‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘It does.’
Like everything else in this new relationship, their love-making was tentative, cautious, watching and learning from each other. He was a patient lover, fervent, but with the control to take everything slowly. How softly his fingers caressed her breasts, and how mysterious was his smile as he did so.
She smiled back, feeling more and deeper mysteries unfold within her. The sweetness at being one with him was greater than anything she had ever known. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to be him. And she wanted it for ever.
Afterwards, he murmured, ‘Are you really mine?’
‘Can you doubt it? ‘ she whispered.
‘Yes. Nobody has ever been mine before.’
Before she could reply, he enfolded her in his arms again and in the passion that followed she forgot all else. But after passion came safety and contentment, both as precious as desire.
‘Nobody was ever yours before?’ she murmured. ‘Surely that can’t be true?’
‘You’d think not, wouldn’t you?’ he agreed. ‘I don’t usually go around telling people that I need them. It’s too dangerous, for one thing.’
‘Oh, yes, I know. They have to discover it for themselves.’
‘Yes. And they don’t. Except you. But before you…’ His voice died away into silence.
‘What about your fiancée?’ she asked. ‘You must have been in love with her.’
‘Yes, desperately. I thought I’d found the answer—a woman I could love and who’d love me—but it wasn’t right between us. I couldn’t be the man she wanted, giving her all my attention. She resented my other responsibilities.’
‘Did she force you to choose between her and them?’
‘In a way, yes. I can’t blame her. I put them first, but how could I not? Charlie was still basically a kid and Mother was still stuck in a state of bewilderment. They needed me. In the end, Verity and I agreed to call it a day.’
But to outsiders it had looked like a cold-hearted parting, she thought. Perhaps Roscoe bore some of the blame for that, hiding his feelings and turning a blank face to the world, but it had left him in terrifying isolation. He’d said that nobody had ever been his before, and it was true. Pippa clasped him more closely, seeking to offer him a warmth and love that would make up for the aching loneliness in which he’d lived, a loneliness that left him always prepared for betrayal, ready to expect it as natural and inevitable.
Now she recalled the words with which he’d greeted her, a few hours and a lifetime ago.
‘Why did you think I wouldn’t come? Surely we’d agreed?’
‘Yes, but I thought you’d remember that you were angry with me, and with reason. I behaved badly.’
‘When? I don’t remember.’
‘When I discovered that you knew something I hadn’t told you, about my father. You’ll despise me, but I couldn’t bear that. It made me feel spied on.’
‘You like to control how much people know about you,’ she mused. ‘It’s safer, isn’t it? ‘
‘Much safer. No—’ he checked himself instantly ‘—it feels safer but, if you give into it, it’s actually the way to go mad. Once I knew what you’d discovered, I had to head in the other direction, even though leaving you was the last thing I really wanted. But it was like being driven by demons.’
‘Mmm, I know about those demons,’ she murmured. ‘They scream, This way lies safety. So you take that path, but you find that it leads to a howling wilderness, then to a cage. And you know you must escape it soon or there’ll never be a way out.’
‘You have to decide whether you want to live in that cage for ever, or venture out and take the risks of being human,’ he agreed. ‘But if you don’t take those risks—’ his arms tightened about her ‘—then you stop being human. And perhaps you need to find the one person who can make you want to take them.’
‘Then maybe it’s time I took a risk,’ she said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Asking you about your father. You’ve already told me to back off—’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘But I’m not going to do that. I’m going ahead, even if it makes you angry. Perhaps you need to be angry, so tell me what happened when he died. Were you very close to him?’
‘Close?’ He seemed to consider the word. ‘I hero-worshipped him. I thought he was a great man, starting from nothing and building up a huge business. He had power and that was wonderful. Which just goes to show how naive I was. I was as immature in those days as Charlie is now.
‘I was so proud when he took me into the business, told me I had the brains for it. We were a team, working together to conquer the world, so I thought. It was only after he died that I discovered the mountain of debt, the rip-offs, the deceit. He’d lied to everyone; my mother, who never knew he had a succession of mistresses bleeding him dry; virtually everyone he ever worked with, and me, who trusted him totally, was so proud at being close to him, and then discovered that we weren’t close at all.
‘I’d been so smug, so self-satisfied, sure of my place inside the loop, and all the time I’d been kept on the outside, like the fool I was.’
Pippa pulled herself up, turning so that she could look down at his head on the pillow. ‘Don’t put yourself down,’ she said.
‘Why not? A fool is the kindest thing I can call myself. If you knew how ashamed and humiliated I felt at how easily he took me for a ride. He knew he could deceive me more than anyone else.’
‘Because you were his son and you loved him,’ she urged. ‘He made use of that. Shame on him, not you.’
In the dim light she could just make out his wry smile.
‘That’s the sensible point of view. Back in those days it didn’t help a distraught boy who’d been conned by a father he damn near worshipped and only found out when it was too late to ask any questions. He was dead. I went to see him lying on a slab—cold, indifferent, safely gone beyond the world, beyond me. I wanted to scream at him—why hadn’t he trusted me? We could have fought for the business together. But he’d chosen to walk away, leaving me behind.’
‘He rejected you,’ she said softly, ‘left you stranded without warning. No wonder you’re sensitive about what other people know about you.’
‘Stranded without warning,’ he murmured. ‘Yes, that was it. Suddenly I was standing on the edge of a cliff that I hadn’t even known was there. No way forward, no way back, nobody I could talk to.’
Nobody I could talk to. The words were like an epitaph for his entire life. His bond with his father had been an illusion, his mother took everything and gave little, Charlie took everything and gave nothing. He was like a castaway stranded on a desert island.
‘Was anyone with you when you went to see him on the slab? Your mother?’
‘No, she couldn’t bear very much. There were so many things she mustn’t be allowed to know.’
‘The other women?’
‘Yes. She’d heard rumours, I denied them, swore that I’d never heard of his being untrue to her. I was afraid she’d kill herself as well if she knew. It’s ironic. I blame Charlie for telling stupid lies, but I’ve lost count of the really black lies I’ve told, the deceptions I’ve arranged, the people I’ve bribed to stay out of my mother’s way in case they let something slip.’
‘That’s different. Sometimes you have to lie to protect