CHAPTER TEN
“SO TELL ME THE truth,” she said, scooping some more spaghetti into her mouth and then reaching for her napkin, wiping her lips.
He studied her curiously, waiting for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he prompted, “About what?”
“Why are you here in England instead of with your family?”
He didn’t visibly react. “To look after my wayward ward, remember?”
“And you’re looking after me very, very well,” she winked. “But I don’t buy it. As you’ve pointed out again and again, I’m always in the papers. Why now?”
He sipped his wine, his eyes hooded when they met hers. “I wanted to be here.”
“You didn’t want to be there,” she corrected.
He dipped his head forward in silent agreement.
“Ah ha!” She leaned closer without realizing it. “Why not?”
“It’s … complicated. Family stuff.”
“Family stuff? What’s that like?”
He shifted a little. “Do you regret not having siblings?”
“I can’t regret it. It’s not like it was my decision.”
“Right.” He frowned. “Do you wish you had siblings?”
“Nope. Don’t change the subject,” she said with a small smile. She reached for a piece of garlic bread and took a bite. Warm butter oozed out of the corner of her mouth and he reached over and caught it with his fingertip, taking it to his mouth and tasting it. She followed the gesture with her eyes, her stomach churning with desire.
“Is that what I was doing?”
“Yeah. And trying to distract me with how much I want you,” she said with mock criticism.
He laughed. “Is it working?”
“Almost.” She pouted. “But I really want to know.”
“How do you know there’s anything more to it?”
“I just do. So? What family stuff?”
He kicked back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and regarding her for a long moment before nodding slowly. “Okay, if you really want to know.”
“I do.” She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath.
“My brother is getting married.”
“You have four brothers?”
He nodded. “And one sister.”
“So one of your brothers is getting married. Isn’t that a good thing? I mean, you seem kind of pissed about it?”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “That’s because his fiancé is my ex.”
Something strange flared inside of Claudia. She didn’t want to analyse the dark emotion that overtook her senses, filling her with ice and fire all at once. “Your ex?”
“Rhiannon,” he nodded.
The name was vaguely familiar to Claudia. She tapped her fingertip against her cheek. “You were with her when I … back when…”
“When you begged me to take your virginity?” He prompted, the words droll, as though he was enjoying her discomfort.
“Yes.” She didn’t meet his eyes.
“We broke up about a month after I left the UK.”
“Why?” She didn’t let hope flare in her breast. It had nothing to do with her. That was stupid, immature vanity, a hopeless, blind vanity, speaking.
“We weren’t well-suited,” he shrugged. “We should have realized sooner but we were friends, I suppose.”
“How long were you together?”
“Two years.”
“Two years?” Okay, now she could name the emotion. Jealousy, unmistakable, fired through her.
“You went out with the woman for two years and now your brother is marrying her?”
“Apparently.”
“What’s she like?”
He shook his head with frustration. “She’s… does it matter?”
“I’m curious.”
He expelled a sigh. “She’s … fine. Nice. A paediatrician who loves children and desperately wants to have some of her own.”
“And you didn’t want children?”
“No.” His eyes glittered with something like determination. “I didn’t.”
Claudia nodded slowly, but she didn’t meet his eyes when she asked her next question. She was lost to the image of the undoubtedly beautiful Rhiannon, who was also smart and professionally accomplished. Who definitely wouldn’t ‘waste’ her life tumbling out of nightclubs and getting photographed with different men every Saturday night. Jealousy chewed through her gut, and a deep sense of inadequacy flared inside of her.
“Do you still care for her?”
“Care for her?”
“I mean, don’t you think it’s kind of a coincidence that you completely lost it at me because you think I’m in some kind of love triangle when actually, you are?”
“I am not in a love triangle,” he contradicted.
“Your brother is marrying your ex. What would you call it?”
“A mistake,” he grunted.
“Are they a good couple?”
“I’ve never spent time with them.”
“Maybe you should,” Claudia suggested thoughtfully. “Unless you plan on never seeing your brother again, you’re going to need to make your peace with it at some point.”
“Perhaps,” he said with a shrug.
“Not perhaps. Definitely.”
“Not this Christmas though. I am going to eat that delicious pudding you made, and whatever else you want to feed me.”
“You know, that sounds vaguely chauvinistic,” Claudia said with a laugh, banishing the dark thoughts of Rhiannon and her cleverness from her mind.
“I cooked tonight,” he pointed out.
“You ordered room service.”
“Same thing.”
Claudia couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her. “It really isn’t.”
“So what are you making us on Christmas day?”
Her heart twisted. No. It squeezed and plummeted and soared from her chest. It took on a life of its own. It hammered against her ribcage so hard she thought it might explode.
Us.
Such a tiny word with such enormous ramifications.
Most of them good. Some of them horrifying.
“Turkey,” she said, the word slightly unsteady. “And all the trimmings.”
“A turkey, just for us?”
“A small one,” she nodded. “And pudding with custard and egg nog, and fruit mince pies. We’ll go into Bath for the carols on Christmas Eve,” she said, getting carried away. “I always do that.”
“Since when?”
“Since I was at school. I was usually in the dorms over Christmas,” she said, and though there wasn’t a hint of blame in the statement, something like guilt and regret slid through him. “There were maybe ten of us left behind each year.” His remorse intensified. “So our headmistress, Mrs Burns, would organize for us to go to carols in the village. We’d do the late-night service, and then come back to the dorms and have a supper of non-alcoholic egg-nog and gingerbread, and stay up late chatting.” She sighed. “It was beautiful. And then, since I got to London, I always go to my local church, just down the street.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You must have some family traditions.”
She blinked at him with obvious confusion. “Why must I?”
“Well, because, it’s a special time of year.”
“Not for my parents.” She kept her heartbreak out of her voice.
He was quiet for a moment, his eyes roaming her face thoughtfully. “I often wondered why you weren’t closer to your father.”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m different to him. Like you said.”
“Yes.” He frowned. “But I also think you are like him, in many ways.”
“Really?” Pleasure flickered in her chest.
“Well, yes. Apart from your aversion to anything book-related.”
She held her breath, fear spreading through her veins. “What do you mean? I like books.”
“You like books?” He laughed. “When was the last time you read one?”
“What? I read all the time,” she lied, the words thick with emotion.
“What was the last book you read,” he challenged.
“You know it wasn’t The Taming of the Shrew.”
“That’s a play,” he laughed.
Claudia’s cheeks flashed pink.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said softly, reading the shift of emotion in her eyes, seeing sadness where moments ago there’d been pleasure. “I’m saying that in spite of that you remind me of him. That you are smart like he was smart, and interesting, and funny.”
Her heart flipped in her chest. She liked hearing him talk about her in that way.
She loved it, in fact.
“Perhaps it’s why I find you so easy to talk to.”
“To yell at?” She supplied, the words still thready with the depth of her emotions.
“I do have a bad habit of that,” he said softly. He expelled a sigh. “I never understood why he chose me as your guardian.”
“He adored you.” She didn’t manage to keep her bitterness from showing but she softened it with a tight smile.
“He loved you,” Stavros offered, understanding intuitively how she felt, wishing he could offer her something better. Something more concrete. “He was proud of you.”
Claudia sucked in a breath and shook her head. “Don’t say that. You don’t need to lie.”
Stavros’s stomach swooped. He hated that he had been lying. He hated that Christopher had never once spoken glowingly about Claudia. He portrayed her as a perpetual work in progress, and Stavros had believed that. Yet she’d achieved so much – in her own way.
“You did a wonderful thing tonight.” He reached forward and laced his fingers through Claudia’s, squeezing her hand. “You have a real gift for fundraising.”
Her eyes were enormous when she lifted her gaze to his face. The compliment spread like warmed butter through her soul, filling all the gaps that years of never feeling good enough had caused.
“Thank you.” A hoarse whisper.
“I never really knew that about you.”
“I think we’ve established there’s a lot you didn’t know about me.” She pointed out, thinking that the biggest secret of all was one he would never, ever find out. “You met my dad at college?”
Stavros frowned a little at the quick conversation change. “Yeah. He was guest lecturing.”
“And you were doing creative writing?” Claudia teased, truly surprised at the fact, though.
“I’d been a huge fan of your father’s books all my reading life,” he said. “As a teenager I used to take them onto our yacht and read all day. I would have changed majors just to get in his class. Hell, I would have changed colleges,” he laughed.
But a prickle was making its way sharply down Claudia’s spine. “You love to read?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I always have. I don’t get as much time now but as a child and a teenager I never wasn’t reading a book. Usually a Christopher La Roche.”
Claudia’s smile was tight. “But you became friends.”
“At first, I could barely speak in front of him. I was in awe.”
“You?” Claudia’s disbelief was obvious.
“What? Why is that hard to understand? The man was a legend. He redefined the horror genre in modern literature. Over nine of his books have been made into blockbuster films. He still comes in on the New York Times bestseller charts. He’s a goliath.”
Claudia nodded, staring out of the window, watching as snow fluttered down, so beautiful, so whimsical.
“Eventually I forgot about the legend and got to know him as simply Christopher. We had a lot in common. He was interested in investing and I had a knack for shares.” He shrugged.
“He thought of you like a son,” she said, the words a little croaky.
“More like a brother,” Stavros pointed out. “I was closer in age to your father than I am to you.”
A strange mood had settled between them. A mood that was flat and heavy, that throbbed with awareness of facts, rather than sensuality.
“Does that bother you?” She asked, lifting his hand to her lips and pressing a kiss to his fingertips.
“Yeah.” A husky acknowledgement.
“Why?”
“Jesus, Claudia, because you’re almost young enough to be my daughter.”
She laughed. “Not quite.”
“I shouldn’t be doing this.” A muscle jerked in his cheek.
“You’re not doing it alone,” she pointed out, squeezing his hands. “Besides, it’s too late for regrets.”
“You’re right about that.” He stood up, his eyes glowing with promises and something else. Something like acceptance. “Come, Claudia. Let’s go back to bed.”
She stood slowly, drawn upwards by magnetic force, and she smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”