Chapter Six #2
Ice slid through his body. So too danger sirens.
Because he wanted to deny that. To explain something he was only just starting to realise himself—how much more nuanced his response to her had been.
How much it had been born from his own shocking discovery, and the difficulty he was having rediscovering his place in this life.
He’d rejected her because of what he was going through; it was not—and never had been—about Rosemary.
All across Europe, he was the Machairas heir, the sole son of the great Stavros Machairas. But it was a lie. He was no more a Machairas than the next person. He’d been plucked from poverty and obscurity, chosen for some reason, by a twist of fate.
‘I didn’t hate you.’
‘It’s okay, I was used to it,’ she quipped, but it made his insides catch fire with shame.
He’d been navigating the emotional fallout of his adoption discovery, but Rosemary’s life had hardly been a walk in the park.
She’d been fought over and turned into a pawn in her parents’ acrimonious divorce and then, when her mother remarried and had a new family, she’d been shunted to the side, made to feel like an encumbrance.
And even then, her mother—who sounded like a selfish piece of work—hadn’t been able to give her up, to let her live with Glen Richardson, because she’d still wanted to ‘win’.
‘It wasn’t about you.’
Her hands twisted. ‘No?’
‘I hardly knew you,’ he pointed out logically. ‘You were just some teenager who appeared in my home.’
‘Your mother told me I could go anywhere. I was too young to realise it was probably invasive of me to explore the way I did.’
‘She told you to.’
She lifted one shoulder, her expression pinched. His gut felt hollowed out.
‘I suppose even then I was fascinated by the past. I had never been somewhere like that. I mean, on class trips, to museums, but this was a living, breathing house that was so steeped in history. So casually available. In every room there were museum-worthy artefacts, paintings that could have been in the best galleries in the world. I would touch a wall and feel the past, pulsing and throbbing, just behind the veil. I could never reach through, but I could sense it, anyway.’
‘I see,’ was all he could say, because he could easily imagine how tantalizing that would have been for someone like Rosemary.
‘I never said at the time how sorry I was, about your dad.’
It was like a gut punch. Not the statement—he’d heard that, or something like it, a thousand times.
But from Rosemary’s lips, with her soft, genuine voice, and the slight quiver in it showing that she felt those words deep in her heart.
He almost reeled back physically. ‘Your dad.’ But who was his dad? Who was he?
‘He left me those encyclopaedias in his will, you know.’
Aristotle hadn’t known. He hadn’t thought about it.
‘He knew how much I loved them,’ she recalled a little wistfully. Then, with those intelligent, perceptive eyes latching to his, ‘It must have been hard to see your mother move on so quickly.’
Another gut punch, but this time, the tone of the conversation had at least enabled him to brace for it.
‘I was surprised.’ Angry, disgusted, disbelieving.
‘You and me both,’ she said, shaking her head a little. ‘I don’t know how it happened.’
‘Your father makes her happy,’ he said after a beat.
‘I know he respected your dad. I don’t for one second think anything untoward was happening before he passed—’
‘Nor do I.’ He’d never once suspected it.
‘Have you told her how you feel?’
He ground his teeth, surprised by the question.
By what it suggested she understood about him.
Ordinarily, he would have stepped away, but if anything, he seemed to move closer, without even realising he was doing it.
He knew only that they were almost touching, chest to chest, toe to toe, so close he could feel a hint of her breath when she exhaled.
‘How do I feel?’
‘Hurt,’ she said simply, looking at him as though she had no choice in the matter. As though the same invisible force that was propelling him forward was keeping her stuck in position.
‘I am not hurt.’ He heard the defensive ridicule in his tone, the cold rejection, and knew what underpinned it. A survival instinct. A desperate need to deny that anyone—even his own mother—had the ability to wound him now.
‘Oh, sure,’ she said, mockery clear in her tone. ‘You’re too big and tough to be hurt. I forgot.’
His eyes narrowed as his heart began to beat faster. There were parts of him he kept locked deep inside—even from himself—yet he couldn’t help feeling that this woman was using her archaeological digging skills to discover them, completely without his consent.
‘My mother is her own person,’ he said, the words carefully blanked of feeling. ‘She can do what she wants with her life.’
Rosemary’s eyes narrowed, boring into his, leaving Aristotle with little doubt that she saw parts of him he didn’t intend to share. And then, to his surprise—and relief—she lifted a hand to his chest, holding it against the middle of his pecs, palm pressed to the warmth of his shirt.
The response was instantaneous, as though she’d pressed a firecracker beneath his skin.
Heat flooded his veins, then burst into every cell of his being.
His eyes flared and his body hardened. As he sucked in a deep breath, his chest lifted, shifting her hand a little, but bringing his chest closer to her body.
Her tongue darted out, licking the middle of her lower lip, before disappearing again. But it was too late. His eyes were on her, staring. Hungry.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said slowly, and with a huskiness in her tone that told him that her control was hanging by a thread. That the same currents of desire that were flaring to life inside of him were burning through her, too.
‘That’s your prerogative.’
His response was guarded and cool, as though parts of his brain were still functioning, and actively pushing her away.
She glanced up at him, her expression flickering for a moment with sympathy. He tamped down on his irritation, but it was there. That sense that, yet again, she was scraping through the debris of his life to get to the core of who he was. And he wouldn’t let her.
‘I never asked why you were a virgin.’
It was a question that was designed to give him back the upper hand.
To take control of a situation that was spiralling out of his control.
But he hadn’t expected how quickly she’d withdraw from him, dropping her hand and stepping back, so the heat he’d been flooded with quickly turned to ice—and regret.
‘It hardly seems relevant.’
‘Indulge me.’
Now it was Rosemary who was guarded, her features pinched, as she visibly hid herself from him. ‘I’d prefer not to.’
‘You were twenty years old.’
‘I remember.’
He took a step forward then, invading the space she’d sought.
She held her ground, tilting her chin towards his.
And as if he knew that he could seek refuge in the physicality of their connection, he reached out, pressing a finger to her cheek, watching the effect it had on her.
The way her lips parted and her pupils darkened, the way her cheeks flushed pink and her breasts pushed forward almost imperceptibly, but enough to draw his attention.
Briefly, lower, to notice the way her nipples were peaking against the flimsy material of her shirt.
‘I touched you and you exploded,’ he said, remembering that night.
How he’d gone to tell her to steer clear of his ‘friends’, and ended up sleeping with her on the sofa in the study.
Hardly the most salubrious environment for a woman’s first time.
Still, it had been better than the next time, hard up against a cold brick wall, with the party staff just a dozen or so metres across the property.
‘And?’
He couldn’t help but admire her. The way she stood there, staring back, giving as good as she got, not cowed by him.
Most people came up against Aristotle and immediately bent to his will.
Rosemary never had. Even with this wedding, he had no doubt she’d agreed because she could see the merits in it.
Because she knew it was right for their baby, but also for herself, professionally.