Page 43 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

If she wanted...if she wanted him to treat her like a person he could do that. She was offended by him seeing her as redemption, though for him that meant something. Even if she couldn’t see it.

But he wanted her to see it.

Surely he could do that without revealing more of himself?

Hannah was still rubbing her eyes when they disembarked from the plane and got into the limousine that was waiting for them.

“Maybe being jet set isn’t for me,” she said.

“Some good strong coffee will fix you up nicely.” He smiled. “Unfortunately, it will be difficult to find here.”

“It’s New York,” she pointed out. “You can find whatever you want here.”

“Spoken with such confidence,” he said. “But I find most coffee in America lacking.”

But he took her straight to his favorite place in the city, a small hole-in-the-wall that served an eclectic mix of European delicacies. They had baklava and very strong espresso sitting at a tiny table right next to the window, against the busy street. Hannah’s eyes were wide and searching as she looked all around.

“What?” he asked.

“I’ve never been anywhere like this.”

“You cannot mean that. You grew up part-time in the city.”

“My dad wasn’t one for tiny cafés. Especially not...”

“Is this a bit downmarket for you,” he said, feeling amused.”

“No,” she said. “Not at all. It’s just different.”

“I see. And you and your friends in Greece never went places like this? Not to banish her hangovers.”

“No. Mariana is a very good concierge, and she got us into very fancy places. Plus, I’m actually not big on drinking. I did a little bit of it when we went out, but I’ve never had a hangover.”

“Never?”

“No,” she said. He felt both envious of her right then, and a bit regretful. Like he had somehow been part of holding her back from interesting parts of life. But also... He wondered what it would’ve been like to be so protected. To have had choices about these things. Real choices. He had made decisions, difficult ones, it wasn’t as if he had no agency in his life. But his choices had been all bad at different points in his life.

Hannah had been able to retain a certain amount of innocence in a world that was unkind to the naive. Part of him wanted to congratulate himself for that, but another part of him knew he could take no credit for it. Not really. Her parents had established that boundary of safety. Something she didn’t seem to understand.

He watched as she took a bite of her baklava, a stray bead of honey left on her lips.

He wanted to touch them, to kiss them away. But that wasn’t who they were. And it wasn’t what would happen going forward.

“Your father did love you, you know,” he said.

Softness wasn’t a native language to him. But he wanted to try and give her something. All of her actions these past months had demanded what he didn’t know how to give. He could at least give her this.

“I know,” she said. “I know he did. That’s why the things that he did that I don’t understand, the things that hurt me, hurt as badly as they do. If he had been awful, if I doubted that he and my mom cared for me, then... I wouldn’t be so regretful about not having time with them. I wouldn’t feel left behind. I wouldn’t... It is that I loved them and they loved me that makes it hard.”

“They died before they could finish with you. And I don’t have children, obviously. I don’t suppose you ever really finish with them. In the fullness of time, they might have made it up to you. The things they did back then. Because they were good people who would’ve listened to you if you would’ve said that you wanted things to be different. Your father set that trust up for you with the care and concern of a man looking at a child. Not a woman. He didn’t know who you would become, and he never got to see it. Have some forgiveness for him. Think of how much you’ve changed. He might also have.”

She shifted in her seat. “I never thought of it that way.”

“I tried to help my mother,” he said. He didn’t know why he was telling her this, except he wanted her to know. The difference. The difference between parents who loved their children, and those who saw them primarily as a burden. And who could never, ever re-examine their actions because it was far too confronting for them.

“I’m a billionaire. I could change her life if she would let me. But for her to allow me to do that would mean admitting that things in her life are not all that they might be. And she cannot do that. She can’t and she won’t. I tracked her down in Edinburgh and she refused me. She said that I was just coming back to lord my status over her. She acted like I thought I was better than her, because I had always thought that I was better than her but... We were the same. And she knew it. Your father loved you. My mother grew to despise me. I was an emblem of everything that had ever gone wrong in her life, and she made sure that I knew it. She was too filled with spite and hatred to even allow me to help her.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. You didn’t deserve that. No child does. Every child deserves... They deserve to be loved. To be cared for. And I realized that my parents did care for me. But I was lonely. Perhaps if they’d lived until I was older, I would have known how to tell them that. Not that I did a great job of telling you.”

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