused her.
She felt ashamed whenever she thought of the way she’d allowed Andrew to have so much influence over her life and friendships.
“Hey,” Knox cajoled. “I didn’t tell you any of that to put a damper on your excitement about seeing Karen and Geoff’s babies.”
Ellie already knew that.
Just as she knew that Knox’s only reason for confiding in her today was that he wanted her to take him and his interest in her seriously.
She doubted too many people, women especially, would ever be able to ignore anything about this ruggedly attractive man. Especially if he was doing everything he could to show her his interest was genuine.
Even her…?
* * *
“Ellie?” Knox prompted at her long silence.
She blinked, as if his query had dragged her from thoughts that were causing her inner turmoil.
Because of him and his stated interest in her?
Knox really hoped that wasn’t the case.
Because he was now more convinced than ever that he was going to be another victim, as were the men in the Wynter family and Declan Quinn, of meeting and instantly falling in love with the woman he was meant to share the rest of his life with.
He willingly acknowledged he was still slightly dazed by the realization.
One minute, he had been happily going along with his life, completely unattached except for his loyalty to the Wynter family and his genuine affection for Angel Wynter.
Now all he could think about was Ellie. Wonder what she was doing.
How and what she was feeling. Of wanting her to feel the same attraction toward him.
Even if she finally did allow that, Knox knew it was going to take time and patience on his part if they were ever going to be in a relationship together.
She gave a shake of her head. “I’m honored that you felt you could confide in me.”
“You’re just wary as to why I did so when I admit to not having shared any of that with Karen in the past year,” he guessed knowingly.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I’m…curious, yes.”
The heaviness that had been weighing him down as he talked about his beloved daughter was dispelled as he chuckled softly. “Ellie, thy middle name is caution.”
“Actually, it’s Louisa, after my paternal grandmother, but I know that isn’t what you meant.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Yes, I— Is it so surprising I feel wary about taking any man’s interest in me seriously?”
“Not at all.” He turned his hand over so that he could tighten his fingers about Ellie’s slender one. “But in time, you will realize I’m exactly who and what I appear to be.”
Now it was her turn to chuckle. “That Jason Statham lookalike?”
He grinned. “I’m as rough around the edges as he is, but I don’t know quite as many martial arts.”
“But enough to win if you’re ever in a fight, I’m guessing,” Ellie said ruefully.
Knox shrugged. “Unless it was actually against Jason Statham. Then, I might struggle a bit.”
“But only a bit?”
“Yes.”
Those beautiful aqua-blue eyes were glowing, and her lips had softened into a warm smile during their teasing conversation. She was too much of a temptation like this for Knox to be able to resist kissing her again.
He held her gaze as he leaned forward, looking for any sign of revulsion or aversion in those candid aqua eyes. When he didn’t see any, he continued the rest of the way, his own eyes closing the moment his lips were pressed gently against her deliciously soft ones.
Ellie’s fingers tightened about his, but she didn’t move away. She wasn’t quite kissing him back, but she wasn’t shying away from the connection either.
Knowing of Ellie’s history, of the total betrayal of her longtime partner, this reaction was more than Knox could have hoped for from a first real kiss.
As far as he was concerned, it definitely wasn’t going to be their last!