The Flaw in His Diamond(19)

More surprises were in store when Roman took her for lunch. He chose a  low-key beach shack rather than some high-tone restaurant.

And this was better, she thought as they kicked off their shoes. She  could relax and be herself-maybe even forget who she was for a couple of  hours, forget who Roman was and their respective roles in life. She  could forget the fact that she was having lunch with a billionaire who  just happened to have flown her here in his helicopter.

'Is that okay for you?' Roman checked with her when the handsome young waiter suggested the fresh catch of the day for lunch.

'Perfect,' she confirmed, resting back in the wicker chair. 'This is  heaven.' And after the ups and downs of the past couple of days, to be  sitting like this with her feet in the sand and Roman at her side, with  the lazy surf rolling rhythmically back and forth in between them, this  was heaven.

'Have I convinced you?' he asked in a lazy drawl, leaning back.

She smiled as his chair creaked. It hardly seemed substantial enough to  contain such a significant force. 'I can see the need for those  diamonds now, and it goes far beyond what I thought...'

'But?' he queried, sensing a question in her words.

She waited until the waiter had served their cold drinks. 'I suppose  your particular interest in the medical application fascinates me. You  seem...' She hesitated.

'Unusually passionate?' Roman suggested. 'That's because I am.'

'It wasn't your passion that surprised me. It's the direction it takes.  Is there some particular reason for that?' she asked carefully. 'A  personal reason, perhaps?'

He shrugged and finished his glass of water, pouring another before he spoke, and then he just said, 'Yes.'

She waited, but then their food arrived and they were both distracted  for a few moments. When everything had calmed down, she tried again.  'So...'

'Eat, Eva. Your food will get cold, and it looks delicious.'

'Yes, it does,' she agreed, but she didn't make any move to pick up her knife and fork.

'All right,' Roman threatened as he shook out her napkin and spread it  across her knees. 'I'll have to feed you if you won't eat. You have been  warned.'

'No. Seriously. Please tell me-' She jumped in with both feet.  'Starting with the gold chain...I can tell it means a lot to you. Why do  you wear it?'

When his eyes flashed she was sure she had gone too far too soon, and  wished she could call the words back, but Roman quickly gathered  himself.

'It was my mother's chain. She got sick and died,' he said briskly,  unemotionally. 'I'm just trying to do some good, Eva. We all have to do  what we can, even if it's all too late. So now you know. Do you mind if  we eat now?'

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry. It's just that I don't know too much about you apart from what I read in the newspapers.'

'And that's largely lies and exaggeration.'

She shrugged and smiled briefly as their glances met and held for an instant. 'I wouldn't know, would I?'

A long moment passed, and then Roman said, 'My adoptive mother died-my blood mother too...of the same illness.'

'Fate can be very cruel sometimes,' she said gently, treasuring his confidence in telling her what he had.

'I still can't believe it all these years on.'                       
       
           



       

Roman seemed lost to her for a moment. 'It was a terrible coincidence,'  she said quietly, not wanting to intrude on his painful memories.

'I still blame myself,' Roman revealed as he stared out across a deceptively placid-looking ocean.

'You can't blame yourself for their illness.'

'I blame myself for causing them the stress that might have provoked  it,' Roman explained. 'I grew up the trophy son, praised to high heaven  by my adoptive parents, but when I found out the truth about my birth on  my fourteenth birthday, all I wanted was to be accepted by my blood  family, but when I went to find them, they shut the door in my face.'

'It was too late and your mother had died?' she guessed.

Roman's smile lacked any humour. 'Worse. It was the day of her funeral,  and having her fourteen-year-old son turn up out of the blue was the  last thing her grieving family had expected. She bore more children  after me, and it was just too much for them, my turning up, and at the  worst time possible. They told me to my face I had no place there.'

'So you believed you didn't belong anywhere.'

'My adoptive parents took me back without question and with open arms.'

'But that was good, surely?'

Darkness still lurked behind his eyes. 'They had never shown me  anything but love-and how did I repay them? By becoming increasingly  cold and unfeeling.'

'But you were so young. You must have been so full of anger and bewilderment.'

'And now it's too late.'

'It's never too late,' she whispered.

'All I wanted was to make them proud.'

'And don't you think you have?'

'I should have loved them more at the time, and then thought about  making them proud of me. My adoptive mother fell ill, but I didn't even  notice I was so self-obsessed.'

'Most teenagers are,' Eva pointed out. So this was what had put that  haunted look in his eyes. Her heart ached for him. 'You've never  forgiven yourself, and yet you must have been broken-hearted too. What a  terrible shock for you, and teenage boys don't deal too well with  emotional upheaval-'

'Which of course you know all about,' he snapped, resenting her intrusion into his hidden world, she guessed.

'I do know, as it happens. I have a brother, Tyr, remember? I only have  to think back to remember Tyr rampaging around the house, yelling at  everyone when he was young because he had no other outlet for his  feelings.'

'So that's how you learned to shout,' Roman said, slowly coming out of his black mood.

In that moment, things changed between them. An understanding grew that  hadn't been there before. 'My personality has nothing to do with my  brother, Tyr-though, like most sisters, I blame him for lots of things,  but not that.'

'So you just grew this way?' Roman suggested, a smile curving his lips.

'I don't know what you mean,' she said, acting menacing.

'I think you do know, Eva.'

This was too much-too much emotion-too much understanding of what made  her tick. She chose not to meet Roman's penetrating stare, and stared  out to sea instead, to where the heat-bleached horizon met the intense  blue-green of deep water.

Perhaps if Tyr had stayed home rather than answering the wanderlust  that had always plagued him, things might have turned out differently,  but like Roman she couldn't turn the clock back. She didn't want to.  Things were as they were, and she was as she was, and for once in her  life, sitting here next to Roman, that didn't seem such a very bad  thing.





CHAPTER TWELVE

STANDING UP, HE held out his hand to Eva. She hesitated. Then she  smiled and reached out to him. He drew her with him, pausing only at the  counter to pay.

'We'll be back.' Roman narrowed his eyes when it struck him that the  gaze of the smiling waiter taking his money was fixed longingly on Eva's  face.

His hackles rose. He smoothed them down again. Who could blame the  youth when Eva looked as she did-a little bewildered and surprised she  could enjoy herself and relax as she had with him? She was endearingly  dishevelled from the stiff breeze blowing off the sea, and her face was  flushed from the warm sun on her winter pale skin. She looked beautiful.  She looked beautiful and vulnerable and desirable, yet strong. She was  as strong as he was, maybe. But she was tender too, and sensitive. He  had never told anyone the history of the chain he wore, or his  backstory. Only the two men in the consortium knew that, and they had  known him since school. And though they had hardly known each other  long, he trusted her, and for no better reason that he knew his  diamonds, and Eva was a pure blue-white in a grimy world. She was  everything he had dreamed about as a teenager, and as a man could never  find.                       
       
           



       

'Where are you taking me now?' she asked him as they headed back towards the helicopter.

'That depends on whether you're prepared to call a truce or not,' he  teased her, drawing her along by the hand, wondering if he had ever felt  quite so relaxed or so happy with a woman. 'Personally, I think you owe  me for showing you around.' His face relaxed in a smile as he stared  down at her.

She met his gaze and smiled. 'I'm not sure I'm quite in the same league  as you, Roman. I don't have a helicopter to whisk you away, or a  multimillion-pound facility to blow your mind.'

'How about a return trip to Skavanga?'

'Are you serious?' The smile died and was replaced by something far more touching.

'Never more so,' he said.

'Then it's a date,' she said, brightening at once.

There weren't many women who could persuade him to change his plans.  Eva could, because he wanted to please her. But he still wasn't sure he  could break the habit of a lifetime and learn to feel again, so for  Eva's sake he had decided on a delaying tactic he thought she might  enjoy before they made the trip to Skavanga. 'We're going somewhere else  first.'