Page 65 of Sinful Temptations

“I bet it’s not.” He refilled my glass.

“We’re going to need another bottle.”

“That can also be arranged.”

I groaned, not from my stupid period pains this time. The last thing I wanted to do was poison our delicious meal with stories from my messed-up childhood.

But Roman wouldn’t give in. I was his captive. The more we ate, the more he pleaded. Dipping the soft bread into the rich soup, I watched it absorb the luscious red liquid and wished he’d change the subject. But at the same time, I wasn’t that terrified about telling him. I was more annoyed that it would ruin this perfect meal.

It surprised me that I was okay to tell him more about my childhood. It was like I was always destined to have this moment, and I was almost relieved that it had finally arrived. Roman had a gift for divulging secrets, yet I couldn’t believe I was about to reveal one of my biggest.

I heaved a huge sigh and with it went the last barrier of my resistance.

Chapter Fourteen

He reached for my hand, clasping our palms together. That simple touch had me believing that no matter what, everything was going to be okay.

“Okay. Okay. Jeez, you’re impatient.”

He bulged. “Impatient. I do not think I am impatient. You have nearly eaten all your meal. That proves how patient I am.”

“Really?” Faking annoyance, I flashed an evil glare.

“Yes. Really.”

I had another mouthful of champagne and nodded. It was time. “When I was a kid, one of the trailer parks we lived in was in Kilmore. It’s a remote town in the middle of Victoria, at the bottom of Australia.”

I huffed out a sigh, trying to put the events into a sequence in my head. “I had just made myself a bowl of Coco Pops when my father sat down opposite me in the booth seat and said we needed to chat. He’d never done that before. He was always off working, and when he was home, we never chatted.”

“What’d he do for work?”

I searched my brain. I’d never thought about that. “He was in the mines, but I don’t know exactly what he did.”

Roman’s brows drilled together. It must have been hard to comprehend how a fourteen-year-old didn’t know what her father did for a living.

“Anyway, I knew straight away something was up because he was sober.” I shrugged. “That was unusual too.”

Roman squeezed my hand.

My throat started to constrict, and I swallowed.Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

And don’t look at Roman or he will make you cry.

“Mother was in the bedroom with some guy. Tony was his name. Apparently, he was the supervisor at the fuel stop Mother worked at sometimes.”

Roman’s eyes bulged but I kept talking, needing to get it out as quickly as possible.

“The bedroom was just ten feet away. Yet Dad seemed oblivious to . . . to the noises.”

Roman’s breath hitched. “So, your dad knew what . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence.

I huffed, hardly able to believe I was talking about this. “Yeah, they both slept around. All the time.”

Roman scratched his beard, and it was hard to decipher what he was thinking. When I was growing up, my parents’ free-love mentality had never struck me as strange. It was only after I’d moved out with William and started to see what normal families did, that I realized how fucked-up my parents were.

But at the time, I hadn’t known any different.

“Anyway.” I sipped the champagne and Roman topped up my glass again. “It was the afternoon. I only remember that because Mother had been in the bedroom with Tony and a bowl full of marijuana most of the day. Each of the three times she had emerged from the bedroom, she’d staggered tothe communal bathroom in the trailer park, and I didn’t think she’d make it back. But she did. And each time she wobbled past me like I didn’t exist.”

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