Marseilles.
Until she said, “Theo,” with surprising gravity behind him.
“Yes?” he prompted, keeping his back to her as he boosted Evie toward the edge.
Ah, hell, he had his back to her. Inner tension came on so fast he felt like he solidified and fractured in the same breath.
The scars should have become less of an issue for him in the last year. His whole family had started coming to terms with their childhood, but he’d spent so many years clenching his teeth against it all that he couldn’t bring himself to open up to any of his siblings about what was plain as the stripes on his back. There didn’t seem any point and they were still so awkward with each other. He wanted to be friends with his older brother, but making that happen was easier if they both pretended the ugliness in their early lives hadn’t happened. Maybe it was counterproductive, but all of them had been raised to be polite and ignore. They very easily fell back on that coping strategy.
Jaya was private and quiet, but she was soft. Anything that moved her started at heart level. If she asked him about this, it would be because she was concerned.
Knowing that made the cracks in him extend to even deeper places, touching into areas that were raw and sensitive. Thank God he had a baby to keep an eye on and didn’t have to turn and face her pointed silence. He waited with ears that felt stretched and hollow, not ready for this conversation, not imagining he could ever be ready, but he didn’t know how to avoid it.
After a long interminable moment, she asked, “What happened to your back?”
Ensuring Evie was out of the water and sitting safely on the edge, he kept a hand on her tiny frame and glanced at Jaya, dreading her pity.
Her anxious frown was so kind it made him want to shudder, like he’d had too big a taste of sugar. He swallowed back a thickness in his throat and was left with the bitter residue of a bleak time when he’d been insignificant and helpless.
“Exactly what you imagine happened,” he answered in as controlled a tone as he could manage. Maybe he should have seen a counselor by now, but why? The emotional scars were as permanent as the physical ones. All he could do was accept them and try not to feel ashamed. He was smart enough to know it wasn’t his fault, even if he’d grown up believing he must have done something to deserve all that abuse.
“Who—? When...? Why?” she choked.
“My father.” A shadow of chagrin touched him. Shame that he had been so reviled by his own flesh and blood. Surely that meant there was something wrong with him.
Swallowing, he tried to find his equilibrium. He stepped back and nodded at Evie, inviting her to jump and swim toward him. Once he’d caught her up safe against his chest, he forced himself to look into Jaya’s appalled face again.
“He was drunk.” He tried to say it matter-of-factly, but a taut line inside him vibrated, making him unsteady. “I didn’t keep my brother in his room as I’d been told.”
“That’s...” She shook her head and he could imagine someone as tenderhearted toward children as she was couldn’t comprehend such cruelty. “How old were you?”
He reached for his well-practiced technique of shutting down, wanting to shrug off the details, but he couldn’t seem to make it happen. No one had ever invited him to talk about this.
His body shivered as though the water he stood in was full of ice. “Eight. That’s why I don’t drink. That’s why...”
He didn’t want to apologize for Bali. They’d been using each other, she’d said so, but she had wound up expecting more after all. He’d let her down. He hated failure, but he didn’t have anything else to offer. Maybe if she understood that, she wouldn’t hate him so much.
Squinting into the sunlight reflected off the water, he spoke in a graveled voice. “That night in Bali...Adara had called me earlier that day to tell me she’d contacted Nic. We hadn’t seen him in years, not since we were kids. Before he left home, our lives were pretty normal and decent. After Nic was gone, both our parents drank. Our father became violent. I blamed Nic because I never paused to think about how we were all kids when it happened. He hadn’t had a choice, either. I hadn’t considered that he might have suffered in his own way. When Adara told me he had...”
He shook his head, remembering how everything had skewed in his mind, falling in a jumble he couldn’t make sense of. Then Jaya had arrived, sweet Jaya, soothing and earnest and warm, wanting to say goodbye. He hadn’t been able to bear the idea of her leaving. All he’d wanted was to keep her close.
“It was a lot to process,” he said, hoping his strong dose of self-deprecation hid the impact her sharing herself had had on him.
“I understand.”
“Do you?” he asked gruffly.
He wasn’t a talkative man. He didn’t have drinking buddies or squash partners. Men didn’t typically share their personal garbage anyway. Not with each other, but he’d entrusted Jaya with his emotional safety that night. Maybe he hadn’t shared his inner dialogue, but when she’d lain against him, naked and soft, her breath caressing his neck and her hair tickling his arm, he’d wanted to.
He wanted that emotional safety net again. Craved it like air.
Bending her dark head over Androu, she said, “I’m lying. I don’t understand how anyone can be cruel to someone smaller than they are. It upsets me.”
She looked up and the unprecedented connection he’d felt with her in Bali manifested like a beam between them, pulling them toward each other. The urge to move close and cover her mouth with his own was almost irresistible. He could practically taste her papaya flavor, could almost feel the cool mango smoothness of her lips against his.
A buzzer broke the spell.
Jaya’s expression fell to one that was appalled and startled before she buckled her shoulders in a cringe. She wasn’t given to swearing as far as he knew, but she muttered something in Punjabi that might have been a curse.
“Who is it?” he asked, worried they’d suffered a leak to the press.
“Quentin. I asked him to bring...” Her look of remorseful appeal made all the sharp edges in him abrade against each other.
“Your things?” he guessed. “Understandable.”
A ripping sensation went through him nonetheless, tearing away the paper walls he used to disguise the fact his childhood still affected him. He thought, Lucky, lucky man, and hated his rival for being smart enough to win her heart and keep it. The bastard had better be good to her.
He waved her to climb the stairs before him then had to avert his gaze from her ass and the backs of her long slender thighs. “Is he staying?” There’ll be a murder-suicide in tomorrow’s papers.
“I thought we’d have more time to talk before he arrived,” she said, handing him a towel before wrapping Androu like a Mexican burrito.
“What else is there to say?”
Her flashing glance was loaded as a hot pistol, but she only carried Androu inside. He followed on heavy feet, reluctant to meet her...what was the beau’s label? She wasn’t wearing a ring so they weren’t married or engaged. Maybe they were only dating.
“We’ll swim more later,” he promised Evie as she protested leaving the pool to come inside. He paused to reach up and lock the door behind him as he entered, then forced himself into the foyer where more bags had landed among the flotsam there.
A stocky blond man chopped his German tirade short as he spied Theo over Jaya’s shoulder. His blue eyes were sharp, his manner too damned proprietary.
Every male instinct came alive in Theo, despite having no claim on Jaya. He looked right into the man’s eyes with challenge, mentally aware it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself. If the guy wanted her, he could damn well fight for her.