Page 63 of Captivating Anika

She’s cute when she’s flustered.

“Are you asking what’s wrong with me?” I tease her.

“No,” she answers emphatically. “I’m asking what was wrong with them?”

“Them?”

“The other women. The ones who didn’t hang on for dear life to keep you.”

This time I laugh out loud, wrapping both arms around her when she tries to get up.

“You’re laughing at me,” she grumbles.

“Sweetheart, I’m laughing because you’re making it sound like I had women lined up. Trust me, you couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Oh, please. I’m sure there were women.”

I grin and slide one hand under her hair as I lift my head to drop a kiss on her lips.

“I’m forty-nine-years old, Sweetheart. I haven’t been celibate for all forty-nine of those, I’m not a monk. So, yes, there have been women, but I’ve always been clear I wasn’t in the market for anything serious or long term. I definitely never lived with any of them, even temporarily. Not many women would consider a hog farmer long-term material.”

“Well, that’s just stupid,” she mutters indignantly.

“And because you think that, I’m in your bed and my toothbrush is sharing a cup with yours in your bathroom.”

She smirks and her amber eyes sparkle. “I feel special.”

“You are special. That was clear the first time I met you.”

“That was a lot of years ago,” she points out.

“I know, but I wasn’t in a place where I felt I had much to offer. Hear me out,” I quickly add when I see she’s about to disagree. “My father was an abusive tyrant.”

I see the shock in her face, and briefly wonder if this is the wrong time to share my dysfunctional history, but I already got this far and it’s only fair she knows where I came from.

“He was hard on me, was quick with his fists, but he was absolutely brutal with my mother, who tried to protect me as best she could. Living on a farm, we were pretty isolated. I didn’t really have spare time to socialize. I went to school, came home, did homework, and then worked on the farm from the time I was old enough to carry a bucket or pick up a shovel.

“By the time I was fifteen and had a growth spurt that suddenly made me taller than my father, the dynamic changed. He didn’t even try to lay a hand on me anymore, only slinging words to belittle me, but I was used to those, they didn’t touch me.”

Anika slides her body off me but stays tucked to my side, her leg over mine and her hand in the middle of my chest. She’s watching me closely as I tuck a few pillows behind my head and scoot up a bit. I shoot her a little smile, but she can’t seem to bring herself to smile back and presses her face into my shoulder instead.

Better get this over with.

“Mom wouldn’t leave him, no matter how much I begged. She believed in the sanctity of marriage and the vows she gave. So, she stayed, and therefore so did I. I was the only thing standing between her and my father’s fists.

“Mom loved the farm, so after he died, it seemed natural for me to stay and help her run it.”

For a while we stay quiet. I play with a strand of her hair, and she draws patterns on my chest with her fingers, causing goosebumps to break out on my skin. Anika is first to break the silence.

“You know you’re nothing like your father, right?”

“Sweetheart, I know that,” I answer by rote.

But do I?

Hasn’t there always been a small part of me that wondered if perhaps I was genetically predisposed? After all, my dad followed in my grandfather’s footsteps. According to Mom, he’d become the very thing he had loathed in his father.

Maybe staying at the farm had been as much about me as it had about my mother. Fear is a great motivator, and perhaps I was afraid to find out who I might turn into.

---