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‘Because you’ve been doing those important things like keeping him alive.’
I shake my head as a tear runs down my cheek even though everything’s okay now. Better than okay, in fact. ‘I’m hormonal,’ I mutter by way of an excuse as I brush it away.
He regards me with a smile that’s both sweet and sceptical. ‘I don’t think it’s hormones. I think you’re tired and upset. Which isn’t surprising, given how much you’ve had to process recently.’
But it’s more than that. I’ve just blown up at him and he deserves to know why. Yet again he’s shown me he can be trusted so he deserves to know that it isn’t him.
‘I don’t have any toys from my childhood.’ I rub the toy to soothe myself as I speak. ‘I don’t have anything at all, actually. So I want Lukas to have the toys he’s been given.’
He cocks his head ever so slightly and it’s just enough to tempt me to keep talking.
‘You already know we moved a lot,’ I mutter. ‘I’ve lived in every city, most small towns in the country. Mum would pick us up from school and we’d just leave. She’d have broken up with the latest, or been abused by the guy’s wife.’ I wince, remembering how the daughter of one guy once shredded me at school. ‘Mum would’ve packed a few clothes for us but never anything else—never any toys or anything. None of those little silly things I collected as a child. Things that shouldn’t matter.’
‘But do.’
I nod. ‘So then you just accept it. That you’re not going to keep them. So I stopped collecting.’
He’s still as he listens.
‘What little I have now I’ve got for myself, and even now I tend not to hold onto them any more. If you have less, then you don’t feel a loss.’ I shrug. ‘Because if you haven’t had something to begin with you can’t really miss it...’ I have no idea if I’m making sense to him but it’s easier for me this way. It’s emotional safety. ‘Things don’t last anyway, you know? Nothing is for ever.’ But I run my fingers over the toy he’s restored. He’s fixed it so it can last longer.
‘Right.’ He slowly nods. ‘But you want different for Lukas.’
I stare hard at the rabbit. ‘Yep.’
‘I get it.’ He takes a step towards me. ‘Both of us have parents who disappointed us.’ He sighs and his smile is a little twisted. ‘I had so many toys. Didn’t love any of them.’ He shoots me a rueful look. ‘Poor little rich boy, right?’ He bows his head. ‘My parents behaved badly—either spoiling me or neglecting me, purely to antagonise each other. So I’m not unscathed. I have scars and triggers. Like I react badly when I think someone thinks the worst of my intentions. I still feel the shame and humiliation of having any private business aired. Their infidelities were exposed and picked over by everyone—gossiped about. They used me—taking me from school to go to a sports game but tipping off the press, one upping the other in spoiling me. But only in public—it was evidence-gathering for the lawyers and if there were no points to be gained the outing was abandoned.’
That he tells me this steals my breath. ‘I’m sorry, Dain.’
He glances away, breaking that searing contact. I glance around too and it finally dawns on me that we’re in his bedroom.
It’s every bit as beautiful as the rest of the house—everything is gorgeous, it’s jaw-dropping quiet luxury. But he’s so used to it he doesn’t seem to have any idea of how sumptuous everything in his life is. And I mean everything—from the private jet and gleaming cars to the discreet staff who appear and do things without him needing to direct them at all before melting into the shadows, to this palatial, magnificent home with every last detail and smallest fixture the absolute finest. Maybe his apparent unawareness is what happens when you’re born into a family that’s been wealthy for generations.
He could’ve gone out and bought a million new soft toys for Lukas. But he didn’t—despite being surrounded by all this perfection. Because for all that wealth he was poor in other ways. He fixed up this old rabbit because he sensed its sentimental value.
‘I’m still not sure he really fits in here even with the repair,’ I mutter.
That Dain even knows how to stitch it stuns me. Surely he never had to darn his holey socks or anything. He’d have been handed new ones.
‘He belongs with Lukas,’ Dain says gruffly.
I glance back up at him only to see he’s watching me and his expression isn’t masked. I see his hunger. I see it and feel it and match it. I move closer.
He swallows but doesn’t step back. He’s watching me the way a predator watches the thing it wants. Warily, quietly, intensely—waiting for it to wander within reach.
I get that he doesn’t trust people because they always have an ulterior motive. People want things—generally money—from him all the time. I don’t want any of these things from him. At all. What I want is far more basic than that. Far more reckless. And it is so impossible to resist. But I should. For Lukas I should. For myself.
But the blue of Dain’s eyes vanishes in the black heat of his pupils and the yearning I see echoes my own.
‘Talia...’
I don’t want him to think I want him because he’s been nice—because he’s helped me in so many ways already. It’s frustrating and somehow I need to make that clear to him. ‘I understand why you’re not interested in marriage,’ I say.
He stiffens. ‘I’ve never wanted any kind of wife, trophy or otherwise. I can’t commit to something I can’t believe in.’
‘Good.’ I step towards him. ‘Because we’re definitely not getting married.’
He seems to stop breathing.
