Ares put his hands up. ‘I’m not the one who’ll be under the world’s lens with everyone debating the meaning of ink on your unblemished skin.’
She cocked her head. ‘You think my skin is unblemished?’
Yes, damn her, every toned and golden inch of it.Ares cleared his throat. ‘It’s not becoming of a queen.’
Cassie speared some cheese and popped it into her mouth, saying, ‘Well, it’s a good thing I’m not queen yet, isn’t it?’
‘And did your parents never teach you not to eat and talk at the same time?’
Ares was surprised at the way her face momentarily fell, before she brightened again and swallowed her food before saying, ‘No, they were too busy engaging in domestic warfare. But our nannies did their best, if they lasted long. Caius did tend to wear them out.’
Ares picked up on what she’d said and saw the arguing couple in his mind’s eye and her reaction to it. ‘Domestic warfare?’
Cassie’s brightness dropped a few volts again and it was as if the sun disappeared behind a cloud. He hated to admit it but he didn’t like it.
She said breezily, ‘Forget I said anything, a slip of the tongue.’
To avoid thinking about that tongue and how it had felt tangling with his, Ares said, ‘They didn’t get on?’
Cassie looked at Ares warily. ‘Did Caius ever talk about it?’
He shook his head. No, they hadn’t talked about family. Because Caius was in the realm of arranged marriages, or had been, and Ares had no intention of inflicting the Drakos name on children he would inevitably mess up. His own parents hadn’t even tried to save him when he’d been in peril and the rest of the time they’d had a series of cold and aloof nannies—how the hell would he know what to do?
In their worlds—his, and Cassie’s to a greater extent—children were born to continue legacies or bloodlines. He had no desire to inflict that on a child.
He’d carved out his freedom and on that note he could actually empathise with Cassie. He knew what it felt like to want to break away.
‘Well, there’s not much to tell, except that…’ Cassie stopped and blew some hair out of her face, which only drew Ares’s eye to her finely etched jaw and high cheekbone. Those pouty lips.
‘Look,’ he said, regretting drawing her into this, ‘if you don’t want to—’
She cut him off. ‘They despised each other, that’s the truth. They fought all the time. It was like a minefield living with them. They both had affairs. They crucified each other.’
Ares went still. He could see it all too easily. ‘That’s what happened back there, wasn’t it? Your reaction to that couple fighting.’
She shrugged minutely. ‘I hate seeing people shouting at each other.’
Ares guessed it was more than that. Her response had been stricken, as if they’d shouted at her.
His parents hadn’t actively hated each other but they certainly hadn’tloved. Not that that even existed.
Cassie went on, ‘When my father died in the skiing accident, my mother went on holiday with her latest lover, after pretending to be griefstruck for the cameras of course. And whenshedied a few months later, everyone said wasn’t it so romantic, that she obviously hadn’t been able to live without him.’
Ares heard the cynicism in Cassie’s voice. And something more hollow. Disappointment?
‘What had you expected?’
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Was it too much to expect parents who respected each other at least and who showed the minimum of care for me and my brother?’
‘No,’ Ares said quietly. ‘Everyone deserves that.’
With a mocking tone that didn’t suit her, Cassie said, ‘And some even get more than that, parents who actually love each other and who love their children.’
Ares bizarrely felt like comforting her. He pointed at her. ‘Now that is way too much to ask for. That’s just an urban myth.’
Cassie smiled but it was small and made Ares miss her full wattage. But wasn’t this just proof that being in close proximity to him was only going to dim her light? Something moved through him, a need to restore Cassie’s ebullience.
He called for the bill and when Cassie looked at him quizzically, he said, ‘Well, if you’re going to fit in a tattooanddelivering all that shopping back to the boat before going out tonight, we’d better move.’
