Chapter Five #3
Her father had cried and apologised to her when she had told them that she would use her own money to ensure their future security. They’d had next to no savings of their own by then. Living in the present had made zero allowances for life in the future.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Erin eventually said.
‘Try me.’
Erin looked away for a few minutes. It was a slow journey because the roads were narrow, twisty and occasionally perilous, with steep drops into dense forest on either side.
She couldn’t imagine what would happen if someone happened to be coming in the opposite direction.
Strung overhead in a seemingly random fashion, electricity cables bowed under twisting vines.
The heat was like a blanket around them, dense and filled with humidity.
‘Okay, yes, I have financial obligations,’ she finally confessed, because the whole story was going to be better than half a story.
If she dropped it all, he would be left thinking that her parents were irresponsible layabouts who exploited her good nature, and just thinking that made her feel angry on their behalf.
‘My parents have never been good about money and it’s not because they’re stupid or lazy.
It’s just that…’ Her voice trailed off. She thought about her colourful childhood.
Exciting, unpredictable, joyful…but what a learning curve in the end.
And she thought about his: predictable, wealthy, privileged and with zero learning curves beyond how much more money it was possible to make.
‘Just that what?’
And suddenly Erin felt her lips twitch and she looked at him with raised eyebrows and grinned.
What would her billionaire boss, who had always been protected from the hardships of life, who’d probably never glimpsed any life too far removed from the one he’d led, what would he think of hers?
Her smile broadened when he frowned and she could tell that he was bemused and disconcerted by her sudden change of attitude.
‘Raffaele, this might come as a shock to you but until I was twelve, I grew up in a commune.’
Erin stifled a laugh when his mouth dropped open in shock. She’d shocked him once when she’d mentioned that her parents had a small holding and a tiny cottage industry…and now she’d shocked him again with this revelation.
‘A commune…’
‘It was wonderful, to be honest. I’m not sure how my parents drifted into that lifestyle but I think they’d both been hippies from the very beginning and commune life appealed to them once I came along, which was quite late in life for them.
I think they spent so many years just enjoying one another and enjoying their wonderful nomadic life that they only decided at the very last minute that they’d quite like…
well…me. A child. And along I came, at which point they joined a commune.
We lived in the middle of nowhere but it was a vibrant community and we were all home-schooled. ’
‘Home-schooled…’
‘You look a little dazed, Raffaele. Is this all too much for you? Should I get the smelling salts out?’
‘Is that the sound of you being patronising?’
‘I’m afraid it might be.’
‘And then what? What happened after the commune life?’
He was leaning against the door, staring at her with his long legs splayed and his hands loose between his thighs, which for some reason made her unexpectedly remember the sight of him in his boxers. Solid, muscled and way too sexy for his own good.
She quickly looked away.
Her brief flirtation with amusement at making him uncomfortable now felt dangerous.
‘We travelled,’ she said abruptly. Her voice softened with memories.
‘I think my parents stuck it out being in one place when they had me but in the end, the wanderlust gene was too much. It was embedded way too deep in both of them. Maybe if one of them had wanted security, then life would have been different, but they were absolutely both on the same page.’ She half closed her eyes and enjoyed the warm breeze blowing her hair this way and that.
‘Unfortunately,’ she said drily, twisting to look at him and noting that the dazed expression still hadn’t quite left his face, ‘travelling didn’t come with the usual stuff like pensions and savings.
They worked as they moved around, sometimes for a while in one place if it took their fancy but… ’
‘But then the time came for them to put down roots and they found that their… What did they do all this travelling in? Whatever it was, it wouldn’t do as a permanent roof over their heads.’
Erin tried to take offence and bristle at that remark but found she couldn’t, because there was clearly nothing malicious behind it. He sounded genuinely curious and interested.
‘Actually, we changed homes several times.’ She slanted a glance at him and smiled wryly.
‘Almost like normal people moving house. When we left the commune, I remember a brightly painted mobile home and then an old four-wheel drive with a caravan. My dad could turn his hand to most things. He was really clever, and especially gifted with cars. Some of his jobs paid enormously well and we would hang around for a while, reaping the benefits. Sometimes we did actually stay put long enough for me to go to school somewhere, but we were never anywhere longer than a handful of months.’
‘And how was that lifestyle for you?’
‘Had its ups and had its downs.’
She looked at him seriously, establishing boundaries.
No matter how much she was attracted to him, she still knew he was her boss—utterly off-limits—and it felt important to subtly manoeuvre the conversation so that he was aware of that.
Just because some of the barriers between them had been eroded, she didn’t want his finely attuned antennae picking up any signals that would set alarm bells ringing.
‘It made me resilient, I think,’ she mused thoughtfully, eyes half lowered but still keenly gauging his reaction to what she was telling him.
He looked frankly fascinated and she felt a kick of something pleasing in that.
‘It also made me really value the importance of financial security. Thank goodness for that, as things turned out. It also made me value even more the importance of…emotional security. My parents adore one another but for me love would have to be with a guy who was committed to settling down, in one place. A house with a picket fence and a couple of apple trees in the back garden.’ She grinned. ‘If you get my drift.’
‘Sounds dull.’ He grinned back at her. ‘Sure there’s no longing for adventure waiting to break through the picture-perfect future you have all mapped out?’
‘None,’ Erin said firmly. She thought of him, yet again, in those boxers and sucked in a steadying breath.
‘Absolutely none whatsoever.’ She smiled blandly as they hit tarmac and the jeep picked up a bit more speed.
‘Thanks for bringing me into town. I have an idea, why don’t you look around the place while I grab a couple of things more suitable for the weather?
I can meet you back in half an hour or so. ’
Holding her bland, unrevealing gaze, Raffaele nodded and returned the smile with an equal measure of politeness.
Underneath, though, he was burning to reject Erin’s signature hands off change of topic and ask more.
The little she had opened up and shown him had kick-started more questions than it had provided answers, and he was startled at just how urgently his wanted her to keep talking.
She’d told him that the women he dated were shopaholics who needed no urging to tell him all about themselves and she’d been right. He dated open books.
Honestly, that had always suited him. He had no interest in anything long term so if they liked to be indulged and if they enjoyed talking nonstop about themselves, then that had always been fine.
Now, he could feel his brain engage—in the presence, for the first time, of a woman who clearly didn’t want to prolong the conversation and who had no interest in him beyond the fact that he was responsible for her pay cheque at the end of every month.
She’d said as much.
Hell, she didn’t even consider him a friend!
Logic told him that in the face of all that, his best way forward was to drop all interest in trying to get to the bottom of her and return to the fault free, perfect working relationship they had always had.
Or he could pursue it.
Since when had he ever not been up for a challenge?
The week, he decided, was going to be a great deal more interesting than he could ever have imagined.