“One Saturday night about a month before my sixth birthday, they were at a pub with friends,” he continued. Was she imagining things, or did his voice hitch? Just a little? Her heart felt that hitch all the way to its core. “Both were too plastered to drive home. But of course, of the two of them, my dad was the worse. So Mum took the keys and got behind the wheel.”
Emily sensed the tension in the muscles of Christian’s chest, felt his thigh tighten beneath her bottom. She was so tempted to take his face between her hands and kiss away all his pain and sorrow. So tempted to throw her hard-learned lessons right out the window and…give in. But instead, she clasped her hands together and squeezed her fingers tight.
“She blew through a stop sign at anintersection, and a delivery truck T-boned their Ford Fiesta.” His Adam’s apple bounced in the column of his tan throat. “It crashed into the passenger side of the vehicle. The docs said my dad died instantly. But my mum?” He shook his head. “She barely had a scratch. I think that actually made things worse in the end. I think she might have done better with the rest of her life had she been injured.”
“What? Why?”
The questions were out of Emily’s mouth before she had a chance to reel them back in. She’d used up her second truth, and she’d planned on it being something else entirely. Like, what his tattoos meant—if they meant anything—and why he’d gotten them.
The thick black patterns that inked over his muscular arms didn’t jibe with the man she knew, the one who drove a fancy carand wore designer clothes. But she suspected they jibedverywell with the manbeneaththose designer clothes. The one who was down and dirty, gruff and gritty.
“The guilt ate at her,” he said. “If she’d been seriously injured, I think she would’ve been able to deal. But she couldn’t live with getting him killed and her walking away as if nothing had happened.”
So many questions buzzedthrough Emily’s brain that she felt like she’d shoved her head in a beehive. She had to grit her teeth to keep from asking them.
And why the hell wouldn’t he stop rubbing her hip? Warmth had spread from the skin beneath his hand, and now her whole body was suffused with it.
“Is she the reason you stayed in England after Boss invited you to join him at Black Knights Inc.?” she asked. Thelook he shot her had her lifting a brow. “What?”
“That’s the second time today I’ve thought you were either a mind reader or else practicing witchcraft.”
“Really?” The thought delighted her. “When was the first time?” Then reality sank in. Shit, that was question number three. “Never mind!” She slapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t answer that.”
His eyes sparkled mischievously. He’dtried using her own technique against her, piquing her interest so she’d use up her truths.
“I’m not the only one who fights dirty,” she accused.
“And don’t you forget it,” he parroted her words back to her. Then he placed a hot kiss in the center of her palm.
She snatched her hand away, dropping it into her lap. If he noticed that she curled her fingers, trying to hold on to the heatof his kiss, he gave no indication.
“So out with it,” she demanded. “Is your mother the reason you stayed in England after Boss invited you to join him at BKI?”
“Yes.” His nod was perfunctory. “After I was let go from the SAS, when I was trying to make my way as a civilian, I moved back in with Mum. After Dad died, she didn’t only get soused on the weekends. She did it all day every day.Held on to the bottle like a lifeline. She was self-medicating, of course. When she was pissed, she could forget she’d been the one behind the wheel that night. But miracle of miracles, with me back home looking after her, suddenly it seemed like she was trying to pull her shit together. She stopped spending all her government support checks at the pub and instead started buying decent food forthe flat. She even went ’round to the local Jobcentre offices and applied to be placed in a position.”
From the tender age of six, he’d lived with a drunk mother and a dead father.
Snap. Crackle. Pop.
That wasn’t Rice Krispies. That was the foundations of Emily’s walls. Because shegotit.
Her parents might not be drunks, but she knew all about addiction. Her mother and fatherwere both addicted to love, addicted to the high it brought them. They’d sought it with single-minded determination, and their searches had, more often than not, left Emily all alone.
“Then one night, about three months after I got back, I found her in an alley,” Christian continued. “She was half frozen, half dressed, and totally piss drunk. And that’s when I knew.”
He stopped there.Didn’t say another word for a full minute, simply stared into space.
Even though she’d used up her three truths, Emily posed a question anyway. “What did you know?”
Christian turned to look at her. There was so much sadness in his eyes that her heart lurched toward him, and her arms were around his neck before she could stop them.
“That I couldn’t change her,” he said, his voice deepand husky. “That I couldn’t help her, couldn’t save her. And she was too far gone to have any hope of saving herself. So, I trundled her off to the best rehab facility in the country the next morning. It cost all my savings to get her in a six-month program. Then I bought a one-way ticket to America. Got on that plane with nothing but a change of clothes in my rucksack and a paltry roll of poundssecured by an elastic band.”
Emily desperately wanted to know what had become of his mother, if she had ever sobered up, how she’d died. But she’d already pushed her luck and gotten one more truth than he’d agreed to give her. So she bit back the questions poised on the tip of her tongue and said simply, “I’m so sorry, Christian.”
Althoughsorrydidn’t come close to describing what shewas feeling for him in that moment. She wasn’t sure there were words in the English language that could do her emotions justice.
Then, because hehadgiven her one more truth than he’d agreed to, and because her emotions were running high and she felt she should dosomething, she decided to answer the last question he had posed. After all, turnabout was fair play. She prided herself on beingan equitable woman.
