Page 28 of Their Diamond Ring Ruse

It was such an innocent question, but to answer would force Julian to reveal more than he wanted to. And yet he wanted to tell her.

‘My father wasn’t a particularly wealthy man, but he was smart.’

He felt a burn scratch at the back of his throat, like it often had when he was younger. It had made him feel so weak that he had eventually stopped himself from thinking about Conrad Ford at all.

‘He was a professor of robotics in LA.’

‘What was he like?’ Lily was leaning in, and without thinking he pulled her hand towards him, wrapping his strong fingers around hers.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘He died when I was two. I have no memory of him. He feels a bit like some mythological creature I can’t be sure existed. Except—’

‘Except of course he did, because you’re here.’

Julian nodded. ‘I was told that he was almost single-mindedly driven. But also a family man.’

‘Brilliant and driven?’ Lily summed up. ‘Like father like son.’

‘That’s how it would seem.’

And Julian was certain that was precisely one of the reasons that his stepfather had hated him.

‘Do you know what he looked like?’ she asked.

He huffed a humourless laugh. ‘You could be looking at him now.’

‘Oh, Julian. I’m sorry.’

He batted away her apology, but he could see the sincerity on her face. There wasn’t pity there—just a deep sadness on his behalf.

‘You mentioned you had a stepfather, though...’

He tensed, but Lily’s free hand coming up to draw lazy circles on top of his had the tension melting away.

‘My mother remarried a few years later and we moved to Lupine Heights.’

Lily’s brows rose. Clearly she had heard about the small town just outside LA and all the things he’d had to avoid growing up in that place. The crime, the drugs, the gangs...

‘We lived there until she got cancer, and within a few months she was dead.’

‘Oh, my God...’

He gave her a small smile. ‘That’s life. You can wish things to be different, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter because it’s all temporary.’

Her face softened. ‘Is that when you came up with your energy storage invention?’

Julian saw right through what she was attempting to do. But he was grateful for the change of topic because he didn’t understand why he was talking to her about his past. All the things he kept hidden. The only person alive who knew about this was Henry, and that was because he had needed to know what he was taking on in a mentee.

‘It is. I was fifteen at the time. I knew I could make money from selling it, but I didn’t want to. It was mine, and I was going to make more money from keeping it and using it myself.’

* * *

‘That’s really impressive,’ Lily said.

Her heart was breaking at all that he had revealed and everything he wasn’t saying. But he was opening up to her just a little, so she would take what he offered.

‘Why that invention?’ she asked. ‘Why renewable energy at all?’

‘You mean besides it being good business? Because I’ve experienced enough of people trying to destroy the world without thought about who it affects. What will we have left if we keep taking without care?’

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