Why it should matter to her she didn’t know, but something relaxed inside her. “Okay then. What do you want to know?”
Reaching out, Luke touched the blue bead around her neck, his fingers grazing the skin at her throat, sparks from his touch scattering everywhere. She tried not to shiver.
“This,” he said softly. “The bead is all misshapen and not quite round, yet you wear it all the time. It’s got some significance, doesn’t it? Tell me about that.”
Automatically, her hand reached for the smooth glass. “It’s the first piece of glass I ever made. My dad helped me make it and then put a hole in it and strung it on a necklace for me.” Gently, she rubbed the bead with her thumb.
“Your father made glass?”
“Yeah. We had a studio in our back garden and I used to love going and watching him create stuff. Vases and sculptures and bowls. All kinds of things. It was amazing. Glass is such a fragile medium and temperamental, but dad could do the most incredible things with it.” She paused, because the next bit was always hard. “He passed away when I was sixteen. And that’s when I decided I wanted to be an artist like him.”
Unexpectedly something warm covered her hand where it rested on the grass. Luke’s hand over hers. Something locked tight in her chest and when she met his eyes, she saw sympathy there.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“Good question.” Marisa moved her hand away, trying to ignore the constriction in her chest. She picked up her hot chocolate instead, which really wasn’t what she wanted but had patiently let Luke order for her anyway, and took a sip. “I’m not exactly living my dream, am I? If you must know, I kind of got sidetracked. First by my mother, then by Alistair.”
Luke was scowling now. “Who’s Alistair?”
“That guy I told you about. My ex. A photographer I met during a modeling shoot when I was eighteen. I’d won a fairly major beauty pageant and he told me he could make my career take off and I… Well, he was handsome and charming, and I was an idiot and let him sweep me off my feet.”
Luke was silent a long moment. Then he said, “This was the guy who was married and bad-mouthed you everywhere?”
“Yeah, that’s him. He…liked spending, liked a certain lifestyle, and used to get me to pay for stuff when we were together. And I did because I loved him. I thought he needed me. Then I found out about his wife and that he’d been getting me to pay for things so she wouldn’t notice all his expenses. That’s why I was left with a whole lot of debt.” She let out a breath. Years ago, yet the memories remained painful ones. “But you know that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was how he lied to me. The whole damn time we were together. And I felt so stupid when it all blew up in my face. How dumb not to see any of the signs or pay attention to the rumors. People warned me about him but I didn’t listen. He lied to me and I was too infatuated, too young, and too stupid to see it.”
The expression in Luke’s eyes flickered. He glanced away. “You weren’t stupid, Marisa.”
She realized she’d picked up a daisy and had pulled it to bits, the petals all over her skirt. Carefully she brushed her skirt off. “It’s okay, Luke. It was a long time ago.”
“Still. You weren’t stupid. You were young. And probably innocent.”
She laughed at that. “Innocent? Moi?”
He didn’t smile. “You were eighteen. He took advantage of you. That was wrong.”
That tightness in her chest was back with a vengeance. She didn’t like it, so she looked back down to the half-eaten sandwich that she suddenly didn’t want any more of. “Some of it was my fault, you know. I think a part of me knew what he was doing but I let it happen anyway. He had a tortured-bad-boy thing going on and I thought I could heal him.” She made herself smile. “Eighteen-year-old girl crack, in other words.”
Luke’s face remained unsmiling. “You mentioned getting sidetracked by your mother, too?”
Marisa wrapped her sandwich up, her appetite gone. “Oh, Mum was an ex-beauty queen and got me onto the pageant circuit when I was a teenager. Thought it was good for my confidence and crap. After Dad died it became really important to her so I thought, why not?”
His gaze was like an X-ray, seeing all the way inside her. “I thought you said you wanted to be a glass artist like your father?”
Marisa closed her fingers around her sandwich. “Yeah, I know. But Mum was so upset after his death. The pageant stuff was the only thing that kept her going and it was no skin off my nose to keep doing it. I could go off and be an artist at any time, but you can only do the beauty-queen stuff when you’re young.”