Chapter 10 #3
Tia’s eyes were watchful, but there was no judgement on her features. “And did you?”
“Yes,” Kate said abruptly, ignoring the hammer of pain and unfairness that accompanied those memories.
“I didn’t know that,” Roman said, at her side.
She tilted her face towards his and then wished she hadn’t. It was like the world caught fire around them, leaving only him and her in a protected bubble. His eyes seemed to be pouring something into her, and she was powerless to look away.
“I haven’t told you,” she said, lips tugging upwards into a half-smile.
“You studied law?”
Her throat seemed too constricted to swallow. She sipped her champagne, and when she caught Roman watching her with a hint of disapproval, she kept the glass to her lips, draining almost all of it. “Tia said we’re getting drunk,” she reminded him.
“Hear, hear,” Tia agreed, standing up and refilling Kate’s glass. But even that wasn’t enough to break through the bubble she and Roman had surrounding them. She murmured a soft thanks to Tia without looking her way. “And Roman is doing a crappy job of it, so thank you, Kate, for indulging me.”
Tia was right. Roman’s glass remained untouched. She almost laughed out loud to imagine his big bear hands wrapping around the delicate champagne flute. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing Roman would drink for pleasure.
“Law degree,” he prompted, the words almost a growl. Her heart hammered, desire slicking low down in her abdomen. Two glasses of champagne in rapid succession left her free to admit that she loved this possessive, protective side of him.
“Oh, right.” She lifted the glass to her lips then pulled it away again.
Not because of Roman, but because Kate didn’t generally drink to the point of losing control, and she could feel her brain becoming mushy.
She angled her body a little, so Tia was included in their fire-proof-bubble, even though her eyes and focus remained squarely on Roman.
“I moved to the city, enrolled, then saw what my textbooks alone would cost and almost had a heart attack. It took all my savings to buy one semester’s worth.
” She did sip her champagne then, if only to cool the simmering inside her.
The way he was looking at her! Forget about a fire-proof-bubble.
The fire was all inside of her, melting her bones and boiling her blood, and Roman was its source, unequivocally.
“By the time I factored in the other expenses—”
“I thought college in Australia was free,” Tia said, draining her glass and topping it up, lying on the sofa now, on her side, like an elegant marble carving.
“No. It’s financed by the government as a loan—you pay it back.
The fees weren’t the issue. I had to live somewhere,” she said, lifting one shoulder.
“That means rent, utilities, transport costs, food. I had to work part time to support those costs, and even then, could barely cover it. I managed two and a half years before it broke me,” she admitted.
“Broke you?” Tia sipped her champagne, eyes on Kate, so she finally tugged her gaze towards the other woman. “I barely know you, but I’d put money on you being almost unbreakable.”
Kate smiled at that. “Something I suspect we share.”
“Oh, I can be broken,” Tia said. “I have been broken,” she corrected, and now her eyes moved to Roman’s and Kate had the horrifying sense of being shoved outside of the bubble. “But not enough to destroy me.”
Kate leaned back against the sofa and this time, she knew that Roman’s touch on her shoulder was no accident. His fingers lingered and a thrill ran through her, like an electrical current, turning her veins into a live wire.
“I think every crack changes you a little,” Kate said, knowing it was the champagne talking, or at least, loosening her tongue to admit things she rarely said. “I gave up trying to patch over them a long time ago.”
“Cracks make you stronger.”
“You think?”
“Definitely.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Tia sipped her champagne. “What did you do after dropping out of university?”
“Tia.” Roman’s voice was sharp. “What’s with the third degree?”
“Hey, I’m getting to know her. Is that a problem?”
“It’s fine.” Kate put a hand on Roman’s thigh without thinking, but the second she felt his muscle bunch beneath her touch, as though her electrical current had travelled directly into him, she knew it wasn’t a good idea to touch.
She pulled away, went back to cradling her champagne flute.
“I got a job, started saving. I thought that if I had enough in the bank, I could go back to uni but prepay all my expenses and just focus on study. Take on extra subjects to finish quicker, do summer school.”
“Sounds like you had it all worked out.”
“I thought I did.”
“So what happened?”
Kate shook her head slowly. “It was harder than I thought. I still had a lot of expenses, I couldn’t save as much as I wanted.” She hesitated, not inclined to talk about the discovery of her father. She shrugged instead. “Circumstances change. I’m okay with it.”