‘I need a minute. I’m not asking,’ she warned him as his mouth opened and she swept past him, taking the path down to the beach, called by the openness of the sea and sky, the way it stretched even farther than she could see, full of possibilities and no limits.
She’d never forgotten the stories her mother had told her of her time as a young artist in Rome and Paris and London. Serena had dreamed of following in her footsteps, even more so after she’d died, knowing it would keep the memory of her mother close, and she would have had the opportunity to live and work in Paris or Florence as part of her degree. It was that which had kept her focused, kept her grief over her father’s passing and miscarriage from swallowing her completely. But right when she’d been on the cusp of it, Marcia had intervened, forcing her to choose between herself and the twins.
There had been no choice to make. Leaving Kit and Alexis was unthinkable, but letting go of her dreams had been so hard. It had been like letting go a piece of herself, and a piece of her mother. She wasn’t losing anything as profound this time, but the emotion was the same nonetheless.
Serena didn’t realise she was crying until she felt the teardrops drop to her chest. Lifting a hand to her face, it came away wet, but the release felt good, the pressure on her chest easing substantially. She had held everything in for so long, having to be strong, that this moment of privacy in which to break down was a gift, and she felt better for it.
‘Are you ok?’
Serena sucked in a breath. The last thing she wanted was for Caleb to see her in tears. ‘I’m fine.’
She had survived her stepmother and would handle this too. Because she wasn’t a young girl anymore, frightened and fragile, and she wouldn’t let this be the same. Wiping her face dry, she squared her shoulders and turned across the sand towards him.
‘Let’s go back to dinner and finish our conversation.’ Calmer now, she had terms of her own to assert.
But as she passed by, Caleb’s hand snatched out and seized her arm, halting her. His eyes raked over her face. ‘You’ve been crying. You’re upset. What’s wrong?’
She tried to tug her arm free because his touch was scorching her skin and as that heat sank deep into her blood and her bones, her pulse skittered. But what shook her even more was the concern she read in his eyes, a concern that had long been absent from her life.
When she’d miscarried, Serena had had to take herself to the hospital. There hadn’t been anyone to hold her hand or stroke her hair as she’d tensed in battle against the indescribable discomfort. There had been no one’s shoulder to cry on, no arms to comfort her when the doctor had delivered the bad news and no one to take her home and tuck her in bed to rest and mourn. She’d had only herself to rely on, and going forwards, that was exactly what she had done.
It had been sink or swim and she’d refused to drown. To give her stepmother the pleasure of watching her flounder. That was how she’d lived the last five years, not looking for care and affection from others, because she knew she couldn’t count on it being given. It had been hard and lonely…but less painful. So, to see it now, in the last place she would have expected to find it, in Caleb’s face, was disarming, and even more surprising was that she wanted to tell him—everything. To not have to be strong and guarded and just…be.
‘Serena? Tell me.’
‘OK,’ she said, following the feeling, even though she had no idea where it would lead. ‘I thought I was finally going to get to live my life on my terms. To be in control of my life, at last, but instead…there’s you. With your commands and expectations and contract. Telling me what I will and won’t do. And I don’t want to be told what to do and who to be anymore.’
‘I’m not telling you what to do,’ he blustered, but a quick look at her tear-streaked face had that conviction deserting him. ‘Or at least, I’m not trying to.’ He looked bewildered by the accusation, horrified that she had even for a second imagined that he was trying to control her. ‘Serena, if that’s how it seems, I’m sorry. I appreciate that I can be somewhat domineering…’
‘Somewhat?’ she quickly cut in, her brow arching.
‘OK, a lot domineering,’ he amended. ‘It’s what my life, my role, demands of me. But I don’t ever want you to think that I want to control you. That’s the last thing I want.’ He stared down at her, his gaze weighty, working to assimilate this new, explosive information. ‘It was your stepmother, wasn’t it? The person telling you what to do before?’
Serena nodded. ‘It was the only way I was able to stay in Kit’s and Alexis’s lives—by adhering to what she wanted, living by the rules and standards that she set. Everything from where I worked to how I dressed, to who I was friends with was dictated by her.’
Horror leached into his expression. ‘Serena, I would never try to tell you how to live. Not at all. I hate that I’ve made you feel that way. I’m sorry. God, I…’ Drawing in a breath, he ran his hand over his face. ‘All I was trying to do was to banish some of the uncertainty from this situation we’re in and make sure we’re on the same page moving forwards. Not for a second did I think you would feel dictated to. That’s the last thing I intended. Please tell me you believe that.’
His dismay was so apparent, so genuine that it was easy to believe his taking charge emanated from a conscientiousness and not a will to control. ‘I believe you.’
His relief was palpable. ‘I still don’t understand why your stepmother would treat you that way?’
‘Because…’ Serena stopped as soon as she started. There was no way for him to understand without knowing the whole story. But it was a story that out of fear and shame she had never shared with anyone, keeping it bottled so tightly within her. But how could he understand otherwise? And, much to her surprise, she wanted him to understand. And surely, he had a right to know. Taking a breath, she began again. ‘Because she didn’t trust me to behave and not create another scandal like the one I caused when I got pregnant at eighteen.’
Shock rippled through his silver eyes. ‘You were pregnant before?’
She nodded, anticipating his next question. ‘I miscarried at nine weeks.’
‘Serena…’
‘That’s why she did it. Because she didn’t think I could be trusted and that I could be a bad influence on the twins. And given that I did fall into your arms within hours of meeting you and fall pregnant again, maybe she wasn’t wrong.’
‘First of all, you have no reason to feel any guilt or shame about what happened between us,’ he asserted strongly. ‘It was natural and wonderful. And when I said it shouldn’t have happened, I meant me taking someone less experienced than me.Youwere never a mistake. And secondly, I don’t care about your stepmother right now. Only about you.’ His throat worked, and she could see how affected he was by her admission. ‘Serena, you lost a baby.’
‘Yes.’ And now that she had uncorked that bottle, she could feel it all rising up within her, that tide of feeling she had always been so afraid of. Scared to speak of in case others shamed her as Marcia had, or blamed her as she blamed herself. But, looking into Caleb’s expression, so full of compassion, she felt safe to speak. ‘It was awful. I was alone in this hospital room for hours and I just felt like… I’d failed.’
‘Yor stepmother wasn’t with you?’
‘No,’ she scoffed. ‘Things between Marcia and I got worse after that, but they’d been bad before. Not just because of her,’ Serena admitted. ‘I never made it easy. I didn’t want her in our lives where my mum should have been. I accepted the marriage because my father asked me to, because he said Kit and Alexis needed a mother, but I never wanted her there and we never got on. I never felt like she liked me. She loved the twins from the moment she met them—I think she liked that she could make them hers, that she would be the only mother they knew—whereas I was my mother’s daughter through and through. And I looked so like her—the woman my father had loved first and still loved. Whilst he was alive my dad was our go-between, advocating on each of our behalf’s and smoothing over the tension he could see. But once he was gone…that tension just ballooned. Nothing I did was right. And when she learned I was pregnant, she was furious. Scandalised and ashamed. And when I miscarried…all she had to say was it was probably for the best.’
