Blackmailed into the Billionaire's Bed(31)
So much had happened. Was it really such a short time since her incredible and sometimes scary adventure had first begun?
“Turn around, honey.” He wasn’t asking, he was telling her. Kendall was more than willing to oblige and instantly felt the soft cotton towel against her bare back and ass.
Mac Buchanan was a legend. His meteoric rise in the newspaper business was heralded throughout the western world. However, she knew very little about his early life. Nobody did. Maybe, while she had his undivided attention, she’d probe a little deeper, try to find out what made the great man tick.
“Mac?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Tell me about yourself.”
Kendall felt the soft warm towel briefly pause between her ass cheeks before he started to dry her again.
Obviously defensive, he simply replied, “What’s to tell? I’m Mac Buchanan, head of Buchanan Enterprises. The information is all in the public domain. My life is well documented. Everything related to my business as a newspaperman is a matter of record.”
Even with her back to him, Kendall sensed from the tone of his voice that he was reluctant to speak about his life before he became famous and feared. “I know all about that. It’s your early life I’m interested in. Tell me about your childhood?”
He spun her around to face him. “Huh, childhood. That’s a laugh. I never had a fucking childhood.”
“But—”
“Listen, honey, it’s all ancient history, something I don’t dwell on. However, I can see you’re curious, so if you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’ll be the one and only time I do. I live in the present. Understand?” His brow was furrowed.
“I understand, Mac. I understand perfectly.”
“Okay. Let’s get this horse shit over and done with. Let’s start with the woman who gave birth to me.”
“You mean your mother?”
“If that’s what you want to call her.”
“Everyone has a mother, Mac.”
“Well, maybe, but I didn’t have one. Not in the true sense of the word anyway.”
Kendall saw how uncomfortable he’d become with her line of questioning and regretted being so curious, or should that be downright nosey. “I’m sorry, it’s not my place to pry into your past. You don’t have to say any more.”
“Fuck it. Now I’ve started, I may as well get it all off my chest.”
As a form of encouragement, Kendall took the towel from him, and started patting the storm water from his powerful arms and broad shoulders. “Go on, I’m listening.”
He let out a long deep sigh before continuing, “Okay. Thirty-eight years ago a woman gave birth to me, but I don’t remember her at all. In fact, I have no recollection of what she looked like. I couldn’t tell you the color of her hair, or even the color of her eyes.” He shook his head. “I have no photographs of her. Nothing. It’s as though she never existed.”
Kendall stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips, then tenderly stroked a clump of stray wet hair to one side. “Oh, Mac, I’m so sorry. Really I am.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be. What you never had, you never miss.”
She saw from the sadness clouding his wonderful silver-gray eyes that he didn’t believe that himself, and because of that, he certainly didn’t convince her. Realizing she needed to be careful how she tackled the sensitive subject of his early life, she kissed his lips again. “Do you want to go on? You don’t have to.”
“Apparently, it was my screaming and constant crying that alerted the neighbors to my mother’s death.”
“Oh, no, Mac.” Her heart went out to him, and she realized that although outwardly he suppressed his emotions well, deep down he was just like any other human being.
“Screaming and crying? How old were you?”
“A few days short of my second birthday. My mother was a junkie. She’d OD’d on heroine. When the neighbors found me, I was clinging to her dead body. Goddamnit, Kendall, years later I found out that she still had the fucking needle hanging out her arm. I don’t blame her, because she was just a kid herself. Barely eighteen, and way out of her depth when it came to looking after a baby.”
“What about the CPS? Didn’t they do anything to protect you and your mom before the tragedy happened?”
“The children’s home I was sent to later told me that my mother moved from one godforsaken shithole to another in search of the next high, with me strapped to her chest. I suppose she slipped through the net, just like thousands of other junkie kids. Don’t be sorry, Kendall. It’s all ancient history. Shit happens. Fact of life. Live with it, or it takes you down, and I was never going to be taken down.”