Carrying the King's Pride(18)

He sat her down in a chair and put her head between her knees. Knelt beside her, his hand on her back, commanding her to breathe. Minutes passed before the dizziness decided which way it was going to go. Finally, her gasping pulls of air slowed to rougher, longer breaths and her head began to clear.

Nik sat her up in the chair, retrieved some water from the dinner table and pressed the glass into her hand. “A sip,” he instructed. She obeyed, hand trembling as she brought the glass to her mouth. When she’d taken a couple of swallows, she handed him back the glass. Nik set it on the table, sat down opposite her and pinned his gaze on her face.

“What was that?”

“Too much,” she muttered shakily. “It’s all too much.” She took another deep breath. “I hardly had any lunch. I get nauseated if I go too long without eating.”

He shook his head. “Unless you’re an A-list Hollywood actress, that was a full-blown panic attack, Sofía.”

Her mouth twisted. “Isn’t that what you’ve already established I am?”

A glitter filled his eyes. “You know I have the patience of Jove. I will wait you out all night if I have to.”

“It’s everything,” she said quietly. “Forcing me to come here, the plane ride, threatening to take my child away. It’s too much.”

He shook his head. “I’m not forcing you to stay. I’m telling you my child will remain here. The rest is up to you.”

“You know that’s no choice.”

“Then stay. Marry me.”

She gave him a frustrated look. “You don’t understand what you’re asking.”

He studied her for a long moment. “Then tell me. Make me understand.”

Her gaze dropped away from his. She had never told anyone about her panic attacks. Never told anyone what her father’s death had cost her. Only Katharine and even she didn’t know the depth of it. But if she was going to make Nik see reason, she had to tell him.

She fixed her gaze on him. “My father was going on his first big business trip to London the night he died. He had worked his way up through the ranks of an investment banking firm after my parents emigrated from Chile to New York when I was two. His credentials weren’t recognized the same way there as they had been back home. He had to work his way up the ladder. He’d just gotten his first promotion before the trip. He was so excited. We were so excited.

“I remember him telling me the night he left, before I went to bed, with this big smile on his face, ‘This is just the beginning for us, chiquita. It’s only up from here. We’ll be taking trips to all sorts of exotic places.’”

A lump formed in her throat, tears scalding the backs of her eyes. She blinked them back, intent on getting through the story. “The phone call came at 3:00 a.m. from the airline. They told my mother my father’s plane had gone missing somewhere over the Atlantic. That they weren’t sure where it was or what had happened. My mother sat up all night waiting to hear. When she woke me up for school, I knew something was wrong. She looked like a...ghost.”

She swallowed hard, but she couldn’t hold the tears back. They slipped down her face like silent bandits. Nik took her hand and curled his fingers around hers. “They found the first piece of the fuselage at two o’clock in the afternoon,” she continued. “My father’s body was recovered the next day.”

“So long,” he said quietly. “That must have been torture.”

Not the torture he must be feeling knowing he might never get his brother’s body back... Never get that closure.

“I’m not telling you this story for your sympathy. It explains me, Nik. What I’m feeling. When you said that night in New York my father’s death must have affected me deeply, it’s hard to even describe what it did to me. I was so young. I was only eight. I didn’t really understand the concept of death. I was dependent on my mother to help me understand, but she wasn’t there.”

He frowned. “Where was she?”

“Emotionally, I mean. Mentally she was...gone. My father and she, they were a team when they came to America. They’d fought so hard to make a life there. But when he died, I don’t think she knew what to do. She had me...so much fear about the future. She fell into a deep depression that lasted for years. It was only because of my aunt that I wasn’t taken from her.”

Nik’s gaze darkened. “That must have been very scary for a little girl.”

She nodded. “I was lucky to have my aunt. She helped until my mother could function again. Hold down a job. But my mother was never the same. It’s only recently that she’s started to recover some of who she once was. She is going to marry a surgeon in the fall—a doctor who works across the street from the café where she’s worked for years.”