She looked back at him and he saw her exhaustion. He leaned up on his stomach, ignoring the shot of pain through his shoulder, and caught her hand. “You don’t owe me any explanation, Diana. I know that. I want you toknowI know it. Despite that, I’m asking because I’m curious. And because I want to know more about you.”
She stared at their intertwined fingers. Then she pulled away and motioned him back to his original position. Her hands came back to his skin and she sighed.
“When my mother died, my father only knew medicine. He had no idea how to raise a child, certainly not a daughter.”
Lucas thought of his own parents. His father who had always despised him. His mother who could hardly look at him. He doubted Oakford had ever been that harsh, but that didn’t mean he’d been a good parent or given Diana what she needed.
Andthathe wholly understood.
“It must have hurt you,” he said softly.
Her hesitation was the only answer she gave to that question for a moment. Then she whispered, “Sometimes. Eventually he began to teach me about his vocation. Of course, I quickly learned that he taught me what he knew because it was all he understood. And that meant we had long talks about the body and all its processes.” She drew a long breath. “I am not like the ladies you were raised with, Lucas. I wasnevera tittering innocent.”
“Not in mind, perhaps. But the body is a different thing,” he said.
“Yes.” Her voice cracked, and it took everything in him not to lift his head and look at her. Not to roll over and pull her closer. He fought those urges, not just for his own sake, but because he doubted she would continue if he did so. He could sense her reticence.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said again.
“I know. But I suppose you deserve the truth given the…the nature of our relationship.” She sighed again. “I was innocent until I methim.”
“Him,” he repeated.
Her fingers dug harder into his muscles and he tensed against a rush of pain. For a moment, she just worked at it and slowly the muscles relaxed and the pain lessened.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that hurts.”
He knew she was trying to distract him on some level. That she was reluctant because her story was obviously painful. He didn’t want to hurt her, but this drive inside of him, the spy’s tenaciousness, it didn’t relent.
“Who was he?” He pushed and rolled over at last so he could look at her when he asked it.
Only he did not see pain in her expression. At least that wasn’t all he saw. There were much deeper emotions in her stare. Anger. Resentment. Loss. And grief. Something deeper and more potent than mere fleeting pain.
He saw it all and he wished he could take back the question. Not because he didn’t want to know the answer, but because suddenly the answer felt far too important. Far too intimate. The answer would bind them, and he feared that as much as he had ever feared anything in his life.
But he was about to know it. There was no going back.
Chapter Nine
Diana could hardly breathe, but she managed to keep her voice calm as she said, “You are tenacious.”
He smiled at her, but she saw the falseness of it, heard it in his voice as he said, “It is an investigative prerogative.”
She pressed her lips together. She liked his teasing most of the time. It made her comfortable. In this moment, it felt false. A way to make the tension fade, to get whatever it was he wanted from her.
“Am I being investigated?” she asked softly.
His gaze grew hooded and heated as he reached out to touch her leg through her skirt. “Most intimately.”
She frowned more deeply. If he was using what they’d shared against her, that cut her to the bone. And yet she still felt driven to tell him the very truth he sought. If she did, it might make him understand who she was on some level. And perhaps to drive him away a little too.
After all, a person like him would not want a woman who had given herself so easily. That would put a wall between them, and perhaps that would keep her from being so needy when it came to this man.
“He was a friend of my father,” she said, and hated how her voice shook. “He came to our country home as a visitor. Or so I was told.”
Lucas sat up a little, resting on his elbows. She saw pain on his face, but not as intense as it had been days before. They were making progress.
“What do you mean, so you were told? That wasn’t the truth?” he pressed.
