brilliant mind absorbed what was a logical and sensible answer, yet didn’t make sense at all. He frowned. “Why weren’t you invited?”
She held back a rude snort at a question she’d never been able to answer. Picking up the napkin off her lap, she dried her lips, wondering if she’d be able to get through this plate of food when her appetite was fading so quickly.
“I had just started school,” she said, offering the excuse Faye, her stepmother, had used. “My father had given me some money toward tuition, about the same amount as airfare. It didn’t make sense to throw it away.”
“So you were given a choice between school and going with them?”
“No.” She couldn’t help the bluster of resentment that hardened the word. Old, angry tension started clenching up her insides and she had to make a conscious effort not to let it take her over. Picking up her fork, she deflected the subject a little.
“This is why I was looking forward to dinner with Amber. She knows my history with my stepmother and lets me vent about whatever is bothering me, without my having to lay the groundwork and examine how much is my fault and whether I’m being paranoid. Amber takes my side, which is refreshing, whereas if I try to explain it all to you—” she waved a hand toward him, feeling herself getting worked up, but unable to stop it “—you’ll be like Stephan and say maybe Faye didn’t mean it that way, that I’m being oversensitive and her reasons make sense and I’m misinterpreting. Her reasons always make sense, Raoul. That’s the beauty of her dictatorship.”
Oh, God, shut up, Sirena.
She clenched her teeth, intending to drop the subject, but she couldn’t hide the way her hand trembled as she tried to twirl noodles onto the tines of her fork.
“Why don’t you give me an example,” he suggested in a tone that echoed with reasonability, as though he were trying to talk a crazy person off a window ledge.
Sirena crammed too big a bite into her mouth, but he waited her out, saying nothing as she chewed and swallowed. The pasta went down like a lump of coal, acrid and coarse.
“For instance,” she said tightly, “when I was so pregnant and swollen I could hardly get myself out of bed, worried I would die, I asked if my sister could come and was told that my father’s plumbing business had fallen off and Ali had exams and the doctors were keeping an eye on Faye’s thyroid so the timing really didn’t work.”
She glanced up to see a frozen expression on his face. “You should have called me.”
A pang of anguish struck. She’d been tempted a million times, but replied, “The people who were supposed to love and care about me wouldn’t come. What was the point in asking you?”
He jerked back as if she’d thrown her pasta in his face.
She looked away, trying to hide the fact she was growing teary over old conflicts that would never be resolved. Her stepmother cared nothing for her while she, Sirena, loved her father and sister. There was nothing that could be done except manage the situation.
After a few seconds, he inquired in a stiff tone, “What about Amber? Why didn’t you call her, if you’re such good friends?”
“She’s in a wheelchair.” She cleared the huskiness from her throat. “Which isn’t to say she wouldn’t have been a help, but my flat is a walk-up and she has other health problems. That’s what brought her to London. She’s seeing a specialist then heading straight home.”
His silence rang with pointed surprise. “I really don’t know anything about you.”
She wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole.
They ate in silence for a few minutes until he asked, “Your father wasn’t worried about you?”
“Of course, but he remarried because he didn’t know what to do with a little girl. He wasn’t about to play midwife to a grown woman.”
“And your sister? She can’t make her own decisions?”
Sirena let out a poignant sigh, bristling at his judgment because if he didn’t understand Ali’s vulnerability and how much she needed support, he’d never understand why she’d taken his money for the young woman.
“Ali’s young for her age. She struggles in school, so exams are a real issue for her. Pitting her against her mother has never seemed right, no matter how much I’ve wanted to. I adore her like I can’t even tell you and I miss her terribly. I practically raised her. Faye wouldn’t change a nappy if I was around to do it. Homework was me, running flash cards and spelling lists. The questions about puberty and sex and buying her first bra all came to me. But they left nearly eight years ago and I haven’t seen her since. Faye had been cooking up the move the whole time I was applying to school, never mentioning it until my plans were sealed. Tell me that’s not small-minded and hurtful.”
“You could have gone to see them.”
“Oh, with all my spare time working two jobs while studying? Or do you mean after you hired me? Go all the way to Australia for one of those generous single weeks you’d allow me? Every time I asked for more than five days you’d get an expression on your face like you were passing a kidney stone. I tried taking a stretch after that trade fair in Tokyo, but the database melted down in Brussels, remember? I had to cancel.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “You might have explained the circumstances.”
“To what end, Raoul? You never once showed the least bit of interest in my private life. You wanted an extension of your laptop, not a living, breathing woman.”
“Because you were my employee,” he bit out, pushing away from the table in a minor explosion.
She’d seen him reach the limit of his patience, but usually within the context of a business deal going south. To have that aggressive male energy aimed at her made her sit very still, but he wasn’t throwing his anger at her. He paced to the edge of the pool, where he shoved his hands into his pockets and scowled into the eerie glow of the blue-green depths.
“You have no idea what it’s like to lust after your coworker, knowing that’s the one person off-limits.”
I beg to differ, she thought, but swallowed it back because... She shook her head. “How can you say something like that when you made it quite clear—”
“I know what I said that day. Stop throwing it in my face,” he growled. “Why do you think I let it go so far so fast in Oxshott? I’d been thinking about it for two solid years. And the next day—” he gestured in frustration “—the very next day, I found you’d been stealing. You betrayed my trust and you used me. What the hell was I supposed to say? Admit you’d hurt me? It was too humiliating.”
She’d hurt him?
No. She didn’t let herself believe it, not after all these months of scouring the joy and tenderness from her memories, reframing it as a meaningless one-afternoon stand. Maybe in her mind their day in Oxshott had been special, but all he was saying was that he’d had sexual feelings for her while she’d been employed by him. That was only a fraction more personal than being handy. His ego had been damaged, not his heart.
“I was trying to behave like a professional as well,” she said thinly. “Not dragging
