“Left you?”
Leaning back, she gazed into his face. Her eyes were no longer brilliant blue, but a hazy blur as if she were seeing across the years. “When I was twelve. He claimed he couldn’t handle bringing up a brat by himself. So once Mum went, he turned me over to residential care.”
An imaginary snapshot sprung into his head. One of a little girl: black curls, blue eyes. A little elfin child alone. “Buon Dio.”
She pulled out of his arms as if she too needed space. “I survived.”
Had she? How could a child recover from such a desertion? She still claimed hatred. Obviously, she hadn’t survived the experience with no repercussions. She continued to carry it with her—the memory of being abandoned.
A dark, yawning ache blossomed inside him. One he’d ignored and pushed aside for years. The teenager standing by his papa’s bed while the priest gave last rites. The kid who’d sat numb and distant as his father’s friends had arranged for the burial. The boy who’d thought his world had come to end.
Yet his father hadn’t left him willingly. Getting cancer had not been his choice. He’d also been a teenager, not a child. “If he weren’t so sick, I’d strangle him myself.”
“My knight in shining armor?” She threw a jaunty grin over her shoulder as she walked to the couch again. “Somehow, I don’t see you in that role.”
The thing curled in his gut. “Not a knight, true. But perhaps an avenger?”
“It’s in the past.” She waved his words away as she sat. “It’s behind me.”
“Yet you hate him.”
She hunched her shoulders.
“You also give him money on a consistent basis, according to the report I read about you. A man you supposedly hate.”
She stared at the faded linoleum floor.
“How do you explain that, carita?” He needed to know how she ticked. Needed to know for what reason he could not articulate. Still, the need beat inside him, exactly as his heart did.
She pursed her lips.
Watching her keenly, he noticed as she folded her hands primly on her lap. The action told him she was trying to pull back from her confession. It told him she was trying to put distance between them. At any other time, with any other woman, he would have felt relief.
Now? Now, he felt a compulsion to rip aside her defenses and delve deep into her mind, her past. His desperate desire to know every inch of her body had somehow turned into a dogged need to know every inch of her.
The thought shocked him.
“What?” The sprite immediately sensed the change in him. She tilted her head, giving him the same keen attention he’d given her. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
A look of disbelief filled her face. Her hand smoothed down her jeans-clad leg in an absent-minded gesture.
Touching herself. Again. Disturbing him. Again.
A thought jumped into his mind, swallowing his lust whole. In its place his non-existent conscience suddenly came to life and screamed. “Why the hell did you take my deal?”
“Huh?” She frowned.
“Why would you agree to my blackmail in order to save your worthless father? A man you supposedly hate?”
“Well.” Her gaze grew dark. “He’s my dad. He’s the only family I have.”
The only family I have.
The words ricocheted inside him, hitting his gut like pieces of spiked glass. When his papa had died, he’d been devastated. Felt totally alone. Within hours, though, his mother had descended back into his life with her new husband and an unknown younger brother, Matteo. A brother who’d unwittingly filled the hole howling deep inside him.
His little brother had become his family.
During the past years, he’d forgotten. Purposefully. Forgotten the joy of being with his brother. Of celebrating life’s journey with a member of his family. He’d forced himself to do what had to be done to salvage his pride and his honor.
His phone buzzed in her pocket.
She stared at him and then slowly slipped the phone from her pocket and held it out for him to take.
The buzz came once more.
The jangle of emotions and thoughts inside him whirled. The memories collided with the purpose which had driven him from the moment of Juliana’s rejection.
Another buzz.
Her night-blue gaze burned into his soul.
He took the phone and answered it.
* * *
Her father’s eyes were blurry with medication. But for the first time in years, they were the clear, sky-blue she remembered from her childhood rather than red with liquor or drugs.
Why this comforted her, she couldn’t for the life of her say.
“Darcy,” he rumbled. “It’s good to see you.”