had fun.
Once back in Ben’s Jeep, she kicked off her sandals and stretched out her feet. She couldn’t help sneaking glances at his profile, stern in the shadows of the car.
As they left the city behind them, Ben asked lightly, ‘So, what were you and Ricardo talking about?’
Lia tensed, feeling guilty even though she knew it was irrational. She could have found out about his past if she’d dug a little deeper. Her own innate sense of honesty made her say, ‘I didn’t know that your father was Jonathan Carter.’
Ben’s hand on the steering wheel tightened, his knuckles showing white. ‘I should have guessed Ricardo wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to gossip.’
Lia turned in her seat and rushed to defend the man. ‘It wasn’t like that. I asked him how he knew you and he happened to mention—’ She stopped, recalling the exact words. Maybe Ben’s friend had been a little gossipy.
Ben said dryly, ‘Do go on.’
Lia swallowed. ‘He just mentioned that he thought it was amazing, all you’d achieved, considering how your family had lost everything.’ When Ben didn’t respond, Lia said, ‘It’s not exactly common knowledge.’
He glanced at her. ‘You mean because it didn’t come up when you did an internet search on me?’
She turned back to face the front and said hotly, ‘That’s hardly fair. You knew exactly who I was when you asked the matchmaker to set us up.’
Tension thickened in the intimate space of the car, and then Ben said with evident reluctance, ‘The reason why my past doesn’t always come up is because people choose to forget what’s not relevant any more. It’s old news.’ His lips twisted. ‘Especially after my father had the temerity to die in relative squalor and solitude with my mother following him a year later. I guess they figured he’d paid his dues.’
Sensing he wouldn’t appreciate platitudes, Lia just asked, ‘How did they die?’
‘My father drank himself to death. He’d always been a heavy drinker—albeit of fine whiskies, when he could afford them. The cheaper stuff didn’t suit his system so well. And my mother had a heart attack. She couldn’t come to terms with what the real world looked like.’
Lia was silent, absorbing the enormity of what he’d just revealed. ‘That’s why you don’t drink?’
He nodded, the lines of his face stern. Lia figured it was no surprise, after seeing his father poison himself. She knew enough about him now to know that he would consider that an immense failing in personal control.
She could imagine him as a young boy—handsome and privileged, no doubt attending the best schools, with his future mapped out. The world at his feet. Only to have it ripped apart and the grim reality of how things really were revealed. No wonder he’d thought he had her all summed up.
Sensing he’d appreciate a change in subject, she asked, ‘So why Brazil? Do you have a special connection to here?’
Ben glanced at her again and she caught the gleam of something wry in his expression. ‘Did Ricardo stop gossiping long enough to answer your actual question?’
Lia frowned. ‘He said that he’d seen some of your work in Manhattan...’
‘Yes, and then he approached me with an offer to bid for the work on one of his hotels in Brazil. It was just when my company was starting to break even.’
‘How old were you?’ Lia asked.
Ben shrugged minutely. ‘About twenty-five.’
Lia held in her shock. Some achievement, indeed. Clearly he’d been very driven, and questions abounded in her head as to what had happened after his mother had died. She knew what everyone else knew, about the foster homes, but how had he crawled out of that to achieve such meteoric success?
Ben continued. ‘I went down to Bahia to see the site, and after a meeting Ricardo signed me up then and there. After completing the job I realised I’d come to love the place—it was like a breath of fresh air. Different, vibrant. Unstuffy. So I decided that I’d build a holiday home there. My family used to have a house in North Shore on Long Island. The community there, who had once been like family, completely ostracised us when my father lost everything. But as soon as I started to make a name for myself, some of my father’s old cronies came out of the woodwork, as if nothing had happened. The last place I wanted to be was back in that stuffy environment.’
Lia could hear the bitterness in Ben’s voice and read between the lines. Where had those ‘friends’ been when he’d been alone and defenceless?
Lia said lightly, ‘Sounds like you made the right decision.’
She could feel him looking at her, but she didn’t want him to see the mix of emotions she was trying to hide. She’d felt off-kilter from the moment she’d laid eyes on this man, and now it was even worse.
When Ben drove through the gates leading to his villa a short while later, Lia realised she’d been engrossed in her own circling thoughts. Ben got out of the driver’s side and came around to help Lia out—the perfect gentleman. She only realised her feet were still bare when they hit the sharp gravel and she let out a squeak.
Before she knew what was happening she was being lifted into Ben’s arms and he was striding into the villa as if she weighed nothing.
‘You don’t have to carry me,’ she said, but it was too late. They were inside, and he was putting her down.
Her head was whirling. She couldn’t look at him, overwhelmed with some nameless emotion.
But Ben caught her chin with a finger and tipped her face up. He frowned. ‘What is it?’
The fact that she felt absurdly close to tears was horrifying. She bit her lip, and then said, ‘I don’t know... I’m just... I’m sorry for what you went through. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been.’
Ben’s expression became shuttered in an instant, and he let her go so fast that she almost lurched forward.
He backed away, his lip curling. ‘What? You’re feeling sorry for me now because the poor little rich boy lost everything and had to slum it? Suddenly everything’s more palatable now that you know I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth?’
Horror that he could think such a thing, and hurt, made Lia put out a hand. ‘No! I didn’t mean it like that at all—’
But he cut her off, saying harshly, ‘It was the best thing that could have happened to me. It woke me up to reality before I could get too cushioned by life. I knew not to take anything for granted, as my father had done. Not to grow complacent. I learnt the value of hard work and building something with your own hands—something that won’t collapse.’
‘I can understand that,’ Lia said quietly, hating it that he’d misunderstood her.
* * *
Ben looked at the woman in front of him, her hair tousled and that glorious dress falling to the floor where her bare feet peeped out. She was all slender curves and pale skin.
He
