“Yes. And French and Italian.”
Caradoc wasn’t often thrown off balance. In negotiations, he made sure he had every single detail regarding his opposition. Not simply the pertinent facts, but the irrelevant ones too. Finn wasn’t his opposition though. And he knew only what she’d chosen to reveal; only what he’d bothered to ask.
The thought displeased him. Should he have asked her more? He didn’t usually waste time getting to know the women he was sleeping with. Not beyond the cursory conversations that were necessary to flesh out the time they weren’t enjoying one another’s bodies.
“Why?” A simple question while his fingers moved the zip lower still, so that it was now halfway down her back and his fingers could trace patterns against her flesh.
She sucked in a deep breath as he lowered his mouth to her shoulder and kissed her gently. Sweetly. Her chest was heavy, as though a batch of bricks was pressing down on it.
“Because of my dad,” she said simply, not being intentionally vague.
“Your dad?” He prompted, wondering at the fanning sense of interest.
She moved a little in his lap, making him painfully aware of his arousal, and slipped an arm around his shoulders. It caused the dress to gape, where he’d undone it, and he reached for her breast instinctively, freeing them from the fabric so that he could feel their perfect roundness in the palm of his hand. Finn’s eyes didn’t leave his face.
“My dad’s a mechanic. Retired now. But he still toys with the engines.” She sucked in a breath as he ran his fingers over her nipples. “I used to spend a lot of time at the garage with him.”
“Learning to change tyres?” He teased with that richly indolent tone of his.
She nodded, her lips lifting into a smile. “Exactly.” She sipped her wine again, enjoying its robust fullness. “My dad’s the smartest man I’ve ever known. He’s got a mind like an ocean, just filled with this fast-paced, crazy, clever construction of ideas and knowledge and thoughts and philosophies. He taught me to question everything, but he also taught me to never stop learning.”
Caradoc didn’t want to analyse why her obvious praise and respect for this man was bothersome to him.
“And so he taught you German?” He prompted, when she didn’t continue.
“No. He taught me that you can perform one task better when you’re focussed on something else. He used to play CDs while he worked on the cars. Some of them were language instruction tapes, you know, German, Japanese, whatever. I’d listen with him, and he’d work, and we’d learn stuff together.”
“Fascinating,” Caradoc said, and he meant it. What must that closeness be like?
“Yeah, it was. I mean, it wasn’t just languages. He’d put on documentaries about anything and everything. And sometimes, he’d make me go and sit somewhere else, so that I would read, rather than listen. He’s huge on reading.” She shook her head slowly. “I mean, he must have been freaking exhausted. He was a single parent, and he worked long hours, but he’d still read to me every night. And I don’t mean just a silly picture book. I mean chapters and chapters of actual books. Tolkien, Dahl, Blyton, Lewis … Anything I wanted.” As if only just realising how enthusiastically she’d been talking, she shrugged, a little embarrassed. “He gave me the best gift in the world – his love of learning.”
“And yet you chose to drive cars for a living?” Caradoc heard the words only after he’d said them, and he saw that they were condescending. The remorse he felt was, he told himself, unwarranted. After all, she had chosen a job that required little skill and smarts, and she could have been so much more.
But his question had hurt. Until that moment, she’d never felt embarrassed about her choice of career. She’d felt proud. “Is there something wrong with that?” She forced herself to probe.
“Yes,” he said, deciding he’d already started down this road. “You could be anything you wanted. Anything.”
“I am what I wanted.” She felt a defensiveness in her chest. After all, she’d grown up in East London; her friends had all come from the same estate. She wasn’t ashamed of her working class roots. “I like what I do.”
“More than, say, passing on your father’s love of learning to a whole classroom of children? I’ve seen you with Madison. You could have been a teacher. I’ve heard you speak and make words into magic. You could have been a writer. Why a driver? Why spend your life ferrying rich bastards like me from one place to another?”
“There’s more to it than that,” she intoned flatly. And there was. So why was her chest clutching as though she was being compressed physically. “And it’s not really any of your business, is it?”
There she had a point. Caradoc nursed it. She was just a woman he was sleeping with. True, he’d already given her more importance than any of his prior lovers by insisting she accompany him to New York. He should have left her in England. He should have enjoyed her at Bagleyhurst and then come back to the States, and forgotten all about her. Instead, he’d folded her into his life, unwilling – yet – to end what they were.
But what they were was just physical.
There was no point getting bogged down in the semantics of her life decisions.
Yet Finn had been thinking, and his disapproval didn’t sit well with her. She sighed heavily. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that no one’s ever spoken to me like that about my work.”
Then no one had ever valued her enough to encourage her to strive for what was beyond her immediate reach, he thought with scathing frustration.
“Where I come from, everyone works. I mean, my dad was incredible, but he couldn’t afford to have me at home forever. I got a job as soon as I left school. The agency I work for was one of dad’s biggest clients, and the owner always liked me.”
More jealousy speared his gut. Who wouldn’t like her?
“He offered me a job, and before I knew it, I had a few regular clients, and I’ve never looked back. Besides,” she said, and the way she softened her words as if trying to console him made something odd beat in his chest. “I wouldn’t have met you if I wasn’t driving rich bastards from A to B.”
Her eyes were so enormous in her face, and there was expectation heavy in the air. She was hoping he’d say something; and he knew she wanted to hear words he wasn’t capable of thinking, let alone feeling.
“You’re right,” he said finally, removing her wine from her hands and placing it on the table beside him. He pushed the dress down lower, so that her beautiful body was almost fully exposed to him. “It’s not any of my business.”
And then he kissed her with a passion that spoke of sexual chemistry, desire and lust, and a dark attraction – but it was a kiss that said nothing of love or the future. Because Caradoc wasn’t capable of offering either of those things.
CHAPTER NINE
“What’s the deal with you and Cristoff anyway?” The birthday party for Sasha Moore had been three days earlier, but the dislike she’d sensed between the two men had played on her mind since then.
Perhaps she’d let it fascinate her as a way to distract her from the increasingly deep predicament she was wading into. Every moment of every day proved only one thing to Finn. She was hopelessly in love with this man. And he was not a man to love. At least, it was not smart to love a man like him.
Caradoc lifted his eyes from the paper and lanced her with his steady, assessing gaze. “The deal?”
How did he do that? With one simple look he could make her feel as though she was completely foolish.
But she wouldn’t let him know that. Her smile was loaded with sweet innocence. “Yeah. You obviously hate each other.”
“Do we?”
She couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Yes.”
A hint of a smile played on his own mouth but he didn’t give it any purchase. “Did he say that?”
“He didn’t have to. And nor did you,” she promised.
“No.” He folded the paper so that he could give her the full
force of his attention. Seraphina James. The biggest problem in his life at that moment, and the biggest pleasure.
“So?” She prompted, sipping her coffee gratefully.
“He’s a small, jealous son of a bitch. I never liked him. Even when we were teenagers, I found him … juvenile.”
She grinned. “As a teenager, he was a juvenile, technically speaking.”
He grunted his agreement. “He was weak. A sook.”
“And for that you hate him?”
He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. “No. Not for that.”
Caradoc didn’t expand, and she knew by now that there was no sense pushing him. She had to skirt around the matter. To try another angle. “He mentioned some big drama that happened after his dad and your mum broke up.”
Caradoc’s eyes narrowed, and a muscle flecked in his jaw. It was distractingly sexy. Finn felt desire pool in her gut, but she wasn’t prepared to be distracted. Yet.
“He’s a gossip,” Caradoc shrugged, and he was acting as though it was terribly unimportant, only Finn knew better, because she knew Caradoc.
“Caradoc,” she leaned forward in her chair, but didn’t make any attempt to touch him. “What was the drama?”
He eyed her thoughtfully, wondering at this woman’s strength and power. That he would feel tempted to disclose to her, of all people, the truth of his mother’s demise. Not just the facts, but the sense of loss he’d felt for years. Feelings he’d never discussed with anyone.
“It’s a matter of public record,” he said finally, his voice devoid of all emotion. His eyes rested heavily on Finn’s face. “My mother suffered her first overdose a month after Amon left her.”
“Amon – Cristoff’s father?”
He nodded. There was a bleakness in his eyes but, for the most part, he spoke without any sense of emotion.
“Was it … intentional?”
He thought of the papers. He shook his head. “It was reported as an accidental overdose.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Her astuteness made his heart turn over in his chest. “I know.” He wouldn’t drop his gaze. That would suggest far greater grief than he’d admit to.
“She was so upset by the divorce?”
His laugh was a sharp sound, completely devoid of any human emotion. “No. Amon was nothing to her. My mother loves nothing better than to feel herself falling in love. Whatever the hell that is.”
Seraphina shelved the question that was burning in her mind. Did he not believe in love at all? Was its power so despicable to him?
“She married him quickly. They were ill-suited. They lived together for a few years. Both cheated much of the time.”
“And you and Cristoff were along for the ride?” She prompted.
“Yes and no. Cristoff and I were at boarding school together. That’s how they met. I never liked him before. I sure as hell didn’t like him afterwards.”
Finn nodded. “It must have been very difficult for her.”
“The break up? Not at all.”
Finn’s eyebrows drew together. “But she … I mean … it wasn’t an accident, was it?”
“No.” He saw no sense in lying to Finn. “She meant to kill herself. And she would have succeeded if I hadn’t gone home unexpectedly.”
“You … you were the one who found her?” She wanted to go to him. To wrap her arms around his waist and tell him that no one deserved to experience such grief. But instinctively she knew Caradoc would clam up if she treated him in any way as a victim. He didn’t want pity.
He nodded sharply. “I’d left some documents at home. I was only nineteen. None of this had happened yet.” He gestured distractedly to the room they were sitting in. The overt luxury and wealth surrounded them completely. “Back then, I was just someone who worked for a broker on Wall Street.”
Finn couldn’t imagine Caradoc working for anyone else. As though he read her thoughts, he nodded. “I only lasted six months. It was enough. I understood the industry. I knew what I needed to do and who I needed to be in order to become a success. He taught me well. Not by being good at what he did, but by showing me how I didn’t want to operate. He was too soft. Too slow. He had too high an expectation of a work life balance.” His smile was cynical. “I learned that I could sacrifice myself to this life completely, and make something great happen.”
She pushed aside the revelation. It was irrelevant and distracting and it deserved proper consideration later. Not then. Not when she was coming to understand so much about his life. “So you went home …”
“And there she was,” he agreed. He lifted his mug and sipped the now-cool coffee. “It was touch and go. She’d had a shit load of painkillers. She should have died. She was … lucky.”
“Your poor mother,” Seraphina said, for lack of other words. What she wanted to say was, “You poor thing. I love you. I want to take away your pain.” But there was no way she possibly could. He was not someone who would appreciate the pity.
Caradoc shrugged. He wasn’t sure he agreed with that sentiment. “She was troubled. Deeply troubled.”
“And now?” Finn said quietly.
“Who knows? She seems the same as always. That’s the problem, Finn. I couldn’t have imagined she’d do something like that. She was always in control of her life. I didn’t respect her decisions, but I respected that she’d made them so unequivocally. To learn that she was unhappy enough to try to … to end everything …”
“You must worry all the time that it could happen again.”
He shook his head, and something seemed to settle on his features. Calmness. Resolution. “No. Not really. I’m not responsible for her decisions any more than she is mine.”
Finn weighed his words up in her mind, trying to assess the truth of what he was saying. Finally, cautiously, she murmured, “I don’t think you’re that unaffected.”
“Don’t you?” He shook his head. “Then you’re right. Of course I was affected. She’s my mother. I care for her. I want her to be happy. But she has chosen a life that causes her much pain. The crucial word being ‘chosen’. Her life, her choices. It would be futile for me to worry about hers when I’m powerless to change them.”
Finn took this statement in. It didn’t sit right. She inherently disagreed with his point of view, and yet she could see that he was intractable. She bit down on her lower lip thoughtfully. “Have you talked to her about it? About what happened that day?”
“No. I don’t need to.”
She was quiet, waiting for him to continue, and eventually her patience was rewarded.
“It was Gower.” He stared straight ahead, his mind being unwillingly dredged back to the past. “He’d just remarried. I found her in the middle of a heap of old pictures. Wedding photos. Baby photos. It was all very dramatic. Like something out of a cheap film.”
Finn shook her head slowly. She was lost for which words would be best, and so she said none.
Surprisingly, Caradoc found himself continuing regardless. “Gower was the love of her life. Or so she said.”
Finn sipped her coffee. “You don’t agree with that. Or you don’t believe her. I can’t tell.”
His laugh was gruff. “God damn it, Finn. Stop reading my mind like that.”
She shrugged. “It’s not your mind so much as your voice.”
His eyes were thoughtful. “You’re right on both counts. I think they were a terrible couple. I was only young when they split, but what I know of my mother, and what I came to understand about Gower … there was no way he’d ever have been able to answer her emotional needs. It wasn’t him she loved, so much as the idea of being the victim. The poor wife who was left stranded with a young son. Loving him in such a tragic way really played into that image she had. Suicide right after his marriage? The cherry on top.”
“Caradoc!” Finn was appalled. “How can you trivialise it like that?”
“Easily. You can’t imagine what these people are like. You’re worlds apart
.”
“It’s too, too cynical,” she said with a shake of her head. “Even for you.”
His smile was half-lit. “That’s who I am.”
It was a caution she chose not to heed. “You don’t think that maybe your mum just loved him that much? That desperately?”
“No.”
“But to have tried to … I mean, it’s really dramatic for someone to do what she did.”
“She’s dramatic.”
Finn pulled a face. “I think you’re wrong.” She held up a hand to forestall his objection. “Okay, I don’t know your mum, and I never met Gower. But you’re being too dismissive of her love for him. It’s like the notion of that kind of desperate love offends you.”
“It does,” he said simply. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe in an emotion that can be so hurtful.”
“So you’re saying love’s not real?”
He dragged a hand through his hair. “Jesus, Finn. Why are we even talking about this?”
Her heart was tingling. Her mouth was dry. Her pulse was a torrent of fast-moving feeling; it beat like a drum in her ears. She ignored his question. Something was pushing her to dig deeper into his feelings, even though she knew she was exposing her own vulnerabilities wide open. “Why do you think something like Romeo and Juliet has been so universally and historically adored? It resonates with people for exactly this reason. We all believe in the powerful hold of tragic love. Deep down, it’s something we all fear. Loving someone so strongly that you’ll do something totally out of character … we’re all capable of that, Caradoc.”
He had spoken from deep in his soul. But now, he was listening, and he was hearing her words with a sense of concern. “You sound as though you speak from experience.” Careful. Guarded. Cold.
She flicked her gaze down to the table top in a gesture that was as betraying as if she’d spoken.
“I speak from … I mean … it’s just a fact of life. Try looking at your mother through the perspective of her heartbreak. Try to see every decision she made, after leaving Gower, as a woman who was deeply, desperately unhappy. Who’d had everything she wanted in life and then lost it.”
The Terms of Their Affair Page 11
