'That's your mother talking. Your mother the divorce lawyer.'
'You paid someone to dig into my background?'
'No, I looked you up, but I shouldn't have had to. We were together for a year and our relationship was serious enough for you to trust me with at least some basic information about your family, although there was nothing there about your father.'
Of course there wasn't.
'Why does my family matter?' Her heart was thumping at her ribcage. 'You were with me, not my mother.'
'It might have helped me understand you. Is it her profession that makes you so wary of relationships? Is that the reason you didn't introduce us?'
'I don't take people home to meet my mother. We don't have one of those cosy mother-daughter relationships where we shop together and get our nails done.' Nerves made her snappy. 'She wouldn't have embraced you; she would have warned me off. My mother's idea of irresponsible behaviour is a relationship lasting more than a few months and being a Prince wouldn't have earned you points. If there is one thing she hates more than a man, it's an alpha, macho man. You should be grateful I didn't introduce you. It was for your own protection.'
'Do I look as if I need protecting?' He'd pulled on a pair of trousers but his torso was bare, bronzed flesh gleaming over solid muscle.
Distracted by that muscle, Avery almost lost the thread of the conversation. 'All right, maybe it was for my protection.'
'She sounds like a formidable woman.'
'Formidable and utterly messed up. Like me, only very possibly worse if you can imagine that. I can see her faults, but that doesn't mean I can dismiss everything she believes because I believe some of it too. When we broke up I was a mess.' Remembering it was terrifying. Thinking about how much she'd changed. How much of herself she'd almost given up. Just thinking about losing her business made her break into a sweat. 'I can't do this, Mal. I just can't. My business gives me independence. It's my life and I won't give that up. Seriously, we'd be crazy to even think of doing this again because the ending will be the same.'
'No it won't, because this time we're being honest with each other. This time we're going to understand each other. We'll find a way.' His gaze didn't flicker from hers. 'I love you.'
She felt a lightness inside her. A lightness that spread and grew. She felt as if she could float, spin, dance in the air. 'You love me?'
'Yes. All of you. Even the aggravating parts.' He gave a wry smile. 'Especially the aggravating parts.'
Avery lifted her hand to her throat. This was the moment she was supposed to say it back. Those three words she'd never said to another human being. Those three words that her mother had warned her always made a woman stupid.
'I-' The words jammed in her mouth, as if her body was putting up a final fight. 'I-'
'You-?' Those dark eyes were fixed on her expectantly and she felt as if she were being strangled.
'I really need some fresh air,' she muttered. 'Can we go for a ride?'
Galloping across the desert on an Arabian horse was the most exhilarating feeling in the world. More like floating, Avery thought, as she urged the mare faster. Soon, the sun would be too high, the day too hot for riding or any other strenuous activity, but for now they were able to enjoy this spectacular wilderness in a traditional way. And with Mal by her side it couldn't be anything other than exciting. Being with him was when she was at her happiest, but didn't all relationships start with people feeling that way?
She adjusted the scarf that protected her face from the drifting sand and cast him a look. 'Do I look mysterious?'
'You don't need a scarf for that.' His response was as dry as the landscape around them. 'With or without the scarf, you are the most mysterious woman I've ever met.'
'Somehow that doesn't sound like a compliment.'
'A little less mystery would make things easier.' His stallion danced impatiently and Mal released his grip on the reins slightly. 'We should go back. You'll burn in this sun.'
'I won't burn. You're talking to someone with pale skin who has an addiction to sunscreen.' But Avery turned back towards the Spa and urged her mare forward. 'It's stunning here. Beautiful. But I feel guilty. Do you know how much work I have waiting for me at home?'
'You employ competent people. Delegate.'
'I have to go back, Mal.'
'We both know that your desire to go back has nothing to do with your workload and everything to do with the fact that you're scared.' With an enviable economy of movement that revealed his riding skill, he guided the sleek black stallion closer. 'Tell me about your mother.'
'Why this sudden obsession with my mother?'
'Because when I have a challenge to face then I start by finding out the facts. Was it her work as a divorce lawyer that made her cynical about relationships, or was it being cynical about relationships that fuelled her choice of profession?'
'She was always cynical.'
'Not always, presumably, since she met and had a relationship with your father.'
Despite the heat of the sun, her skin felt cold. Avery kept her eyes straight ahead, feeling slightly sick as she always did when that topic was raised. 'Believe me, my mother was always cynical.'
'That was why her relationship with your father failed?'
She never talked about this. Never, not to anyone. Not even to her mother after that first occasion when she'd been told the shocking truth about her father.
She'd stared at her mother, surrounded by the tattered remains of her beliefs and assumptions. And she could still remember the words she'd shouted. 'That isn't true. Tell me it isn't true. Tell me you didn't do that.'
Witnessing the visible evidence of her daughter's shock, her mother had simply shrugged. 'Half the children in your class don't have a father living at home with them. You don't need a father at home or a man in your life. A woman can exist perfectly well by herself. I am living proof of that. Trust me, it's better this way.'
It hadn't seemed better to Avery, who was at that age where every little difference from her peers seemed magnified a thousand times. 'Those kids still see their dads.'
'Poor them. I've spared you from the trauma of being shuttled between two rowing parents and growing up an emotional mess. Be grateful.'
But Avery hadn't been able to access gratitude. Right then, she would have swapped places with any one of the children in her class. Her mother wanted her to celebrate an absent father but Avery had wanted a father in her life, even if he turned out to be an eternal disappointment.
She'd never again discussed it with her mother. Couldn't bear even to think about the truth because thinking about it made it real and she didn't want it to be real. At school she'd made up lies. She'd even started to believe some of them. Her dad was just away for a while-a successful businessman who travelled a lot. Her father adored her but he was working in the Far East and her mother's job was in London. She'd stopped asking for affection from her mother, who was clearly incapable of providing it, and instead asked for money, the only currency her mother valued and understood. She'd used it to add credence to her lies. She produced presents that he'd sent from his trips. Fortunately, no one had ever found out the truth-that she'd bought all the presents herself from a small Japanese shop in Soho. That she'd never even met her father.
And the lie had persisted into adulthood. Until somehow, here she was, a competent adult with the insecurities of childhood still hanging around her neck.
She should probably just tell Mal the truth. But she'd guarded the lie for too long to expose it easily and it sat now, like a weight pressing down on her. 'I don't see my father. I've … never met my father.'
'Does he even know you exist? Did she tell him about you?'
They were surrounded by open space and yet she felt as if the desert were closing in on her. Avery tried to urge the mare forward into a canter but the animal refused to leave the side of the other horse, and Mal reached across and closed his hand over her reins, preventing her from riding off.
'You've never tried to contact him?'
'No. And he absolutely wouldn't want to hear from me, I can tell you that.' Once again she tried again to kick the mare into a canter, but the horse was stubbornly unresponsive, as if she realised that this was a conversation Avery needed to have and was somehow colluding with the Prince.
And he obviously had no intention of dropping the subject. 'Avery, no matter what the circumstances, a man would want to know that he had a child.'
'Actually, no, there are circumstances when a man would not want to know that and this is one of them. Trust me on that.' But she didn't expect him to understand. Despite his wild years, or maybe because of them, he was a man who took his responsibilities seriously.