A Royal World Apart(18)

“I’m not just anyone.” Although, maybe she was. Maybe she meant nothing to him. But part of her, a stupidly optimistic part of her, likely the same part who’d thought a rebellion for the benefit of the press was a good idea, was certain she had to be. That she had to matter to him.

“All the more reason to keep it to myself,” he said, not denying it. She shouldn’t have found satisfaction in that. But she did. “You’re my client, or, more to the point, your father is my client. Our relationships is a business association. Making it anything more is senseless.” He turned his focus to the view. She tried to do the same, but it offered her no comfort.

“We don’t have to make it more.” Boldness surged through her. “It is more.”

“Not to me,” he said, his voice flat.

He was lying. That practiced emotionlessness was a put-on, and she knew it now. The calmer he seemed, the more he was hiding. That much she was certain of. She just wasn’t entirely sure of what he was hiding.

“My mother died when I was young,” she said slowly. “She brought the laughter into our family. She was the one who gave hugs and stayed in my room if I had a nightmare. I don’t think I remember my father ever hugging me. Not once.

He couldn’t even cry when my mother died. He doesn’t do emotion either. He can’t even do it for his own kids. Couldn’t show it for his own wife.”

She swallowed hard. She’d never talked about this, not to anyone. Never to Xander, because Xander had left. Never to Stavros. Because beneath his easy charm he was all practicality and duty. Moving forward and doing what had to be done.

Though she remembered seeing him cry for their mother. He’d shown that much emotion at least. So she hadn’t been alone.

“I lost one of the only people who ever really made me feel like I was a person. Like I was more than duty to my country. My mother wanted me to have dreams. She used to talk to me about the things I would do in my life. And somehow, after she died, all of those things died with her. There was no talk of me going to college, of finding what I might be good at. No talk of me finding the man of my dreams, or traveling, or … anything. Some days I want her back so badly I’m afraid my heart will fold in on itself.”

She looked at Mak. “You’re the first person to really treat me like I matter since she died. And yeah, you do it reluctantly, and you make sure I know sometimes just how reluctant you are, but you at least ask me what I want. No one else does. Ever. So, to me, this is more than business. Sorry.”

Mak didn’t say anything, his focus on something that went beyond the view, beyond the mountains. Silence stretched between them, the air turning thick despite the elevation.

“Her name was Marina. As I mentioned, I married her without her family’s blessing. We ran away together when we were seventeen. I told you, I’ve made some very bad decisions.”

“Was marrying her such a mistake?”

“I think it was. Marina and I were married for two hours when a man who spilled a hot drink on himself crossed into our lane and hit us head-on.”

Eva’s stomach dropped, her fingers going numb. “Did … she die then?”

“No,” he said. “But sometimes I wonder if it would have been a kindness to her if she had.” He leaned forward, elbows rested on his thighs. He looked down, his focus on his hands, tented in front of him.

He didn’t speak, he didn’t move. His face looked leaner, somehow. Harder.

“What … happened?” Her words put a crack in the silence, but Mak still didn’t move.

“She couldn’t feel her legs and I … I was fine, I was cut, but nothing more. I’m not sure how that happened. She was talking to me though. And she was rushed to the hospital and taken into surgery. They knew then that the chances of her ever walking weren’t good. She told me I wouldn’t want a wife who couldn’t give me children. Who couldn’t do everything a wife should do. And I promised her that I would always be with her.” He looked up at her, his gray eyes dull, flat. “I promised.”

It seemed too wrong to ask for more information, to make him tell her the rest. But she wanted to know. She wanted so badly to understand him. To know who he was beneath all of that control.

“Then what?” She knew she was pushing. But she needed to. She didn’t know why, only that she did.

“Three days after the accident she was being moved from one bed to another. She threw a clot and that caused a major bleed in her brain. It left her with … brain damage. She couldn’t speak anymore. Sometimes she was lucid, sometimes not. She would be in pain sometimes … and she couldn’t tell anyone. She couldn’t even scream. She couldn’t tell me. Death would have been kinder.”

“How … how long …?”

“Ten years.”

“Mak …”

“I’m not telling you this to get sympathy,” he said, his voice rough. “If you have any to give, spare it for Marina, not for me. For someone who lost too much, too young.”

Eva swallowed hard, trying to keep tears from falling. Trying to keep her composure. “You loved her?”

His eyes never left hers, the lack of emotion, the void there, speaking louder than a cry of pain ever could. “For all of her life.”

“Did anyone help you care for her … did.?”

“Her family disowned her the moment she walked out of their house with the intention of marrying me. It was my fault. But that meant I was her family. I swore to take care of her, and I did. In the end that meant having twenty-four-hour nursing care in our home.”

“But at first … did you have help? Or were you all alone?”

“I couldn’t afford help. I did everything I could to build my business and take care of my wife. She deserved to be cared for. She deserved the best that she could have, to be as comfortable as she could be. I made sure that she was.”

She couldn’t comprehend it. How a man, a boy really, could endure the loss of so much and come out of it so strong. So successful.

“How did you get started in security?”

“I was always big.” he said, a half smile curving his lips. “And I lived in a tough neighborhood. I knew how to take care of myself, how to take care of those around me who were weaker. It seemed like a natural job to apply for. I did good work, so I started helping with more critical clients. I made a name for myself and eventually left the company I worked for to start my own. It’s a dangerous job, but if you’re willing to take risks, you can work your way into good money very quickly. And that was what Marina needed.”

“So everything … everything was for her.”

“Everything in my life was about her until then, why should it change after the accident? She was my wife. She sacrificed everything, her family, dreams for her future, to marry me. I could do nothing less for her.”

Eva felt that her heart would break. Felt tears stinging her eyes that she knew she couldn’t keep from falling. Tears she knew Mak wouldn’t cry for himself.

Someone had to.

“Eva.” He leaned forward and brushed his thumb over her cheek, wiped a tear away. “Don’t. Not for me.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Come here.” He tugged her to him, putting her on his lap, his arms around her, hands sliding over her hair.

“I’m supposed to be comforting you.”

“You’re the one who needs it.” He paused for a moment, his arms tightening around her. “It isn’t that I don’t feel, Eva. I have. I loved a woman very much. I grieved for her in stages. Every time she lost a bit of herself I lost a bit of myself with her. Eventually, I felt so much pain … there was no way to feel more. And now … now everything is just numb.” He shifted, his hands warm on her skin. “It’s better this way.”

She put her hand on his forearm, fingertips drifting over his skin. For the moment, he was allowing this intimacy. Allowing a connection. She didn’t know how long it would last. Didn’t know why it was happening now. But it was. And she wasn’t about to be the one to cut the contact, not when she craved it so much. Not just physically, but emotionally.

She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him, surrounding her, comforting her. She hoped he was finding comfort in her, because no matter what he might say or think, he had feelings. Feelings so deep his body protected him from them by hiding the extent of them. By making them numb instead of exposing him to the full trauma.

It was like emotional shock.

But she wondered how much of it was a blessing and how much of it was a curse. She could see why he thought it to be a good thing, and really, who was she to argue? He was the one who had to live with it. The one who’d had to endure watching the woman he loved die by inches over the course of a decade.

It was a pain she couldn’t begin to fathom. A pain that really did make her seem petty and childish for complaining about her lot.

She turned her head and pressed a kiss to his cheek, his stubble rough and pleasant beneath her lips. She rested her forehead against him, his body growing stiff beneath hers. Tense.

She put her hand on his face and turned him so that his eyes met hers, his lips so close to her own it would take nothing for her to lean in and taste him. She started to, and he held her away, his eyes intense.