Page 13 of Bound By Her Baby Revelation (Hot Winter Escapes)

‘I—I don’t know what y-you’re talking about,’ Kaya spluttered in response and he laughed and turned away, moving towards the kettle, flicking it on then getting out coffee, mugs and milk.

He owned the space around him. She wondered whether that was just who he was: a guy in charge, the sort of person who would have been as at home here if he’d walked in from the cold to find shelter. A man who was so utterly self-confident that he could have been dumped on another planet and he’d have started working out how he could make it his.

‘Sure you do. Milk? Sugar? You know exactly what I’m talking about.’

‘You think you’re so observant.’

‘I don’t think. Iknow. Trust me, when you grow up in a foster home you learn how to look after yourself. You learn how to have eyes at the back of your head and how to hear through walls, because nobody in charge is going to be there twenty-four-seven doing that job on your behalf. And you learn fast how to watch people and work out what makes them tick. So, what’s it about rich guys you don’t like?’

He dumped a mug of hot coffee in front of her and then sat on the very same chair he’d been sitting on before they’d gone outside to deal with the snow.

He had stripped off the black jumper and was down to a long-sleeved, close-fitting tee shirt, also black, that emphasised the muscular body she had surreptitiously stared at when he’d been shovelling the snow.

‘You don’t look like her,’ she said impulsively and Leo frowned, disconcerted. ‘Julie Anne—you don’t look like her. She was very blonde, very attractive. Blue eyes.’ Her words dropped into the silence between them, spreading ripples of restless discomfort through her. He didn’t like what she was saying. He’d come here to sort things out but he was happy to leave without knowing anything about his mother, without making any effort to try and understand the good woman she had been, whatever she had done all those years ago when she had been very young.

‘I have pictures, if you want to see—on my phone. She hated having her photo taken but I sometimes managed to capture her when she wasn’t looking, or else just told her that she had no choice. But in the house...you’d be hard pressed to find any. She just wasn’t interested in seeing herself in photo frames on shelves. That’s what she used to say—made me smile.’

‘I’ll pass.’

‘Aren’t you curious at all?’

‘Let’s park this,’ Leo ground out, eyes cool. ‘If I was interested in seeing pictures of Julie Anne, I’m pretty sure I would have been able to get hold of some by now.’

‘You were asking me about rich guys,’ Kaya said, her eyes as cool as his. ‘And you’re right. I don’t have any time for men with money because they’re all...arrogant and full of themselves. They swan around thinking they can do whatever they like, and enjoy snapping their fingers and watching people jump to their command.’ She allowed a significant pause and his eyebrows shot up, not in anger, but in amusement.

‘I’m guessing that’s a dig at me.’ He grinned. ‘Is that what you think I’ve been doing? Swanning around and snapping my fingers so that I can watch you jump to my command? If that was my ploy, then I’ve failed miserably, because so far I haven’t seen you doing a lot of jumping at my command. Anyway, isn’t that all a bit of a generalisation? Or is your attitude something to do with the tough upbringing you were going to tell me about?’

He remembered...remembered she’d vaguely mentioned that he wasn’t the only one who’d had it hard. The conversation hadn’t been continued but her throwaway remark had lodged in his head, waiting for the right moment to be pulled out and examined further.

Of course, this was how he had got where he’d got, she thought. He was smart and she could believe it when he’d said that he’d had to work hard and take risks. But there would have been more to it than that because lots of people worked hard and took risks. He would have had that added edge to him of being street wise. He would have been the guy who stored things in his head, who knew how to hold on to information until an opportunity came for him to take advantage of what he knew.

‘You really want to know?’ Kaya was willing to drop her guard for a bit, to let him see a side of her she didn’t normally share with anyone, because to get him at least to listen to her he surely had to see her for more than just a nuisance who kept asking questions he didn’t want to answer? He had to see her as a three-dimensional person with a story to tell, something to engage his interest and make him look beyond what was on the surface.

‘Try me.’

‘My mother,’ she said bluntly. She thought of her mother and was taken back through time to when she had become old enough to understand that their relationship was not at all like the relationship her other friends had with their mums.

‘My mum,’ she said softly. ‘My dad died when I was very young. You know...they were crazy about one another. I can’t remember much about him, because I was only six when he died, but I remember them laughing a lot. She was always the extrovert. He was very quiet, very serious. She once told me that he was a complete nerd until he met her, said that she made him light-hearted and he anchored her.’

‘How did he die?’

‘He fell through what should have been solid ice while he was trying to install a system for tracking hibernating sea life under the ice. He was a marine biologist, and he specialised in icy water, because he’d grown up surrounded by it in Alaska. My mother was devastated. He hadn’t been good with money, hadn’t taken out any kind of life insurance, and without any property or possessions to speak of she was left with very little and a young child to look after. We moved here because this was my mother’s home before she left it to go to Alaska with my father. She still had connections here, although no family.’

‘And your learning curve...’ Leo said slowly. ‘She had no money and she...what?’

Their eyes met and she shot him a wry smile.

‘You can maybe guess.’

‘How did you deal with that?’

‘You mean the ever-changing revolving door of cute rich men my mother hoped would put a ring on her finger and money in her bank account? It’s like she went off the rails when she lost the love of her life. Every time one relationship ended, she would start looking for his replacement, and it was always easy to find one because she was so beautiful. No...my mum never had a problem finding guys. It was the keeping them that eluded her. The guys who used her were always rich and good-looking.’

‘And you’re lumping me in the same category? A rich guy who uses women?’

Kaya didn’t say anything. She was surprised at how much she had confided and astonished at how heartfelt her confession had been. Had she been deluded into thinking that he was some sort of kindred spirit? Or had she become so accustomed to never opening up that opening up now was like releasing a dam? Perhaps the fact that he was a stranger helped. He would be in her life for ten minutes and then he would be gone for ever, so what was the danger in handing him some confidences?

‘I don’t see a wedding ring on your finger any more than you see one on mine,’ she pointed out, ignoring his look of utter incredulity at the sheer brazen cheek of her having told him what she thought. Indeed she was tempted to laugh out loud at his expression.

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