“Is your father alive? Do you see him?” he asked.
Why were they talking about her father? “Yes, of course.” Rowan picked up her spoon so she could fill her mouth with yogurt and end that subject.
“Who was he? Why did their marriage put you off it? Was he abusive?”
“Not at all!” Rowan swallowed her yogurt and sat back, surprised Nic would leap to such a conclusion. Perhaps she’d been vehement about what a mistake her parents’ marriage had been, but that was how her mum had always framed it. “No, he’s just a painter. An Italian.”
“So you’re not completely without family?” Nic sat back too, wearing his most shuttered expression, not letting her read anything into his thoughts on this discovery.
Rowan licked her lips and her shoulders grew tense. “True. But … um … he’s an alcoholic. Not that that makes him less family,” she rushed on. “I only mean he’s not exactly there for me.”
Her helpless frustration with her father’s disease reared its head. She rarely mentioned him to anyone, always keeping details vague and hiding more than she revealed. Nic understood that relationships with your father could be complicated, though. That gave her the courage to continue.
“He’s an amazing artist, but he doesn’t finish much. He’s broke most of the time. Olief knew I bought him groceries out of my allowance and paid his rent. He didn’t mind. Nic, that’s why I did that club appearance. With my leg and everything I hadn’t seen my father much, and when I got there—”
She took a deep breath, recalling the smell, the vermin that had taken up residence in his kitchen. Setting down her spoon, she tucked her hands in her lap, clenching them under the table, managing to keep her powerless anger out of her voice.
“It seemed harmless—just one more party and for a good cause.” Her crooked smile was as weak as her rationalization had been. “Afterward I realized how easily I could spiral into being just like him and I decided to come back to Rosedale to regroup. I wasn’t dancing on tables so I could buy Italian fashions. He needed help.”
“You said the marriage ruined your mother’s life, but it sounds like it affects you more than it ever did her.”
His quiet tone of empathy put a jab in her heart.
“Well, he was my father regardless, and he would have needed my help with or without the marriage. And I do love him even though things are difficult,” she pointed out earnestly. “I’m not put off by marriage because he has a drinking problem. Mum just always regretted letting him talk her into making me legitimate, leaving her trapped when she wanted to marry the man she really loved. It made me realize you need more reason to marry than a baby on the way. You need deep feelings for the other person.”
His gaze flicked from hers, but not before she glimpsed something like defeat in his blue eyes. Regret. His head shook in subtle dismissive negation—some inner conclusion of dismayed resignation.
A thin sheet of icy horror formed around her heart as she realized she had admitted to wanting to marry for love. There was no shame in it, but she dropped her gaze, appalled that he had read the longing in her and now his hand was a balled up fist of resistance on the tabletop. Everything in his still, hardened demeanor projected that he couldn’t do it. Would never love her.
Rowan hadn’t imagined he loved her, but confronting the fact that he considered it impossible had her biting back a gasp of humiliation. She blinked hard to push back tears of hurt.
The waiter arrived with their entrées, providing a much needed distraction as he poured coffee and enquired after their needs. At the same time more diners decided to brave the gusting war of spring and winter breezes, taking a table nearby.
They finished their meal in silence.
Nic had locked up when they’d left, so Rowan dug her key from her purse as they came off the lawn from the helicopter pad. She supposed even this quaint touch that her mother had insisted upon—a real key—would go the way of the dodo in whatever high-tech mansion Nic had built.
They stepped into the foyer and both let out a sigh of decompression. Rowan quirked a smile, but the key in her hand dampened her ironic amusement. The jagged little teeth might as well be sawing a circle around her heart. She rubbed her thumb across the sharp peaks, then worked the key off its ring before she lost her nerve.
“What’s this?” Nic asked as she left it on the hall table and started up the stairs.
He stood below her, offering her a height advantage she never usually had over him. His thick hair was spiked up in tufts by the wind they’d left outside. She itched to lean down and smooth it.