No Longer Forbidden(37)

“None. Once my mother admitted I wasn’t his he never spoke to me again.” Nic spoke without inflection, his delivery like a newscast.

“You can’t be serious.”

“He was a bastard. It was no loss to me.” He applied himself to his meal.

Rowan cast for something solid to grasp on to as a painful sea of confusion swirled around her. “You can’t tell me that everyone who was supposed to be acting like a parent in your life just stuck you in some horrible boarding school like you were a criminal to be sent to prison.”

With eyes half-closed in a laconic, flinty stare, he took a deep swallow of wine. “I didn’t mind boarding school. I had the brains and the brawn that allowed a person to succeed there, and I realized quickly that I was on my own so I’d better seize the opportunity. What’s in this sauce besides wine? It’s very good.”

Rowan soaked in the tub, still reeling under the blows Nic had been dealt as a child. He’d barely said another word after his stunning revelations, only cleaned his plate and excused himself to work.

Rowan had almost let out a hysterical laugh as he’d walked away. She so recognized that remote, unreachable man. All those years when she’d heard him described as Olief’s estranged son she’d blamed Nic. Nic was the one who showed up at Olief’s invitation like he was doing Olief a favor. Nic was the one who never left so much as a spare toothbrush in the rooms set aside for him. Nic was the one who took off for hours in his black roadster, never saying where he was going or when he’d be back.

Olief had so much to answer for.

Rowan was angry with him. Furious. He’d broken something in Nic. The boy had needed his real father to step up when his supposed one had rejected him. Instead Olief’s disregard had made Nic incapable of trusting in human relationships. How could Olief have done it? Why?

With a pang, she faced that she’d never know—although she wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with the harsh mental toll Nic had mentioned with regard to being a foreign correspondent. Olief had been doing that sort of work then. Perhaps Olief simply hadn’t had anything to offer his son.

It still made Rowan ache to reach out to Nic and heal him in some way—not that she imagined he’d let her. If anything, he probably resented letting her draw so much out of him. That was why he’d locked himself in his office again.

Drying herself off, she brushed out her hair and wondered if she should go to him, not sure she could face being rebuffed if he shut her out.

With a yawn, she counted the hours of sleep she’d got last night—not many, as she’d tried to work out ways to talk Nic around to her views on Rosedale. She’d slept after their vigorous hours in bed, but not for long. Once she’d woken to find him gone she’d risen and started work in the kitchen. Now her soak in the tub had filled her with lethargy.

She set her head on her pillow for a moment and picked up her feet. She was a master at catnaps….

Nic nudged open the bedroom door and took in Sleeping Beauty, one hand tucked beneath her folded knees, the other curled under her chin like a child. Her hair was a tumbled mass, her lips a red bow, her face free of makeup and her breath soft. She was as innocent as they made them.

While he’d finally given in to the guilty tension swirling like a murky cloud through him and come searching for release. Base, masculine, primordial forgetfulness. His flesh responded to the nearness of hers with a predictable rush of readiness, blood flooding into his crotch so fast it hurt.

Her being asleep was a gift, he acknowledged with sour irony. He hated being so weak as to be unable to resist her. If her eyes opened and flashed at him he’d be lost. If she woke and rolled onto her back—

He bit back a groan and reached for the coverlet, folding it from the far side of the bed until it wafted gently over her. This was better. She was getting too far under his skin with her fancy meals and empathetic speeches. This was supposed to be about sex. That was how he’d rationalized it and it was the only way they could come together.

Rowan’s shock this evening perturbed him. She had ideals about family that were completely at odds with his own experience. It worried him, made him think that at some point she’d look to him to reflect some of those values and he simply didn’t have them.

Uncurling his tense fists, he moved stiffly to the door, reminding himself that he might want to relieve sexual frustration with Rowan, but he didn’t need to. He didn’t need her.

He was on the beach, cold waves lapping at his knees, before he could draw a breath and begin to think clearly again.

Rowan’s confusion at waking with the coverlet dragged across her was too sensitive a topic to pick apart first thing in the morning—especially when a nameless agitation made her feel so aware, like her skin had been stroked by a velvet breeze all evening and then it had been too hot to sleep.