tried to run away. I was a real brat.’
‘You were frightened,’ Kate said gently.
‘Maybe,’he said casually, as if his feelings hadn’t been important. ‘I thought they’d turn me over to the cops. But they didn’t. They took me in.’Astonishment tinged his voice. ‘Hal’s sitting room still looks exactly the same as it did back then.’
No wonder he’d been so tense when they’d walked into Harold Westchester’s parlour.
‘What happened when your father returned?’
He leaned his forehead on his open palm, ran his hand down his face. It seemed this memory was the hardest. ‘It wasn’t pretty,’ was all he said.
‘You should tell Hal who you are.’
He stiffened. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want to,’ he said with a vehemence that shocked her. ‘I’m not that miserable brat any more. I left him behind years ago.’
She wanted to ask him why he hated that desperate child so much. From the closed look on his face, though, she knew he wouldn’t answer the question. She decided to approach the problem from a different angle. ‘Why did you want to buy The Grange so much, then?’
‘Honestly? I don’t have a clue. I decided a while back to sell up in Vegas. But I don’t know why I chose this place.’ He pushed his chair back, got up. ‘It was just some dumb impulse I couldn’t stop.’ He paced over to the rail, leaned against it, his body stiff with tension. ‘When Monty started the negotiations, I got him to check out what Hal knew. I didn’t want Hal connecting me with that kid.’
‘I can’t believe Hal would forget you so easily.’
‘Hal and Mary never knew my real name.’
‘You mean you never told them, all the time you were living with them?’
‘No, I never did.’ He paused, as if debating whether to tell her more. Was this where the guilt had come from? ‘They thought my name was Billy Jensen. At first I didn’t tell them my real name because I thought it’d be safer, but then…’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know. It was like I’d become a different person.’
‘You were a scared little boy,’ Kate said gently. ‘Believe me, Hal’s not going to hold it against you if he’s the man you described to me.’
‘How can you know that?’ His voice broke on the words, and she realised that inside the tough, commanding man there was still a tiny part of that abandoned child—who didn’t think he was worth the trouble to love.
She crossed to him, laid her hands against his chest, felt the hard pulse of his heart. Her own heart squeezed in response. ‘You have to tell him who you are,’ she whispered. ‘You have to tell him the real reason you’re buying The Grange.’
‘What do you mean, the real reason?’
‘You want a home,’ she said simply. ‘And this is the only one you’ve ever had.’
Zack was dumbfounded. It was as if she’d reached into his soul and pulled something out he didn’t even know was there. A secret yearning he’d never once admitted to anyone, not even himself. He turned away from her, stared out to sea, the conflicting feelings of guilt and remorse and longing making his stomach pitch like the surf below.
Her hand rested on his back, smoothed over his spine. ‘Hal’s the real reason you came back.’
He bent his head, his fingers clenching on the warm solid wooden railing. The earth had just shifted beneath his feet. It made him feel exposed and needy, the way he’d felt as a kid. The way he’d sworn he’d never feel again.
He swung round and her hand fell away. ‘You’re wrong. I don’t need a home and I don’t need Hal Westchester.’
And I don’t need you either, he thought desperately. He couldn’t. She’d made him feel things, think about things he didn’t want to think about. It was way past time he stopped messing about and took what he did want. Her body.
He pushed back the panic, reached for her. ‘How about I order us some supper?’ He slid his hand down her arm. ‘This sunset’s too pretty to waste on work.’
The deliberately seductive rumble of Zack’s voice rippled across Kate’s senses. The brush of his fingertips made her skin tingle.
What she’d said had shaken him, and he was trying to hide it by changing the subject. She didn’t understand why, but that glimpse of vulnerability made her want him now more than ever. The depth of her attraction still frightened her, but she was finally willing to admit that it excited her more.
‘Dinner would be lovely,’ she said, hurling caution to the wind. What had it done for her anyway except leave her on a knife-edge of unfulfilled passion? ‘I’m famished.’
She welcomed the swift kick of lust as she watched him walk into the cottage to order room service. Her imagination ran hot as she tidied away the laptops, stacked their work papers on top.
Zack had won another hand, but they’d both be reaping the reward.
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