Page 38 of His Innocent Unwrapped In Iceland

He sat her down on it and then sat beside her, tilting his head back as he stared up at the sky. ‘When I was sixteen I fell in love, and she fell pregnant unexpectedly. She came from a wealthy family, and I was just a sixteen-year-old foster kid working in a garage, and her family didn’t approve. When they found out about the pregnancy, they stopped me from seeing her, and when our son was born, they stopped me from seeing him too.’

Isla went very still. His voice was smooth and even, betraying no hint of his feelings. He said the words as if they’d happened a long, long time ago and to someone else.

‘I was furious, of course. When Cleo’s father told me I couldn’t see my son, that I wasn’t even named on his birth certificate, I took a baseball bat from home and smashed up his car with it. That naturally enough earned me a police warning and a non-molestation order.’

The breath went out of her, a soundless sigh of shock. Again, his face betrayed nothing but casual interest as he stared at the sky. But the fact that he was searching it so intently told her everything she needed to know.

This was painful for him. Terribly, exquisitely painful.

‘I swore that I’d get him back at some point,’ Orion went on. ‘When I had enough money and power, and about ten years ago, that’s exactly what I did. Or at least that’s what I intended to do.’

Isla realised she’d gone tense in the water, staring at him fascinated. ‘What happened?’ she asked, because something had. She hadn’t heard anything about him having a child.

‘Oh, I decided that I’d leave him with his family,’ Orion said casually. ‘I walked in during his birthday party and he was surrounded by his family, and he was so...happy.’ For the first time Isla heard a hint of roughness in his voice. ‘I couldn’t take him away from that. He didn’t know me. He didn’t even know I existed. And I couldn’t bring myself to take a ten-year-old boy away from the only family he’d ever known. So I turned around and walked out.’

There was a lump in Isla’s throat, and it was painful. She swallowed, her heart aching. A few days ago she wouldn’t have believed him. He was a man who took what he wanted, when he wanted it—that’s what he’d told her. Yet he hadn’t taken back his own child. He’d seen that his son was happy and he’d put his child’s happiness before his own.

What must it have been like for him to come into that party and see his son surrounded by people who loved him? Seeing him happy? And knowingly giving that up for himself...

Isla stared at Orion’s rough, handsome profile as he looked up into the sky. At the hard lines of his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said thickly. ‘That must have been—’

‘Good,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘It was good. And satisfying to know he was loved and he was happy.’ His hard mouth curved in a smile that had nothing of amusement in it. ‘The gift of my absence was the only thing I could give him in that moment and so that’s what I gave him.’

She could hear the roughness in his voice again, so very slight and not at all noticeable if she hadn’t been listening for it. But she had been listening for it.

The gift of his absence...

God, how painful that must have been for him. He was an intense man, a passionate man, and there was fire in him deep down. She’d seen it burn. He must have wanted his child badly and to have to give that child up. To have that child never even know he existed...

Her heart twisted painfully and tears prickled behind her eyes. But it wasn’t her sadness to bear, it was his, so she forced it away. ‘Have you ever tried to meet him since?’ she asked. ‘Or has he ever tried to contact you?’

Orion shook his head. ‘I decided it would be easier for all concerned if I just pretended he didn’t exist for me the way I didn’t exist for him. So no, I haven’t contacted him nor has he contacted me. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing and it’s better that way.’

Isla looked away, blinking fiercely against the insistent tears. ‘How could they take him away from you?’ she couldn’t help asking, her heart burning at the unfairness of it. ‘How could they not even acknowledge you?’

He shrugged. ‘I was just some poor kid who’d impregnated their daughter. And Cleo... She was so young and she was scared. I told her I’d look after her, but I wouldn’t have been able to. I was sixteen. I had no qualifications and my job was part-time and paid a pittance. I couldn’t have looked after a partner and a child, no matter how badly I wanted to at the time.’

‘That wasn’t fair,’ she said, knowing she shouldn’t keep pressing the issue, but unable to stop herself. ‘They should have allowed you contact at least.’

Orion finally glanced at her, amber eyes dark. ‘After I’d taken a baseball bat to the family car? I don’t think so. And I don’t blame them for it either. I was young and stupid and full of rage, and I wouldn’t have allowed contact with me either.’

He’s not angry, so why are you? It’s not your trauma.

Except he was angry, she was sure of it. He was so rigidly controlled, keeping all the fire inside him locked down, and there had to be a reason for that. Was it to do with his son? Was it to do with the fury he must still feel and the pain that had to be there? Fury and pain that had nowhere to go and so he simply locked them both away?

She stared into his eyes and yes, she could see that wolf gold gleaming. He felt the pain of having a child he could never acknowledge, and the rage of having that child taken from him. Then the agony of knowing he could never see that child again, because that was what was best for the child.

I gave him the gift of my absence...

No one would ever know what he’d sacrificed. No one except her.

Isla didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have a child, but she knew what it was like to have the family she’d once longed for denied, and she knew how painful that was.

So she turned to him, shifting on the stone seat so she was sitting in his lap, facing him. Then she took his face between her hands and kissed him.

Isla’s mouth was soft and hot and he could taste salt on her lips. They were tears, tears for him.

He wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to cry for him, that what had happened with Luke was all in the past. That he was done with it now and had come to terms with it. But there was something burning inside him, the rage and the pain that had never dissipated despite the years and all the assurances he’d made to himself. The love for a son he would never know and who would never know him.

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