Page 28 of 2 Books in One Bundle
He needed to repair what he’d done here. She wanted truth, and he wanted trust. The only way he could achieve either was to give a tiny bit of himself. Not one that would crack him opentoowide, but enough for Louisa to know that he was telling the truth.
Matteo shook his head, began to prise open the vault to the memories he preferred to keep hidden. Part of him rebelled at the disclosure, because truths could cause the most painful of wounds if twisted against you. But this was Louisa.Lulu.As harmless as a kitten.
‘I know what it’s like to be lied to,’ he said, ‘and I promised myself I’d never do that to another person. Even if the truth hurt.’
Louisa held on to her sketchbook as if it were a kind of life preserver. The only thing keeping her afloat. The one she’d especially wanted nobody to see. It contained her darkest nightmares, where the fear overcame her. Waking her in the night. Compelling her to draw because if she captured them on paper, they might stop tormenting her. Then those other dreams, her fantasies. The ones that taunted her in another way. She’d captured them to make them real, because she’d never wanted a relationship but, sometimes, shewanted.In the end she’d learned that dreams couldn’t hurt you. Not like people.
People were all risk. Little reward.
Though the way she’d seen Matteo when she’d stood at the door, paralysed. The intensity on his face as he looked at her most private sketchbook. The unalloyed fascination as his hands touched the pages gently, almost reverently.
Before the shock and anger overtook her, she’d imagined those fingers touching her.
That last drawing, two people caught in a whirlwind. She’d felt like that down at the lake, in his arms. When his lips slipped over her skin. Their kiss, which rocked the very core of her. It was like discovering a part of herself that had been missing for so long. Here, in this glorious sunshine, far from everywhere familiar, the fears that plagued her nights had begun leaching away. Turning into something more heated, insistent like a ceaselessly beating drum.
Need.
He’d been right, she had been avoiding him. Her work being a convenient excuse. But she couldn’t think about that right now, not with the man those recent desires had begun tangling round standing right in front of her. A man who claimed he knew how much untruths hurt. If they talked about him, he wouldn’t talk about her and what he’d seen.
‘Who lied to you?’
He turned away, walking to the glass doors overlooking the lake, hands in his pockets. As if he was trying to distance himself from some memory. Nothing about him was open right now. He’d closed himself off from her.
‘When I was six, an older cousin told me I wasn’t a real Bainbridge. That I was adopted and I’d never be one of them. I was a fake, a phony. Until then, I’d had no idea.’
Her stomach dropped. She couldn’t imagine what that would have been like. How could anyone say that to a child? Though she understood this family. They were only after perfection, not failure. Blood and legacy were the only things important to any of them.
‘Matteo, I’m—’
He cut off her words of sympathy with the slice of his hand through the air. Okay, so he didn’t want to talk about it. That she understood all too well. The sympathetic looks from the police after her mother had finally been found out. The empathy from her psychologist. In the end she was sick of it all. Of being thought of as unwell for so many years, then being thought of as somehow broken. When all she’d wanted was for things to go back to how they were before her father died. When she was a normal child with her whole life ahead of her.
‘It was a gift,’ he said, yet his voice sounded choked. ‘I finally realised why my parents didn’t treat me the same as Felicity. Sent me away when she got sick. It made sense. I wasn’t theirs.’
She shook her head. ‘No, that can’t be right.’
‘It can. What other explanation is there?’
‘Your parents had adopted you. Theywantedyou.’
He turned. Mouth a thin, brutal line.
‘They wanted what every Bainbridge wants. An heir. Someone to carry on the family wealth, the family name if they’re lucky enough to have a boy. Don’t worry, I’ve reconciled myself to the realisation.’
Yet everything about him now seemed so hard and tense. As if one wrong move and he’d crack and break into a million pieces.
‘Have you?’
‘It is what it is. I can’t change it. They got their true heir in the end.’
‘Are you sure about that? What about Felicity?’
‘What about her?’
Louisa had been surprised to see Felicity at Mae’s funeral. It had been clear she was a Bainbridge, the pale skin and hair a giveaway, yet Louisa had never met her before. Then she’d introduced herself, whilst seeming to search the small crowd of mourners as if looking for something, or someone...
‘I get the idea you don’t see her much. Have you asked her whether it’s what she wanted? Whether she thinks of herself as the sole heir?’
He shook his head. ‘Of course not. I don’t see her because she’s working as a nanny and travels a lot. Both of us are busy.’
