“He did not approve, no.”
“So what? Your daddy said he didn’t like the guy and you ended it?”
She swallowed. Her throat hurt. Were they tears, cloying to be shed?
“My father didn’t just say things. He made sure he was understood, loud and clear.”
Benedetto heard the words but there was a disconnect between what he’d understood and what she’d meant, surely. After all, she couldn’t have been implying that Augustine Beauchamp had resorted to physical means to get his daughter to obey him.
“What did this man do to your father?” He prompted, wondering if this ex-lover of Kate’s might in fact be able to help him with the proof he needed.
“He was his research assistant. Connor made sure dad’s cases were on point. He checked facts. That kind of thing. He was incredibly bright. I have no idea what he’s doing now.”
“You really ended it just because your father didn’t approve?”
“Yep.” She straightened away from him on the guise of studying the roses. “I didn’t even think twice.” She exhaled a long, slow breath to wipe the thoughts from her mind. “He’d love you, though.”
Benedetto felt nauseated. “Why do you say that?” His words sounded casual but inside he was screaming with rage.
“You’re just the kind of guy he’d want me to marry one day.” She laughed unsteadily. “I’m only twenty-two,” she hastened to add on.
Twenty-two.He froze. He had known that. Somewhere in the thick dossier of information he’d collected on Augustine Beauchamp he had all kinds of facts on Kate, including her age.
She was a baby. Far too young for what he’d done to her. Far too young for how he’d used her. Far, far too inexperienced for the game he’d pulled her into.
“You’re twenty-two,” he repeated, his face showing his surprise.
“So marriage is so completely not on my radar.” She laughed again, and now she seemed so young. Her innocence and naivety were byproducts of her age.
Guilt was slamming through him. Staring at the rose garden his father had tended for his mother, years after her death, he felt disgusted at his actions. What he had done to avenge the incarceration and death of his father should never have led to this.
He had taken a beautiful young woman and he had turned her into a weapon. Nothing more. He looked down at her and everything seemed completely off-balance. He thought of his phone, sitting switched off, in his bedroom and he wondered if there wasany chance the message hadn’t actually sent.
Only he’d seen it go. He’d seen the little tick that indicated it had arrived at its source.
“Kate …”
“Don’t look like that,” she cut him off, hating to see him withdrawing from her. She didn’t want him to look cold and distant. She wanted him to stare down at her as though she held all the answers to the universe’s mysteries. “Please don’t look like that.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed his lips slowly, breathing passion back into his soul, pushing out any doubts he had been harbouring.
“You’re twenty-two,” he groaned against her mouth, wrapping his hands into her hair and holding her tight to his body. “I shouldn’t want you like this.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m twenty-two! I’m a fully grown woman! What are you talking about?”
“I’m thirty-four. Do you know that?”
She shrugged. “So?”
He shook his head. It wasn’t the age difference that was bothering him, so much as the fact he’d taken someone innocent and sweet and used her in a way that was so far from what she deserved.
“You’re okay sleeping with me knowing that it has no future?” He demanded. “Knowing that I have a lot of sex, just like this, with a lot of women, just like you?”
The pain was extraordinary. She’d never known anything like it — at least, not emotionally. “This is because I made a joke about marriage?” She said, keeping her mouth close to his.
“No.” He pulled the old t-shirt of his she wore from the waistband of her pants. His hands connected with her skin and he felt a rush of grateful desire. “It’s because, by your own admission, you have limited experience. And this is great sex. Really great sex. But that’s all it is. It would be easy for someone like you to think it was more.”
“I don’t,” she assured him so fast that surely it was true. “I told you yesterday: you have me for two days. So make the most of me.”
He would hate himself afterwards, but he was not strong enough to resist her invitation.
