Even then at only fifteen, she’d had something special. A grace and elegance that made her seem almost untouchable. Unattainable.
It was more than physical. More like a quality that emanated from her core. And lured him to her.
It wasn’t enough when he’d gotten her to fall for him. He’d wanted more. Wanted her love forever. Wanted to marry her, when they were old enough.
But she’d never belonged to him. Never even gave him her heart. She had proven that when she’d ended it. When she’d chosen her father over Cillian.
“I can never see you again. I’m sorry.” Her words, raw and strangled by tears over the phone, were captured in his memory forever.
They had filled him with fury at first, an anger and pain that drove him from Chicago to wander across the country for years. But now, they motivated him like nothing else.
She hadn’t wanted to reject him. She’d said she was sorry, and he knew she had meant it. She’d been controlled, made to do it by someone who held her captive. Who probably still held her in his grip.
The server appeared with Victoria’s cheesecake and Cillian’s multi-layered slab of carrot cake. The teen boy asked on autopilot if they needed anything else, then swung away and trudged off before they would’ve been able to answer if they’d wanted to.
“You had questions for me, right?” Cillian dug into his cake with a fork and casually glanced at Victoria. Better to put the ball in her court if he wanted her to let her guard down. Right now, she still held herself as rigid as the wooden back of the booth’s uncomfortable seats.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, her tiny piece of plain cheesecake sitting untouched in front of her. “Why are you really here?”
He munched his mouthful of cake, then reached for his coffee to wash it down. “I told you. I came for you.” The straightforward approach had always been best with Victoria. Knocked her back on her heels a little.
A hint of pink color flushed her cheeks.
He tried to hold back a grin. Still could make her blush. Very good sign.
Though that expression was new. The pinched lips and stern stare. “What precisely do you mean by that statement?”
He let his grin through. She always had been the most grammatical speaker he’d ever known, though he’d succeeded in getting her to relax the rules a bit when they had dated. “Just what I said.” Though he knew as well as she did that there were multiple meanings and interpretations to his wording.
“I don’t recall asking you to return to Chicago and accept a job at my workplace.”
He chuckled. That was new, too—the sarcasm and spunk she’d surprised him with at her client’s house. It made her even more attractive than when she’d only been sweet and agreeable to everything he’d wanted. He always enjoyed a challenge. “I never wait to be asked to do anything. You know that.”
She met his gaze, unflinching. As if she was studying him and his motives. “It’s been sixteen years. I don’t know you anymore, and you don’t know me.” The definitive tone of her statement, the finality of it—almost like an order her father might give—rang in Cillian’s ears like an irresistible call to battle.
“I bet I know a lot more about you than you want me to.”
She looked away then, reaching for her fork.
What was she thinking? He couldn’t tell quite as well as he used to be able to. Though even as teens, she’d been hard for him to predict. She viewed the world so differently and had different priorities. The classic opposites-attract relationship. But man, did they ever attract.
The sixteen years since he’d seen Victoria hadn’t dimmed her beauty one bit. They’d only made her more stunning. The baby fat in her cheeks had disappeared, heightening her perfect features, high cheekbones, and large hazel eyes. The lines appearing just slightly at the edges of her mouth and corners of her eyes suggested she must smile and maybe even laugh sometimes. She used to with Cillian. A lot. At least once he could get her to relax and forget about what her father was going to do.
Was that still what held her back? Her father’s control? Cillian would bet money on it. But he should confirm that his instincts, and the whole reason for coming back, were correct. “For example, you became a PT because your dad wanted you to.”
Her gaze shot to his, giving her an excuse to lower the tiny clump of cheesecake that she didn’t appear to want to eat anyway. Either she was full or nervous.
He’d bet on nerves. Which also meant he still had an effect on her. Definitely something he could build on.
“The work interests me and enables me to help people. I enjoy that.”
He quirked a closed smile. So like Victoria. She didn’t like to lie. But she would dodge a question and leave something out.
“And gives you a doctorate in a medical field. That’s Daddy’s standard, right?”
She dropped her focus to her plate, her tight swallow visible in the muscles along her smooth jaw.
He was hitting close to the mark. Maybe a bullseye. “I bet all your brothers and sisters are doctors, too, right?”
