by Rachel Lyndhurst; Carmen Falcone; Ros Clarke; Annie Seaton; Christine Bell
Addie shook her head quickly, before he turned and noticed her swooning over him.
She wasn’t sure what to think. Her growing admiration for him wouldn’t help her to forget him later when their marriage dissolved and legal ties no longer bonded them. Then, it would be best to think of him as an evil, selfish bastard. But she no longer had that option.
Still, this wasn’t the time to think about her needs—and her potential heartache. “That’s very generous of you.”
He chuckled roughly and shook his head.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked once the shock subsided.
He turned to her. “It didn’t seem fair.”
She lifted her chin. “It wasn’t fair before.”
He sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“I want to know how your mind works…even if just for a few minutes.” She pronounced the last words carefully. The tick-tock of an old-fashioned clock roared inside her ears. Minutes, not hours. Not days. Not forever.
A sad smile formed on his lips. “Addie, meu amor, for a wife of convenience, you’re very inconvenient.”
The endearing term almost stripped her of any resistance. She cleared her throat. “It comes naturally to me, really.”
He curled and uncurled his fingers a couple of times while he appeared to contemplate what he was about to say.
She itched to touch him, and she raised her hand to outline his stubbled chin. He closed his eyes briefly, and her emotions warred within her. To touch him, or to continue the inquisition? Painfully, slowly, she withdrew her hand from his face.
“Why, Bruno?” she asked.
He groaned. “I saw myself in that boy.”
He saw himself…but how? Then another question slipped past her parted lips. “Why did you leave Brazil?”
Bruno shifted, looking like someone trying to find the right position. The right angle. The right answer. “I told you.”
She shook her head. “Not the whole story.”
“Addie, you know the look you’ve just given me? The way you just touched me? I like that. And if I tell you who I was, I’ll never see that in your eyes again.”
“You don’t know that. Bruno, I know you aren’t a walk in the park. But I’m resilient. I’m a Reed. I bend, but I don’t break.” She gave him a nudge on the side of his abdomen, a pathetic attempt to lighten the mood.
With a somber expression, he grabbed her wrist and placed it in her lap. Away from his body. He sat silently, a war of emotions crossing his face, then spoke. “I quit school at thirteen to help my family. We lived not too far from Recife. My mother was a seamstress, but she got sick, and my father’s income as a janitor was not enough to cover our bills. I worked as a gardener for rich people,” he started, his voice completely in control.
She drummed her fingers on her leg. “There’s no shame in that.”
A sarcastic laugh left his throat. “No. But two months into the job, this lady, my boss, well, she called me into her room and asked me to help her take her dress off.”
Cold, hard ice spread through her stomach. She didn’t like where the story headed. “She…had sex with you?”
Bruno took a long breath, and his lips thinned into a sour smile. “Yes. And she paid me afterward.”
She lifted her hand to her mouth, light-headed. How could a helpless, harmless thirteen year old be subjected to that kind of abuse? “Oh my gosh, Bruno.”
“With the money, I started to pay for food and meds for my mother. The woman referred me to her friends.”
Addie’s fingers tingled to comfort him, and she motioned to reach out and touch his shoulder. But the need to digest what he just said made her withdraw her hand and curl both into fists. She’d imagined he had a rough time growing up poor, but this… Prostituted at thirteen? Anger welled up inside her, and her nails dug into her palm. If she could only put her hands on that woman.
Although she was a laid-back pacifist and despised violence of any kind, her temples throbbed with white-hot hate. “What a monster.”
“Then I grew up and fell for her daughter.”
Her daughter? “Was her daughter…?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Serena. She is the daughter of the woman who lured me into prostitution.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Did Serena know?” Addie asked, though deep down she dreaded the answer.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Not at first. We were young and naïve. We fell in love over a couple of weeks; I saw her when I gardened during the day.” He shrugged. “Even if I hadn’t sold my body for a living, there was no way her parents would allow it. I was just the help.”
This man wasn’t “just” anything. He’d lost his right for education, his innocence, and his first love—well, he’d had them abruptly taken from him. He had all the excuses in the book to turn into a drunk, or to drown in self-pity. Yet he defied all odds and still had made something of himself. Would she have done the same? “How did Serena find out?”
He glanced at her, and for a brief moment his eyes darkened almost to black. The pain in them prepared her for the sad finale. “I wrote her a love letter, and her mother found it—and wanted to hurt us both. Her mother had a potential client arrange a meeting with me at their house, and she made sure Serena listened—she wound up walking in on us.”
An “oh” was the only sound that managed to escape her parched lips. No words would be enough to wash away his pain.
He paced around in a small circle, causing little waves in the otherwise stilled water. Even nature stilled to hear his confession. No birds sang, and no breeze swayed the tall coconut trees. “Yeah. Serena broke up with me. We fought, she called me names, and… The next day, still pissed at me, she went to my father and told him. My father finally understood how I was able to bring so much money home from gardening. The look on his face…” Bruno stopped circling and glared at her, giving her the most intimate and raw look she’d ever seen in his gorgeous eyes. “I won’t live long enough to forget it.”
She scooted to the edge, stood, and got in the water before him. She touched his cold hand and threaded their fingers together. “Bruno, it was not your fault.”
“That’s not how it got played.” He disentangled his fingers from hers, obviously not ready to merge his past with his present. “To my father, I was a man having sex for money, not a thirteen-year-old kid. He didn’t believe I had no choice. After I lost Serena, I vowed to leave home.” He looked around, like the trees and rocks shared his secret. “I stormed inside Serena’s mother’s office and told her if she didn’t give me enough money to leave, I would tell her politician husband and everyone in that hypocritical society what she had done.”
Her heart thudded. “What did she say?”
“She never expected me to rebel. But she acquiesced.”
“Which is why you left?”
He closed his fists tightly. “I thought about only me, Addie. I could have helped my mother and my family. The money wasn’t much, but it bought me a ticket to the US and a couple weeks living there so I could figure things out.”
“But you helped your family, didn’t you? After you made money.”
“Yes, but by then it was too late. My mother had already died. And my father decided to move to Rio for better opportunities—and also because one of the neighbors worked in Serena’s house and overheard a fight she had with her mother. Soon, other neighbors knew, and they made fun of me. They heckled my father for raising a gigolo. Pai and Leonardo were more aware than the others, since Camila and Emanuel were younger.”
“What you’d done? Bruno, you were abused. You were thirteen when it started.” She raised her voice, anger overtaking her other racing emotions. “That’s statutory rape.”
“That’s not how it rolled.”
She knew what he meant. Sadly, a thirteen-year-old girl having sex with an older man still shocked people a lot more than the other way around. Especially because Brazil didn’t
have the same statutory rape laws as the US. The lack of legal backup shouldn’t have detoured his family from the raw, naked truth. He’d been abused.
“But that’s the truth. I’m sorry your family didn’t see it that way.” She shifted her weight to be closer to him, and their limbs rubbed.
“I don’t need your pity.” He scooted back a bit.
“Well, you should take it anyway. Bruno, look at me.” Should she deny her pity? She pitied him, yes, but she pitied the defenseless child he’d been, not the man he was today.
She poked his arm. “Look at me, and tell me it was not your fault.”
He looked at her, and the same emotion that layered his eyes when she’d handcuffed him was there.
“You are quite a listener, Addie.” His lips curled into a sad smile that reached his eyes… Did he think there was nothing else he could do? That his past would haunt him forever and make him unworthy of a real relationship?
“Thank you sharing this with me,” she said and took his hand.
Without saying a word, he sat on the edge of the creek and brought her with him. They stared at the water for a long while.
She appreciated the serene stillness from the trees, the sound of the water flowing downriver. When he offered her his shoulder, she gladly rested her head on it. He kissed the top of her head as her anger at Serena’s mother burned within her—for scarring Bruno for life—and at Serena, for not seeing what he had been through. No wonder she seemed interested in him now that he was successful and rich. But not before, not when things were really hard, when he needed her understanding. And, at last, she fought the growing resentment against his family. She needed to remember that his father had been a different man back then, too, probably nearly illiterate and broken himself after dealing with his wife’s disease for several years.
“What happened to Serena’s parents?” she asked, her unsteady voice slicing the silence.
“Her mother died of an accidental overdose a few years later. And her father, when he began to lose election after election, decided he wanted to become a hotelier. Toca do Tigre was the first piece of property he wanted to buy. But when I found that out, I outbid him and closed the deal. I wanted to take something away from him, something he coveted. That also meant I’d carry that memory for the rest of my life. I think nowadays he’s out of the public eye, living in a small town somewhere.”
Bruno’s arms brought her closer, and she wished they could stay like that forever.
…
Bruno’s fingers tingled, and he surrendered to temptation and threaded them through her hair. He held her more snugly against him, and if her gasp was anything to go by, his hold was too tight. A part of him didn’t want to let her go, and he feared if he loosened the embrace, she’d go away.
He kissed her shoulder, and she moaned softly in response. With a sigh, he loosened his hold just a bit, and when she didn’t move or make any attempt to leave, a grin spread across his face.
Well, she hadn’t run, had she? For how long would she stick around? Telling her the truth could lead to the end of their tentative relationship. But for now, she wouldn’t run even if his past disgusted her. Because she wanted Toca do Tigre. Her eyes had lit up when he’d told her his resolution, but tears bordered them when he told her about the real Bruno.
How it would all play out was a big risk. Their relationship had shifted, that much he knew. She looked at him differently, even though she stuck by him. At least she hadn’t denied feeling sorry for him. That was why he’d never told a soul until then.
He didn’t know which was worse: the disgust in Serena’s eyes when she caught him with a client or the pity in Addie’s. What is she going to do, once this is all over?
What was there to look forward to? The death of his father, which would bring sorrow and sadness? Her departure—he would never meet a woman like her again.
Well, for once in his life, his future sucked more than his past.
But he wanted to make the most of the present.
Then, out of nowhere, her smile died, and she opened her eyes and straightened her posture. He moved his fingers down her shoulders to help her relax.
She turned to face him, her eyes regretful. “I was thinking… I’m sorry that I handcuffed you. You probably didn’t like to be controlled like that.” She bit her lower lip, and he could taste her remorse.
He lifted his hand and outlined her parted lips with his finger. She drew back, and his hand dropped to his side like steel. Was she already avoiding him?
“You didn’t know.”
“But I know now.”
“Doesn’t it get tiring always wanting to know everything?” he said with nonchalance.
She chuckled, the hearty sound helping to loosen the tension in his chest. “That’s what my mother used to say.”
“You don’t talk much about your parents.”
She lay on the grass, her eyes fixed on the sky. “My mom has a gambling addiction. She hasn’t gambled in ten years now. Thankfully. That’s probably why I never went to Vegas; all those slot machines would probably send me to a padded room.” She tried to inject some humor at the end, but her voice trembled.
He eased down next to her, on his side, and propped his head on his elbow. “What about your father?”
“He stuck by her, through thick and thin.” Her eyes saddened. “We got into debt when I was ten. Not your usual credit card debt. We lost our house. At the time, my mom was in charge of making payments, and that’s how we found out.”
“I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat.
“She got help, and she’s been good. But my father never let her manage the family finances again, just in case.” Although a strangled laugh left her parted lips, agony was written all over her face. Probably on her father’s face, too, if he didn’t trust his wife with the family’s finances, even after ten years clean.
He stroked her arm gently and was about to scoot over to kiss her, when the sound of someone crunching on dry leaves brought him to a halt. He disentangled his fingers from hers and stood in one fluid movement, hands resting on his waist.
His gaze zoomed in on a little boy, who he soon recognized as Endi, coming closer and closer. Within a few seconds, Endi made his way to him, running and out of breath.
He smiled inside. If the little boy only knew what kind of game change he’d set—
“Addie,” the boy panted, putting both hands on his knees to catch his breath. “Senhor.”
“What is it?” Addie stood up.
“Your cell phone kept buzzing. The cacique answered in case it was important.”
“What is it about?”
“It’s your father, senhor.” Endi opened his hand and gave him the cell phone.
Suddenly, oxygen was in short supply. It couldn’t be good. His fingers scrolled through the smartphone screen. Twenty missed calls from Leonardo and Camila. He swallowed a lump of guilt and sadness. How could he and Addie be that happy when his father was close to death? Or dead already? No. Best not think the worst.
Someone picked up on the first ring. “Where have you been?” Leonardo’s voice demanded on the other end of the line.
“You know where I am.” Bruno’s calmness impressed even himself. But he wasn’t going to let his brother take him on a guilt trip.
Leonardo let out a frustrated sigh. “The doctor came in and has said Pai won’t last more than a day. You should come home.”
“I’m coming,” he said before he pushed a button and disconnected the call.
Addie looked at him, and her lips shifted into a thin line. The worry in her eyes matched the rest of her, her fingers drumming on her waist. “Yes, we’ll go together.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay? We haven’t talked to Myro or any of the people about the land.” He pushed the words out, needing to give her the choice. She took one step forward and reached for him. A strange sense of togetherness brewed inside him. He accepted her soft hand, much smaller than
his own.
“We’ll work it out. Right now, your father needs you.” The confidence in her voice almost made him forget the doubt churning his stomach.
He peered at his surroundings, and the tension in his shoulders tightened down his spine. The huge trees canopied over the river, and he sniffed the scent of fresh water and morning dew. Would he ever come to this place again? Experience this kind of simplicity? With Addie?
They strode back into the settlement with their hands intertwined. With every step, the idea of a future with Addie turned brighter and sharper. Why not? Even if she insisted on living in Brazil, he could work from anywhere in the world, with all the resources at his fingertips. Yeah.
How to convince her? Addie had a tough shell. She’d had her former fiancé die in her arms. She’d endured living in an Indian tribe in order to do the right thing. Hell, she’d even kidnapped him. But she also was moved by noble emotions.
What kind of emotion would drive her to stay with him once the deal was behind them?
“Are you okay?” she asked when the town car circled around the intersection before turning onto his street.
Okay? The last few hours had been like a physical and emotional marathon. They had run back to the village, where he’d grabbed the keys to the rental and drove with Addie, over the speed limit, to the airport. He had called ahead, and the private jet had been waiting for them as instructed. So, too, had the uniformed chauffeur when they’d gotten off the plane in Rio. But, was he okay? “He’s going to die,” he said and hoped the verbalization would make it easier.
Addie sat next to him and offered him a slow nod. Her silence wasn’t a good sign, was it? Anxiety was like an invisible straitjacket, suffocating him to the max. Sweat formed above his lips and on his forehead, although the AC worked silently and efficiently inside the Lincoln. “When he dies, I’ll finally be able to open up to him.” Just like when he slept. He looked out the window as the car drove through the entrance. “Is that wrong?”
