“It’s too obvious,” he suddenly said. “To pick Scarlett because you chose to be a redhead in this incarnation.”
It was as if he was continuing a conversation he’d been having with himself. Was that why he’d been lost in thought? Searching for explanations as to why she’d chosen that name?
He’d had questions sometimes, what would have led to discussing her past and dissecting it. She’d diverted him every time. But he kept going back to her name, the one she’d chosen for her latest, and she hoped, last identity. It was as if he was trying to grab the end of a thread that would help him unravel her mystery. A person’s given name might not say much about them, but a chosen one said a lot, could be a clue that would lead to their truth. What she never wanted him, of all people, to find out.
But instead of evading the question again, she decided to give him a measure of truth. “I did choose the name because it would make people think my parents picked the obvious name for a redhead. But it’s just a coincidence, since it has personal significance to me, what no one else would ever figure out.”
His focus became absolute. “What is that?”
She gave him another piece. “It reminds me of my mother.”
His eyes smoldered. “Did you lose her long ago?”
“Over twenty years ago.”
He frowned. “You must have been too young to remember her.”
“I was old enough to remember everything.”
His gaze grew more probing. “I wouldn’t give you more than twenty-five or -six.”
“I’m older than I look.”
She was actually almost twenty-nine, had been seven when she’d lost her mother. Or rather, when she had been lost to her mother.
But she wouldn’t pinpoint her age. She drew the line at giving him specifics. But she’d appease his curiosity with one more truth.
“The first fairy tale my mother ever told me at night was Little Red Riding Hood. It remained my favorite bedtime story. But since I couldn’t have named myself Red, I went for Scarlett.”
As soon as her lips stilled, he bent and took them in a long, drugging kiss. As if rewarding her for satisfying one of his curiosities about her.
Pulling back, she noticed a touch of something she hadn’t seen since they’d met again, but had seen a lot five years ago when he’d thought she’d been the fictitious Hannah McPherson, the normal woman who’d lost her parents as he had. Empathy. Even tenderness.
Could she be imagining it? She shouldn’t.
“I was two when I lost my parents. But you know that already.”
She nodded, her throat tightening as she imagined the lost boy he’d been. She realized it was the first time he’d talked about it. She’d never thought he would share any of his scars with her.
He started sweeping her from head to hip in caresses as he talked, his gaze fixed on her eyes but seemingly looking into his own memories. “In the two years I spent in the shelter, no one ever told me that my parents were dead. They probably thought I was too young to understand what that meant, or they weren’t really sure they were. There were thousands still missing and unaccounted for.”