Page 96 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 1-4

‘I think,’ he murmured, ‘that a woman with as much to give as you have will make the most wonderful mother any child could ask for.’

Nell’s cheeks burned and she had to look away at last, unable to hold his gaze. She didn’t want to negate his praise by dismissing it or minimising it, but she wasn’t used to compliments, especially about her most deeply held doubts, and couldn’t think of a word to say.

In the end all she managed was, ‘Thank you. That actually...means a lot to me.’

A weighted silence fell.

She hadn’t realised until arriving here that the bleak feeling in her heart dogging her since leaving New York had been loneliness and doubt. And now he’d lightened that load somehow. Even though he’d insisted on her coming here, he’d taken time out of his schedule to show her around and then have dinner with her and while it might not seem like much, from what he’d told her about his schedule and about himself, she had the feeling that this was a big deal for him.

Perhaps he was lonely too. His childhood had certainly sounded as bleak as hers, probably bleaker since at least she’d had some sense of continuity with her cousins and aunt and uncle. But he’d had no one. No one at all.

Finally Nell lifted her lashes and looked at him again.

He’d leaned forward, elbows on the table, his wine in front of him, watching her. His grey gaze seemed unreadable and yet she could see the silver glitter of hunger there. Hunger for her, she knew, but that wasn’t news. She knew all about his physical hunger. However, now she suspected that there might be something more underneath that. Not sexual hunger, but a hunger for something deeper and more profound.

He was a man who prized his intelligence, his mind. A cerebral man, yet one who also enjoyed his physical hungers. But his emotional hungers... Did he know about those? Did he ever acknowledge them or understand them?

You know he doesn’t.

No, she was beginning to see that. And maybe that was where her power lay. She could see things in him that he couldn’t see himself. She knew things about him that he didn’t know.

He’s lonely. Profoundly lonely.

The thought ripped a hole in her heart.

‘If you don’t have family, who do you have, then?’ she asked softly. ‘Friends? Colleagues?’

He lifted one powerful shoulder. ‘I have one friend in Italy whom I’ve known for years, though I have seen less of him lately. He has a wife and a child now. As for colleagues, no. I have found it easier to work alone.’

‘So you have no one?’

He frowned. ‘In what way?’

‘Someone to talk to. Someone to spend time with.’

‘I have lovers whom I talk to. We have conversation over dinner, which is why I prefer an intelligent woman.’

Her heart squeezed tight. Not only was it clear he didn’t have anyone, he didn’t even know what she meant by that.

‘I mean someone who knows you,’ she said. ‘Someone who understands you. Someone you trust. Someone you care for. Someone you can be intimate with.’

His features hardened and his gaze shuttered. ‘No,’ he said tersely. ‘I do not. Nor do I need anyone like that.’

‘Everyone needs someone like that.’

He abruptly lifted his wine and took a long swallow before putting the glass back down with a thump. ‘I don’t.’

‘You had no one? Not one person?’

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘After my mother left and I went into foster care, people weren’t interested in making connections with me. Which was fine. I was happier in my own head.’

She didn’t think it was fine, though. There was an insistence in his voice that sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as well as her. ‘What about friends at school?’ she persisted.

‘School was boring, the other children dull. They didn’t like me anyway, and I didn’t like them.’

An uncompromising man. Then again, she already knew that too.

She studied him, the hard lines of his beautiful face, the steely glitter of his eyes.

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