football. I was good at it—’
‘And it was a way to feel in control.’
He shot her a wry glance. ‘Yes.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I blew out my knee when I was seventeen. Lost any chance of playing professionally. My father was incredibly disappointed.’
How telling, she thought, that he talked about his dad’s disappointment rather than his own. Natalia suspected Ben’s ambition and need for control had been less for himself and more for his family and the stability of his many younger siblings.
‘That must have been hard,’ she said quietly, and he just shrugged.
‘No one likes to lose a dream.’
‘So then you went into business?’
He gave her the ghost of a smile. ‘I had to do something, didn’t I?’
Something to stay in control. Or at least feel like he was. Was that why he hated the press? she wondered. He couldn’t control them. And yet she had chosen the opposite path … courting the newspapers and acting like she loved the attention because at least then she felt in control.
Yet all of it—any kind of control—was surely an illusion. She certainly wasn’t in control when it came to Ben and her body’s—as well as her heart’s—elemental and overwhelming response to him. She stretched her toes out towards the water, now no more than a sound in the darkness. Night had fallen, soft and suggestive around them. Suddenly Natalia was very conscious that they were alone on a secluded beach, with only the stars to see them. She heard Ben’s steady breathing, felt the heat and strength of his presence just inches from her.
‘What about you, Princess?’ Ben asked, his voice seeming almost disembodied in the darkness. ‘What was your dream?’
Natalia tensed. She hadn’t expected this to get personal … at least not about her. ‘I don’t know if I ever had one,’ she said after a pause. ‘Or at least I haven’t, for a long time.’
‘What did it used to be then?’
She took a breath, let it out slowly. He’d told her so much about himself, surely it was only fair she gave away a few of her secrets. She reached down and cupped a handful of cool, silky sand, letting it trickle between her fingers. ‘I suppose it’s rather predictable, something of the happily-ever-after variety.’
‘Ah. So that’s why you don’t believe in true love.’
She smiled, remembering her disdainful remark. ‘I’ve learned better.’
‘What happened?’
‘You can read all about it in the papers.’ She felt rather than saw him tense.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That torrid affair. You mentioned it yourself. It was big news about six years ago.’ Right before Carlotta had fallen pregnant and trumped Natalia’s own shame.
He didn’t speak for a moment, and Natalia could almost imagine the wheels turning in his mind, the click of the cogs. ‘The French guy?’
‘Jean, yes. He was a count’s son, I believe. He spent the summer on the island.’
‘And what happened? He broke your heart?’
‘It felt like it at the time.’ She shrugged, not wanting to rake up old memories, old hurts. ‘I thought I was in love and I did a lot of stupid things and he told them all to the tabloids. Gave them photos.’ She closed her eyes briefly, remembered the scorching shame of seeing what she’d thought had been a wonderful and private romance laid bare in all of its humiliating detail. ‘He got a lot of money for it anyway,’ she finished lightly. ‘It was an exclusive.’
‘I’ll bet.’ Ben shook his head. ‘So that wasn’t your choice.’
‘No.’
‘The papers made it seem like it was.’
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. ‘That’s what papers do.’
Ben gave her a hard look. ‘And so after that you decided you’d be the one calling the shots. You’d go to them before they could get you.’
He’d summed it up so perfectly, yet she thought she heard a thread of judgement in his voice. ‘Something like that.’
He let out a huff of breath. ‘And I did the opposite.’ Was he implying that’s what she should have done? And maybe she should have. Lived life quietly, above reproach, like Carlotta had. Like Ben had. Surely it was too late now for regrets. But was it too late to change? To want to change?
‘When I was young,’ Ben said slowly, ‘about four or five, the papers printed a photograph of me. I was crying. I’m not sure if it had to do with my parents’ divorce or not. Maybe I’d just skinned my knee and some photographer got the shot. In any case, that blasted photo was in every newspaper from here to Los Angeles. My mother hated it, made her feel like her privacy had been invaded, like the world was watching the breakdown of her marriage and its effect on her children. I hated it because what boy wants the world to see him crying?’
Natalia gave him a glimmer of a smile. ‘No boy that I can think of.’
‘And there were others. It seemed like every unguarded moment of my childhood was captured on film and tied to my parents’ marriage. All I had to do was look a little glum and the papers were screaming about how my mother’s heart was broken.’
‘That must have been hard for her.’
‘It was.’
‘And you.’ He shrugged, and she continued quietly, ‘And when you injured your knee? They must have had a field day.’
‘You saw those photos?’
She laughed softly, yet without humour. ‘No. I just know how the press works. They blow everything out of proportion. Use everything they can get.’
He nodded. ‘It was tough.’
She sighed, feeling sad for both of them. Their experiences had been so similar, yet their responses so incredibly different.
‘Your hatred of the press is starting to make sense. Not to mention your control issues.’
‘But both of those things have blinded me.’
‘Blinded you?’
‘To the way things really are.’ He paused, his gaze hard, unyielding, relentless. She could not look away from it. ‘To the way you really are.’
Natalia felt her heart freeze, suspended in her chest, before it seemed to do a free fall. This was what it was to be known. Except Ben didn’t really know her. Not all of her.
Stupid, slow Natalia.
She angled her head away from him. ‘Don’t go overboard on me, Ben,’
