“Almost fifty years.”
“Amazing.” Her gaze eased into wistfulness that faded to melancholy. “It must have been so hard for her to lose him.”
“It was.”
“You must have been very close to him, too. You said you lived with them after your parents died? How old were you?”
“Eight.” He scratched his cheek, becoming aware he was sharing far more than he meant to. He took a sip of wine.
“So young.” She frowned, introspective. “But there’s no good age, is there?” The empathy in her gaze dropped the bottom out of his heart. How had they come to get so personal? “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“No.” He had to clear his throat. The abandonment instilled by his parents’ death had been unbearable, making him wish for siblings at the time, but it was a very long time ago. His grandfather’s loss had hit him hard, though, stirring up his sense of being adrift. Losing his grandmother would be the same grief all over again, which was why he couldn’t bear to contemplate it.
“But I have, quite literally, hundreds of cousins. Aunts and uncles galore.” All of whom he was responsible for. If the weight of that was heavy at times, well, that didn’t matter. They were all the family he had.
“I always thought being part of a big Italian family would be fabulous.” Her mouth tilted. “Is it?”
“Sicilian,” he was compelled to correct, then shrugged, impatient to move on from talking about himself. “I have no complaints. You have just the one brother?”
“Reeve, yes.”
“Older?”
“Four years younger.”
Their food came, a sampler of local specialties including elk tartar, seared scallops on nasturtium leaves and smoked salmon with sunchoke chips.
“Thank you.” She smiled shyly, wariness still hovering around her edges. “I ran down my groceries and only had a yogurt cup for breakfast.”
Before he could remark on her being so active on very few calories, she asked, “If you’re into self-driving cars, how did you come to buy out the Tabor?”
“I took over the family corporation, Gallo Proprietà, when my grandfather died. We have holdings in other interests, but it’s mostly hotels, restaurants, some shipping and other import-exports.”
“I know what Gallo does, but that’s what I mean. Self-driving cars aren’t really in the company’s repertoire. Why are you running a resort conglomerate if your passion lies in something completely different?”
“I was always intended to be my grandfather’s successor. I took a double major in business and computer engineering because it interested me. When I left school, self-driving was still a sci-fi story, but I believed in it. My grandfather believed in me, and we all expected him to be around longer than he was. It seemed a safe bet to explore my hobby for a few years, but we lost him unexpectedly. I had to put it aside and take up the leadership at Gallo.”
“Do you like running it?”
“I don’t dislike it. It doesn’t matter either way. I did what needed to be done.” Did she realize how closely she was skating onto thin ice?
“Have you pursued anything to do with cars since then?”
Not that he admitted to anyone, having learned the hard way to keep his cards against his chest. “Why? Are you looking for another bite of technology to profit from?”
The pretty inquisitiveness that had grown in her eyes dimmed to hurt. “And here we are again,” she murmured in a tone that cooled several degrees. “I can’t blame you for being cynical, but I’m not my father. I’m just making conversation.”
So much for a pleasant day.
“When did Stephen—?” he started to ask, since he had been wondering.
“Eight years ago.” She had stopped eating to dig into the pocket of her jacket, pulling out a credit card.
“Put that away,” he growled.
She set it on her phone and looked for their server.
“Put it away or I’ll take it.”
She scooped both phone and card into her lap, glaring at him. “I’m not going to sit here and be accused of things I haven’t done.”
“I liked him,” he bit out, furious all over again, just like that. Hurt. Betrayed. “That’s why I couldn’t believe he did that to me.” He picked up his wine, but it tasted sour. He’d lost his appetite, too. “How did the crash happen? Drunk driver?”
“Icy roads.” Her voice held a crack, and the words gave the knot around his heart a hard, abraded yank. “I got a job at a ski hill in Banff and was moving there for the winter, so I could train in my off-hours.”
“How old were you?” She couldn’t be more than twenty-five now.
“Sixteen.”
“Is that when you broke your leg?”
“Yes.” She didn’t have to tell him she felt guilty for being the reason they were on the road. He could hear it in the heaviness of her voice. Could read it in the anguish tightening her profile. That also caused a weird pang in his chest.
“It wasn’t just a broken leg, though, was it?” He looked at the white line next to the hollow at the base of her neck.
“Collarbone and a punctured lung. I had six surgeries over two months, then rehab for a year. Lucky to be alive, so I can’t complain.”
Reeling under the idea that she might have died, he asked, “Was your whole family in the car?” He already knew they had been.
Her mouth tightened. She nodded. “Mom died instantly. I was unconscious. Dad talked to Reeve for a few minutes, tried to tell him what to do, how to stop the bleeding. Reeve was twelve and had a broken arm. He managed to climb up the embankment to flag down help. It took a while for a car to come along, but they stopped, which is why I’m still here. That’s why we always stop.”
The hairs on the back of his neck lifted, thinking he might never have met her if not for those strangers.
“That’s why I helped your grandmother. That’s why Reeve wants to be a doctor. He felt so helpless. Don’t interfere in his plans, Dante.” She looked him dead in the eye, hers glossy and bright. “It’s not about my father or what he might have cost you. It’s about helping people you and I don’t even know and never will.”
Dante hadn’t consciously thought her brother was becoming a plastic surgeon or some other high-paying specialist, but to hear he had such a personal, karmic reason to pursue a medical degree took him by surprise. Unsettled him.
Careful, he reminded himself. Fagans were liars.
But this was too brutally real. He’d seen the scars. He could hear the agony in her voice.
“What happened after the accident? Where did you go?”
“A group home.” She pulled her lightweight jacket around her. “Reeve was able to stay with a school friend. I was glad about that. They were good people. But taking him was a hardship, not that they would say so. They couldn’t take me, as well. I was fine.”
It struck him that he’d known her barely forty-eight hours, and he couldn’t count the number of times she had assured him she was “fine.”
“It was hard to see him, though. I was in Edmonton and he was in Calgary. Once I turned eighteen, I moved to Calgary, found work and an apartment. Got custody of him. We figured it out from there.”
Her phone pinged and she flicked at the screen. “Reeve is home. I’m sending you the documents he scanned.”
Dante’s phone pinged, but he didn’t look at it.
“What?” she prompted, frowning at his hesitation.
“He’s had all day to concoct something,” he admitted, trying to be dismissive, but he was affected by all she’d just said. Surgeries. Family broken and sent to a group home, yet she was quick to smile and offer help.
Her jaw dropped open, astonishment hollowing her cheeks. Then her eyes grew sharp and bright, brow spasming once before she looked away.
“I’m wasting my time.” She stood and walked out.
* * *
If he called out to her, she didn’t hear. She was too busy trying not to let on that lactic acid had set her leg on fire. She clung to the rail down the outer stairs to the ski rack, gritting her teeth.
Do. Not. Cry. He wasn’t worth it. But she was dangerously close to tears, and it wasn’t all physical. He kept breaking down her defenses, giving her a day fashioned straight from her most cherished dreams, then kissing her so tenderly she damned near cried at the sweetness of it.
She had put a stop to that kiss, which had taken monumental effort, but she had been feeling so fragile under the press of his mouth. He could have had her making love in public, she was that susceptible to him.
She couldn’t understand why or how he stripped her down so easily. She had poured her heart out about her parents, reliving the pain, trying to earn some tiny shift in his regard by conveying there had been a cost. He didn’t need to punish her. She lived in torment every day. At the same time, she felt enormous empathy for him that he had lost his own parents.
Yet he couldn’t even be bothered clicking his phone to glance at the albatross he had placed around her neck after she had already lost everything.
They had absolutely nothing left to say to one another. And it gutted her.
She took the more gradual green run down to the bottom, skiing cautiously and mostly on her good leg. She was shaking with exertion when she turned in her skis. Maybe some of her tremble was rage, but she was too tired to pick it apart. She just wanted to get to the bus station—