“You needed someone to care for,” Avery said, breaking through his memories. “Someone to care for you. It’s human nature to need that comfort when you suffer a massive loss. Of course you loved her.”
Slowly his gaze moved from the sunset to the woman before him. Her large brown eyes held only an earnest honesty. She was trying to see his confessions in the best light. Offer some redemption when he didn’t deserve it.
“I was naive and stupid,” he replied. “I didn’t understand the difference between loving a person and loving the bank account behind the name.”
Her inhale was swift. “Sophia wanted your money?”
“Plus the property, position, and power.”
Avery shook her head. “How could anyone take advantage of a grieving boy like that?”
The question lightened some of the pressure on his chest. She looked so confused because there wasn’t an evil bone in her body. Avery would never use someone else’s pain to her advantage. She was as different from Sophia as night was from day. Even someone as damaged as he could see that.
“She saw her opening and took it,” he replied. In hindsight, he even admired her ruthless ambition. She’d played a long con, and her payout had no doubt exceeded expectations. The only price for her wealth had been catering to the wishes of a foolish boy.
“But you were with her for five years.”
“I wasn’t a fast learner.”
“She tricked you,” Avery said, her eyes hardening. “Used you. That’s unforgivable.”
He didn’t disagree.
“She packed me off to college, visiting on the weekends to make sure I didn’t leave her for someone my own age. Our vacations were always spent on the most luxurious islands, like this one.”
“Let me guess. On your dime?”
“I had a trust fund set up in my name. Not to mention I was the sole heir to an emerging hotel empire. Money wasn’t an issue.”
Or it hadn’t been until they’d discovered the millions Sophia had skimmed from the company.
“At least you went to school,” she said. “It gave you a chance to be away from her and become your own person.”
“It did,” he agreed. “She’d enrolled me in an art degree, but it only took one semester for me to switch into business.” He remembered the fight they’d had over that. Sophia had tried to keep him from following his parent’s footsteps, Purportedly because she wanted a different life for him. One free of stress, which would conveniently keep him from looking too closely at his company’s books.
But though he would have stepped in front of a bullet for her, he’d known even then he wanted to take his place in the corporate world, and had done what he needed to do to ensure that path was open to him.
“How did you get away from her?” she asked.
He drained his wineglass. “I’ll tell you how my romance ended when you tell me about yours,” he said.
She sat back with a disappointed sigh, and he had to hide the smile tugging at his lips. He never would have thought it possible to grin while remembering his sordid past, but here he was.
Because of her.
“So we both have some damage in our pasts,” she said, draining her glass.
“It would seem so.”
“But yours has impacted your life for what, over a decade? You never wanted to try and love someone again?”
“Never.”
Love was a trap he’d never allow himself to be ensnared in again.
“That’s sad.” She gazed at him with something akin to pity in her gaze, and the sight made him want to bare his teeth in protest. Of all the reactions he’d been forced to shoulder during his relationship with Sophia, pity had always been the worst.
“Not really,” he replied, tossing his napkin onto his plate. “Without Sophia, I never would have grown into the man I am today.”
The look on her face said clearly, that’s the problem.
“Because of her, I threw myself into my company, determined to undo the damage my ill-fated romance had created. For nearly ten years I did nothing but live and breathe this organization. I poured everything I had into it, and now I’ve secured a lasting empire. It’s nothing to sneer at.”
“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “But it’s also not something that will keep you warm at night.”
He shook his head at her naïveté. “That’s not usually a problem.”
“Yes, of course,” she replied, rearing back. “I forgot about all of us interchangeable women drifting through your life when you want us and disappearing when you don’t.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.