note was the only thing left in the safe,” he continued. “My stepfather had emptied it of everything else. My mother loved him, too, and he appeared to love her back. I thought she’d found some comfort with him after our loss, but my stepfather was using her. He gambled away every cent we had. I came home from university because he’d had a heart attack and that’s when I found the phones were about to be cut off and the electricity was overdue. We lost him and the house in the same month. My mother was a mess, grief stricken, but also feeling guilty for having trusted him and giving me no indication things were sliding downhill so fast.”
He pushed his hands into his pockets, seeing again his mother’s remorseful weeping and hearing her broken litany of, He said he would turn it around.
“You mentioned last night he was the reason you started over. I didn’t realize it was that grim. What did you do?” Her voice was all softness and compassion, her bared shoulder enhancing the picture of her as vulnerable and incapable of causing harm.
“I developed a deep animosity toward anyone who tries to rob me,” he admitted with quiet brutality.
She paled. Her gaze fell and her expression grew bleak.
“Maybe it doesn’t excuse my having you arrested without speaking to you first, but I felt justified when it happened. I was... Damn it, Sirena, it was a perfect storm of my worst nightmares, falling for my secretary the way my father had, then being betrayed by someone I had come to rely on. I lashed out hard and fast.”
She gave a little nod as she drew the sleepy infant off her breast and shrugged her robe into place. “I understand.”
How many times had he seen that look on her face, he wondered, taking in the lowered lashes and stoic expression. He was tough to work for, he knew that. He pushed himself hard and was so overcommitted he didn’t have time for mistakes. She’d always been the first to hear about any he found.
The phrase long-suffering came to mind as he saw past her impassive expression to the self-protective tension in her body language. For the first time he heard the stark despondency in her voice. It had the same underlying incomprehension he felt when he talked about his father’s suicide. She didn’t understand. She was merely accepting what she couldn’t change.
His heart lurched. He prided himself on supporting his family and living up to his responsibilities, but he had leaned heavily on Sirena when she worked for him. Where was her pillar of support, though? Her talk last night of being scared and ill and forsaken by her family had terrified and angered him anew. He wondered why she had needed the money. She had never said, but he was damned sure it wasn’t for gambling debts or high fashion or drugs.
“Why did you steal from me, Sirena?”
She flinched at the word steal, then a kind of defeat washed over her, shutting her eyes and making her shoulders slump. “My sister needed money to pay her tuition fees.”
The words left a bang of silence like a balloon popping into jagged pieces. He hadn’t expected it, but it seemed oddly predictable after the fact.
She rushed on. “She was so upset after working so hard to get accepted to her degree program. They have a huge waiting list. She couldn’t just wait a semester and apply again. And she’ll make an amazing teacher, because she understands what it’s like to struggle. I honestly thought it would only be for a few days until Dad got payment from his customer— Please don’t go after him for repayment,” she said with sudden stark alarm. “Things happened with his business. He doesn’t have it and he’s really struggling. It would kill him to know how much trouble I got myself into.”
Her misery was real, her regret so palpable he could taste it. There was no struggle over whether to believe her. The explanation fit perfectly with her revelations last night about her love for her sister. He’d always seen her as loyal. It was why he’d been so blindsided by and furious about her dishonesty. It was exactly like the woman he knew to step up and fix things as expediently as possible.
None of that excused her behavior, but at least he understood it.
“I think she’ll go down for a while now.” She rose, pale and not meeting his eyes.
He should have let her leave him to his thoughts, but put out his hand to stop her.
She halted, eyes downcast. Subtle waves of tension rolled off her. He could tell she wanted to be away from him, but she wasn’t willing to allow contact with his outstretched arm even to brush it aside so she could leave the room.
Her refusal to touch him spread an ache of dismay through him. They’d torn the curtains back and exposed their motives for treating each other the way they had, but it didn’t change the fact that she’d stolen and he’d wanted her jailed her for it. Those sorts of injuries took a long time to heal.
But they had to ignore the pain and make this work in spite of it.
“The simplest, most advantageous solution for Lucy would be for us to live together permanently,” he began.
Her shoulders sagged. “I know, Raoul. But it wouldn’t work. We don’t trust each other.”
She seemed genuinely distressed. He felt the same, but he couldn’t give up. It wasn’t in his nature.
“We can start over. We’ve cleared the air. Damn it, Sirena,” he rushed on when she shook her head. “I want to be with my daughter and you feel the same. You can’t tell me you’d rather put her in day care for most of the time you’d have her. And when she’s with me, I’m hiring a nanny to watch her so I can work? It makes no sense.”
“But—”
“We put this behind us,” he insisted, overriding her. “You just have to be honest from now on. Swear to me you’ll never steal from me again. I want that promise,” he stated firmly. More of an ultimatum, really.
Her eyes welled. He was coming at her from so many angles and she was still muddled from a rough sleep. She’d been deeply hurt last night. She’d tossed and turned, convinced that telling him anything about how badly he’d wounded her had been a mistake. What would he care? He would find a way to use it against her.
When she’d risen, she’d been determined to start the move back to her flat.
Then she’d found him looking like a pile of forgotten laundry, hair rumpled, sexy stubble on his cheeks and tortured shadows under his eyes. Her heart had been knocked out of place and was still sitting crooked in her chest. Everything he’d said had put her determination to leave him into disarray.
Falling for my secretary...
That barely there hint of regard shouldn’t make her blood race, but it did.
“We’ve managed until now and we were furious with each other,” he cajoled.
“I’m still furious,” she interjected with more exasperation than heat. A lot of her bitter loathing was dissolving. She couldn’t help it. Getting that peek into his past explained so much, not least his single-minded determination to succeed.
And it did nothing to dissipate the attraction she felt toward him. If anything, it was worse now. The thick walls she’d built against him were thinning and little fantasies of somehow finding a future with him, earning his trust and maybe his love, sparkled like fairy dust in the
