Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Cillian couldn’t take his eyes off the woman seated across the table from him.
It was obvious why she’d picked Mason Grill.
Essentially a sports bar and grill, the counter in the center of the restaurant was filled with boisterous drinkers.
The restaurant’s music was louder than Cillian guessed it would be during the day, when families probably occupied the booths along the outer walls.
The large TVs ratcheted up the noise level even more with the sports and other channels they displayed.
There was nothing romantic about the location, that was for sure.
And the loud environment made conversation a challenge, even where they were seated in a small booth by the wood-paneled wall.
The restaurant was perfect for Victoria to pick since she apparently didn’t want to talk or chance anything that could be interpreted as a date.
Her already perfect posture had been straighter than normal, basically rigid, since the moment she’d walked in, and he’d waved at her from the booth. Surprise had lifted her eyebrows. Probably expected him to be late, since he’d never prized punctuality as a teen.
But he’d intentionally arrived ten minutes early, predicting she’d arrive five minutes before eight. He’d been right. At least this way, he could start showing her he’d changed in some ways. In the ways she would want him to.
She’d barely said a word after she’d joined him in the booth, clearly taking great care to be sure her knees and feet didn’t touch his beneath the table. A real trick, since the tiny space didn’t at all allow for his long legs.
But he tried to oblige, angling one foot out into the aisle. He couldn’t help but remember a time when she hadn’t tried to avoid contact. When she’d actually enjoyed the tame touches, the hand holding. All firsts for the innocent fifteen-year-old she’d been then.
Did she have more experience now? The idea of other guys getting close to her squirmed in his belly. But judging from her prim and proper, almost laughable attempts to keep her distance from him now, maybe she still hadn’t dated much.
She had changed her outfit for this non-date, though, which could mean she wanted to look nice.
Or she just didn’t want to wear scrubs to a restaurant.
Her slim-fitting burgundy turtleneck and long, flowing skirt that skimmed heeled boots were completely modest, completely Victoria, and insanely attractive.
Kind of like the way she always wore her hair up in a perfect bun that begged him to undo the clip like he once had and run his fingers through the auburn silkiness.
His heart thumped against his ribs so hard it was probably audible.
His blood rushed in his ears. If he didn’t stop thinking like that, he was going to do something impulsive and send her running.
He reached for his coffee to make sure his dry throat didn’t sound croaky when he tried to say something.
After a quick gulp, he looked at Victoria again. Or tried. She still wouldn’t make eye contact, angling her head to supposedly observe the men at the bar instead. “If I didn’t know you so well, I’d think you were checking out the other guys.”
“Excuse me?”
His mouth twitched at her polite response. The restaurant was loud, but not that loud.
She’d heard him. At least she finally looked at him, her gorgeous hazel eyes aiming at him across the table.
Those eyes. Still had the ability to shoot heat behind his ribs and make him want to move way faster than he should. Made it so easy to remember why as a junior in high school, he’d chosen to date a freshman.
Well, at first he’d wanted her as another conquest. He’d gotten tired of the wild and shallow girls he’d won over and then discarded when he had become bored. But Victoria, her goodness and wholesomeness, offered a fresh attraction and new challenge.
He’d never expected to fall in love. For the first and only time in his life.
Even then at only fifteen, she’d had something special. A grace and elegance that made her seem almost untouchable. Unattainable.
It was more than physical. More like a quality that emanated from her core. And lured him to her.
It wasn’t enough when he’d gotten her to fall for him. He’d wanted more. Wanted her love forever. Wanted to marry her, when they were old enough.
But she’d never belonged to him. Never even gave him her heart. She had proven that when she’d ended it. When she’d chosen her father over Cillian.
“I can never see you again. I’m sorry.” Her words, raw and strangled by tears over the phone, were captured in his memory forever.
They had filled him with fury at first, an anger and pain that drove him from Chicago to wander across the country for years. But now, they motivated him like nothing else.
She hadn’t wanted to reject him. She’d said she was sorry, and he knew she had meant it. She’d been controlled, made to do it by someone who held her captive. Who probably still held her in his grip.
The server appeared with Victoria’s cheesecake and Cillian’s multi-layered slab of carrot cake. The teen boy asked on autopilot if they needed anything else, then swung away and trudged off before they would’ve been able to answer if they’d wanted to.
“You had questions for me, right?” Cillian dug into his cake with a fork and casually glanced at Victoria. Better to put the ball in her court if he wanted her to let her guard down. Right now, she still held herself as rigid as the wooden back of the booth’s uncomfortable seats.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, her tiny piece of plain cheesecake sitting untouched in front of her. “Why are you really here?”
He munched his mouthful of cake, then reached for his coffee to wash it down. “I told you. I came for you.” The straightforward approach had always been best with Victoria. Knocked her back on her heels a little.
A hint of pink color flushed her cheeks.
He tried to hold back a grin. Still could make her blush. Very good sign.
Though that expression was new. The pinched lips and stern stare. “What precisely do you mean by that statement?”
He let his grin through. She always had been the most grammatical speaker he’d ever known, though he’d succeeded in getting her to relax the rules a bit when they had dated. “Just what I said.” Though he knew as well as she did that there were multiple meanings and interpretations to his wording.
“I don’t recall asking you to return to Chicago and accept a job at my workplace.”
He chuckled. That was new, too—the sarcasm and spunk she’d surprised him with at her client’s house. It made her even more attractive than when she’d only been sweet and agreeable to everything he’d wanted. He always enjoyed a challenge. “I never wait to be asked to do anything. You know that.”
She met his gaze, unflinching. As if she was studying him and his motives.
“It’s been sixteen years. I don’t know you anymore, and you don’t know me.
” The definitive tone of her statement, the finality of it—almost like an order her father might give—rang in Cillian’s ears like an irresistible call to battle.
“I bet I know a lot more about you than you want me to.”
She looked away then, reaching for her fork.
What was she thinking? He couldn’t tell quite as well as he used to be able to. Though even as teens, she’d been hard for him to predict. She viewed the world so differently and had different priorities. The classic opposites-attract relationship. But man, did they ever attract.
The sixteen years since he’d seen Victoria hadn’t dimmed her beauty one bit.
They’d only made her more stunning. The baby fat in her cheeks had disappeared, heightening her perfect features, high cheekbones, and large hazel eyes.
The lines appearing just slightly at the edges of her mouth and corners of her eyes suggested she must smile and maybe even laugh sometimes.
She used to with Cillian. A lot. At least once he could get her to relax and forget about what her father was going to do.
Was that still what held her back? Her father’s control? Cillian would bet money on it. But he should confirm that his instincts, and the whole reason for coming back, were correct. “For example, you became a PT because your dad wanted you to.”
Her gaze shot to his, giving her an excuse to lower the tiny clump of cheesecake that she didn’t appear to want to eat anyway. Either she was full or nervous.
He’d bet on nerves. Which also meant he still had an effect on her. Definitely something he could build on.
“The work interests me and enables me to help people. I enjoy that.”
He quirked a closed smile. So like Victoria. She didn’t like to lie. But she would dodge a question and leave something out.
“And gives you a doctorate in a medical field. That’s Daddy’s standard, right?”
She dropped her focus to her plate, her tight swallow visible in the muscles along her smooth jaw.
He was hitting close to the mark. Maybe a bullseye. “I bet all your brothers and sisters are doctors, too, right?”
She cleared her throat. “No. Spring was a pro cyclist, and now she’s studying to become a teacher.” Victoria reached for her water glass. “And Treese is an athletic trainer.”
Cillian laughed. “Bet your old man threw a fit.”
Victoria finished her sip of water and lowered the glass, her attention flitting to Cillian’s face as if uncertain she was safe to land there. But she did, a hint of pain in the depths of her eyes.
He dropped his smile and held her gaze. “Sorry. I shouldn’t joke about it. It’s probably been rough for them and you.” And meant he’d been exactly right about her father not changing, still demanding and bullying his children into doing everything he wanted.
She didn’t look away for a few beats, her eyebrows dipping slightly as she studied him. “It was difficult with Spring, but I’m hoping he’ll come around, given the circumstances.”
Was Victoria actually confiding in him? About her family?
The encouragement pumped his pulse a little quicker.
This was faster progress than he’d thought he might make.
He had realized it could take a while to get back to where she would confide in him like she used to, when she’d poured out her hurting heart about her father, and Cillian had been her shoulder to cry on.
And then when her mother was dying, he’d been her support and escape, too. At least until…
“Treese is his favorite, so he seems to have given her a pass.”
Anger from the memory he’d accidentally stumbled into surged to the surface. “You should be his favorite, Vicks.”
Her eyes widened, and her mouth parted slightly. Probably from the nickname he’d given her years ago. The one that would make her smile and melt like butter.
“You’ve done everything for him. You’re perfect. You do everything he wants.” Including dumping Cillian. Though he kept that reminder to himself.
“That’s not true.” She gripped her water glass on the table like she needed something to hold on to and look at. “I’ve…displeased him plenty of times. He only wants what is best for all of us. He loves us.”
That was new. Cillian stared at her as she refused to look up. She’d always done what her father wanted, but she hadn’t defended him. She would share how hard it was, how she wondered if he loved her at all, how she wished he wasn’t so harsh and difficult to please.
Now, she sounded like a brainwashing success story. Her father’s brainwashing. Years with a manipulative bully could do that to a person.
Cillian had seen it plenty of times as a social worker, especially during his years rescuing children in family social work.
She was still Daddy’s girl, controlled and trapped under his thumb. But now it was worse. Now she thought she wanted to be.
Cillian had to find a way to fix that. “Have you ever stopped to wonder what you want? How you want to live your own life?”
Her features tightened as something flickered in her eyes. She grabbed her purse off the bench and stood, somehow avoiding the inelegant slide most people had to execute to exit a booth.
“Victoria, wait.”
She angled toward the booth and glared down at him.
“I am no longer an impressionable fifteen-year-old you can charm or influence. It’s good our jobs will not bring us into contact with each other frequently.
I expect you’ll maintain professionalism at all times and keep our shared past to yourself. ”
“Is Victoria Weston asking me to lie?” He only half-succeeded in holding back a smile. He couldn’t help it. Her new fiery spirit and strength were amazing, making her even more beautiful and maddeningly attractive than ever.
“Of course not.” She gripped the purse strap she’d placed over her shoulder. “If someone asks you about it directly, you should answer truthfully. But you don’t have to offer unnecessary information. I certainly hope you didn’t come here to hurt me or my family by dredging up past mistakes.”
Ah. There it was. So she did blame him for what happened. He’d always thought so, though she’d denied it when she had called to break up with him.
Well, he’d have to deal with that obstacle, too, if he was going to succeed in rescuing her and winning her back. He sobered and met her accusatory glare. “No. I didn’t come for that.” With the exception of her father.
“Good.” She pressed her lips together in that pinched expression. “If you’ve truly returned in connection with me for some unknown reason, then I suggest you leave again and forget about me as you did before. We’ll all be better off.”
He stood, quickly, so she wouldn’t have enough warning to leave.
She barely got in one step back in the second it took for him to stand in front of her, forcing her to look up at him instead.
“I never forgot you, Vicks. Never.”
She stared up at him, frozen with her elegant brows pushed together and a battle of emotions playing out in her eyes. Fear, confusion, anger, and what he hoped was longing. For him.
She spun on her heels and left, the fear or anger apparently winning out. For now.
He wouldn’t leave this time, even if she asked him to. He’d changed in that way, too. He had learned how to fight bullies and win.
Her father would not control her for the rest of her life. No matter what it took, Cillian would set her free.