‘No clue.’ He shrugged.
‘And her boyfriend?’
‘Apparently they paid him off too. My grandfather told me he took the money and didn’t look back.’
‘You’ve never tried to trace him?’
‘I don’t want to know,’ he said bluntly. ‘I don’t need that rejection all over again. Ellen and I got through—we got out of it. I’ve never seen any of them again and I never, ever want to.’
‘Alvaro, I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m not,’ he said, meaning it completely. ‘Not any more. I don’t need people like that in my life. People who only want to use you? Who’re only interested when you have something to offer them—like money. Or status. People who can’t stand there and take responsibility for their own damn actions.’
Jade looked upset and angry and he shouldn’t have told her. But once he’d started he’d been unable to stop and now she was...
‘They should have been more to you,’ she said with a broken voice. ‘They should have been there for you. They should have supported you.’
He shook his head. ‘Having it hard made me better. Made me fight in a way that maybe I wouldn’t have if everything had come easily. It made me appreciate Ellen and work my ass off to get her what she deserved.’
‘What you deserved too.’
Yeah. Becoming strong, becoming independent, had been everything. He’d refused to be a ‘burden’ to anyone any more. He would repay Ellen a million times over. And he would always make his own way with full independence. And he would never, ever need anyone again the way he’d needed someone that day when he’d been abandoned.
Only now Jade was watching and to his absolute horror a need deep within him was unfurling...for her. He needed her. Right now.
To lose himself in, right? To find that mindless obliteration in sex with her. Because he didn’t want—couldn’t want—to need her any other way.
But he couldn’t seem to move; his body was leaden. And his damned head hurt. Not just his head. His heart too. Everything. It all still hurt.
She carefully took the plate from him and picked up the black witch’s hat that had been placed there as that stupid Halloween decoration, putting it on her head to make room for the plate.
He nodded, because it was perfect. She did bewitch him. And that was all this was, wasn’t it? An ephemeral thing that wasn’t even real. She was like a beautiful witch. She looked at him unlike any other woman he’d known too. There was heat certainly, but tenderness too. None of that avariciousness in her eyes, no awareness of any kind of quid pro quo, it was almost an innocence. It was, he finally realised, an authenticity. And now she curled into him, wrapping her arms around him, holding him in an embrace that he couldn’t help returning. Enfolding his arms around her, feeling her soft skin and warm body, her gentle breath on his chest and the regular beat of her loving heart.
He should move, but he couldn’t. She was like an anchor in his lap. Not letting him leave. Giving him something to hold onto. Herself. Just to hold, here and now. And suddenly he was so very tired. He’d kept all that in, all his life. And now?
He’d never been as exhausted. As aching. And as okay. It was the strangest feeling of release.
‘Do you know what you are?’ Her whisper was so faint he had to concentrate hard to hear her. ‘All my birthdays and Christmases, rolled into one perfect present.’
Oh, but that was what she was for him. Unburdened by her crown, she was just Jade. And her gift to him was just herself. Not just her body, but her care too. He felt it flowing from her now. Everything.
‘No,’ he muttered as that most vulnerable part of his soul shrank from the burn of her tenderness.
But she rested her head on his shoulder and wouldn’t let him go. ‘I won’t hurt you,’ she whispered.
He should have scoffed at that soft promise, should have teased—as if she could?
Instead he closed his eyes and wished he could believe her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ALVARO SLOWLY STIRRED the risotto, taking the time to make it creamy and rich and telling himself everything was just fine. It was only Christmas. Only a day in which there’d been a few smiles, a lot of sex, few words spoken. And what were words, after all? Mere moments that vanished with the next breath.
But he couldn’t believe the words he’d uttered today. He never thought about his past, let alone raked it up and told someone else of that miserable, lonely rejection. But, he rationalised as he swirled figures of eight with the wooden spoon, she was about the one person in the world he could trust. A queen—keeper of total calm and self-containment. She was ultra-discreet in her own life and so wary of exposing anything to anyone for fear of it being splashed across the media. She was resolute. And he respected her for that even though it annoyed him on an intimate level. But he knew he didn’t need to worry that she wouldn’t keep his past private. His knowledge of her true identity was the secret that bound them both to confidence.
So it wasn’t a fear of someone else knowing. No. The mistake he’d made ran deeper than some mere switch or even some mere affair. And it was more dangerous. Somehow her knowing, her seeing him, her soothing him had struck a vein within. And now that vein wanted to bleed even more.
The raw exposure was hideously uncomfortable. The irony was he’d wanted to tell her at the time. At the time it had actually felt good. He’d felt a deep peace after for all of...what...all of the time you had her in your arms.
For the first time in his life he’d fallen asleep on Christmas Day—slept half the afternoon away, like a damn baby. Cuddling her. And when he’d finally stirred, she was still there. She’d lifted her head and smiled at him and he’d done the only thing he possibly could.
He’d kissed her. Silencing, not just her, but the voice in his head telling him he didn’t deserve it...that he shouldn’t allow it...because that other part of him, that long-ignored, tiny, tiny part was more desperate than anything for it to happen. For him to take what she offered. All she offered. Again and again like a glutton, because he’d been deprived too long. Like the damaged, undeserving man he was.
And for as long as he was touching her, it had been okay. But now? Now there was something akin to panic. But he couldn’t suck it back. He couldn’t untell her everything. He couldn’t cut off the connection that had somehow been forged.
It doesn’t matter.
Because she was leaving. And this would end. She was the queen of a small country on the other side of the world. They would have nothing to do with each other again after she returned home in only a few short days. This was merely an interlude for them both.