Frankly, she was right about his usual appetite for heart-to-hearts. Zero. But right now, right here, she could have kept talking forever because he wanted to keep listening forever.
‘Besides,’ she chided good-naturedly, ‘I notice I’m the only one doing the talking.’ Another laugh. ‘Fine by me but I think I’ll call it a day now before you start thinking that you have to fish around to find a hankie to mop up my tears.’
‘Confiding…doesn’t come easily to me…’ Raffaele said roughly.
‘Doesn’t to me either, it has to be said. Just another one of those things learned along the way. You never really get the time needed to build the sort of friendships that encourage girlish confidences.’ She shrugged but her voice was sad. ‘So you learn to keep things to yourself. You don’t have to share anything with me. In fact, it’s a good idea if you don’t. I’ve already said too much.’
‘You think my life was perfect,’ Raffaele said on a wrenched sigh and then was astonished. He hadn’t meant to say anything about himself. That was the program he’d always stuck to.
‘No one’s life is perfect but some of us have a bit more to contend with.’ Erin smiled kindly.
‘Fair enough.’ He smiled back at her crookedly. ‘I didn’t live on the road, travelling wherever the wind happened to blow. I wasn’t isolated from my own peer group because I never stayed in the same place long enough to establish a base but…’
‘But?’
Raffaele peered forward into the unknown, into the possibility of handing himself over to someone else. His early-warning systems were ringing in his ears but he wanted to ignore them.
It felt like an act of wild courage.
When he looked at Erin, her head was tilted to one side and her expression was curious but gentle.
Maybe if he’d seen anything else but that gentle curiosity he wouldn’t have taken a deep breath and said, ‘My parents have a loveless marriage. It was always a union that made sense between two powerful families, but love? No. I barely saw them. I was sent to boarding school almost as soon as I was out of nappies. Maybe if I’d been around them I would have stopped hoping for a show of affection that was never going to come a bit earlier than I did. But I just kept on hoping, until I didn’t. Eventually, I wised up to my place in the pecking order.’ He shrugged. ‘I was a teenager when I discovered my father’s affair.’ He laughed shortly. ‘Why it came as such a shock I have no idea but it did.’
‘How awful for you.’
‘These things happen. Their marriage weathered it, though. I later found out that their marriage had, in fact, weathered my father’snumerousaffairs. My mother told me when I asked her. She didn’t really see why it mattered. Their marriage was everything a marriage should never be, held together because neither of them wanted to abandon their precious status quo.’
‘That’s a dreadful learning curve for anyone, far less a vulnerable adolescent. Raffaele, I’m so sorry. That must have been devastating for you. We look to our parents to define the road we’ll end up travelling down, at least emotionally.’
‘I handled it.’ He raised his eyebrows, forcing his expression to resume its usual cool. ‘You know why I don’t get wrapped up in relationships that lead anywhere? Because I learned that I wasn’t capable of it… I can dosexbetter than most but love is something I have no interest in. Like you say…the road I have ended up travelling down was defined for me by my distant parents in their loveless union.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘I have no idea why I’ve just told you that but…’ He shrugged indifferently. ‘Learning curves are wonderful things. I know mine have made me as tough as nails. Handy when it comes to doing business.’
But not, Erin thought, her heart constricting,when it comes to anything else. He had retreated from that window of vulnerability and she knew better than to try to continue the conversation.
He had let her in briefly and now the door would be shut. But she’d had a striking glimpse of a guy who would never commit to loving anyone when the example set had been devastating for him.
‘I should head in.’ She stood up and feigned a yawn. He stood as well, towering over her and giving her hammering heart no respite.
‘Have a drink with me. In my cabin. Or yours.’
‘Adrink?’
‘It’s a thing, I hear. Some call ita nightcap.’
She hesitated. Part of her wanted to do just that, to have a drink with him, but then she shook her head briskly. Immediately, he backed off, raising both hands in a gesture of amicable surrender.
‘Until the morning, in that case.’ He spun around on his heels and began heading towards their cabins. She fell in alongside him, still unsettled.
‘And the plans are? I mean for tomorrow?’
Raffaele answered readily enough, and Erin could tell that he was as relieved as her to dive into the details of the meetings they had lined up tomorrow. After whatever rogue impulse that had propelling him into opening up to her, talking about work was a return to known terrain, a safe and comfortable refuge.
But then they were standing outside her cabin, and his eyes drifted to her.
‘It’ll be a hot day,’ he murmured as she inserted the key. ‘Dress as light as you can and wear a swimsuit under your clothes. The waterfall will be on the menu and it’ll look very strange if you hang back.’
Erin quailed.
After everything that had happened tonight…how he had looked at her tonight, that he had told her she was sexy, the way her senses had been roused… And even more dangerous than that, that shared moment between them when the world had stood still…
