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CHAPTER SIX

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KATIE lay in the hammock, her book unopened. Beneath her, a kaleidoscope of sea life darted through clear, turquoise water but her brain was too preoccupied to enjoy her idyllic surroundings.

The moment the boat had approached the island, Nathaniel had jumped into the sea and waded the last few metres to the shore without glance or conversation.

Maybe it was just delayed reaction. Maybe he needed time to himself.

If Nathaniel wanted to be alone, then there was no way she was going to force herself on him. In his position she would have been talking it through, but he was different, wasn’t he?

Katie opened her book and stared at the first page. After she’d read the same line five times, she gave up and stared at the horizon. Images of Nathaniel diving into the water played across her brain. It wasn’t the bold rescue that stayed with her, although that in itself had been impressive. What really affected her was the look on his face. The fierce determination in his eyes was something she’d never forget.

Remembering the mother’s frenzied, hysterical relief as she’d held her child, Katie shivered.

Without Nathaniel it would have been so different.

Alpha Man.

Even she could see that with the Sapphire Award ceremony only a week away it would have been a perfect publicity opportunity. And yet he hadn’t taken it. He’d made sure the child was safe and then he’d left the scene quickly before anyone had a chance to recognise him. It didn’t make sense.

None of it made sense.

Katie gave up on the book and swung her legs out of the hammock. She’d just check on him, she told herself, and then she’d give him space.

Barefoot, she walked along the terrace that circled the villa, breathing in the heavy scent of tropical plants. As she approached the terrace of the master bedroom she paused, still worried about intruding. It wasn’t as if they had a relationship. They were castaways, thrown here together by accident. They weren’t friends. They weren’t lovers.

Lovers.

She shivered at the word, thinking of that first night when they’d come so close. And last night on the beach—

Impatient with herself, Katie breathed deeply and walked onto the deck. She was doing what any human being would do in the circumstances. Offering comfort.

She found him sprawled on the swing seat, staring out across the sea as the sun went down.

‘Nathaniel? You didn’t eat dinner. Do you want Ben to bring you something?’

‘No. I want to be on my own.’ Both words and tone were a warning to back off.

Katie ignored the warning and sat down next to him. The decision earned her a cautionary look.

‘I never saw you as a risk taker.’

‘Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.’

And she didn’t know him, did she? She knew nothing about him. He let the world see the actor, never the man. ‘You were amazing today. You know how to play the hero in real life as well as in the movies.’ It still shocked her to think how quickly the day had changed. How death had lurked in those calm, clear waters.

‘I feel pretty shaken up, so goodness knows how you’re feeling.’ She decided to take a risk and plunged. ‘Talk to me, Nathaniel. Tell me why you’re sitting here on your own, pushing me away.’ Show yourself to me. Don’t hide ….

The silence was thick and heavy. ‘Talking isn’t going to change the fact that she almost drowned.’

‘But she didn’t drown. You saved her. She’s lucky you’re such a good swimmer who loves the water so much.’

‘I hate the water.’ The confession was wrenched violently from somewhere deep inside him. ‘The reason I’m a good swimmer is because I hate the water.’ He turned his head and she saw such intense suffering that she sat still, immobilised by the agony reflected in those perfect features.

It was like a veil falling down. She’d wanted him to show himself, but the reality was almost too painful to watch. In his face, she saw nothing but dark, sinister shadows. They lurked in the depths of his eyes, settled around the line of his mouth and haunted the hard angle of his jaw. Emotion. Raw and brutally real. The actor had vanished and she was looking at the man.

Shocked into silence, as far out of her depth as the helpless child in the water, Katie felt a desperate need to ease his anguish in whatever way she could. She moved her hand towards his and then withdrew it, afraid of doing anything that might be a catalyst for his withdrawal. ‘Do you want to tell me why?’

His laugh was harsh. ‘Do you want to hear it?’

‘Yes.’ She held her breath, feeling the fragility of the moment and afraid to damage it with clumsy words. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Are you sure? You and I don’t live in the same world. You live in Katie-land.’

‘Stop saying that.’

‘Why? It’s true.’ It was the low, warning growl of a wounded animal. ‘You believe that people are basically good and that happy endings come to those who wait. You believe in love.’ He spoke the word with cynical emphasis that said everything there was to be said about his own belief system.

This time she did take his hand and held tightly, refusing to let him pull away. ‘We’re talking about you, not me. Tell me why you hate the water.’

The silence stretched for so long she started to think that he was never going to talk.

And then he spoke. ‘There was a lake—’ his voice was hoarse ‘—in the grounds of our house. I grew up in this huge, soulless stately home. Wolfe Manor. A privileged upbringing, or so everyone always told me. It was big. Big enough to play hide and seek and never get found, which was useful because hiding was part of how I lived.’

‘Who were you hiding from, Nathaniel?’

He stared into the darkness, his eyes focused on nothing. ‘The lake was huge. No matter how blue the sky, the water was always dark. Just below the surface you could see the weeds, floating like tentacles ready to grab an ankle. None of us knew how deep it was, but we did know that one of our ancestors had drowned there.’

Katie shivered, although whether it was the words or the tone, she didn’t know. ‘It sounds like a pretty menacing place.’

‘When we were very young we used to believe that a monster lurked in the middle.’

Without thinking, she lifted her hand and smoothed her fingers over his face. Her fingertips registered the roughness of stubble and the perfect symmetry of his jaw. Those smouldering good looks belonged to the man. There was no trace of the boy in his face, but it was surprisingly easy to imagine how he might have been back then, a child, standing by that lake, fascinated and horrified in equal measure, terrified of the monster.

‘What happened?’ She asked the question in the absolute certainty that something had. ‘Nathaniel?’

His blue eyes fixed on hers with a fierce intensity, revealing indecision and a deeply inbred reluctance to share with anyone.

After a moment he stood abruptly and paced to the front of the terrace. His hands curled over the railing, his knuckles white with the force of his grip.

‘It was late evening. Dark. I’d been doing something I shouldn’t—as usual. Messing about. My father picked me up and threw me in that lake.’ His voice shook with repressed emotion. ‘I don’t know whether it was the look on his face just before he hurled me in or the words he spoke, but the shock froze all my reactions. I didn’t even struggle. When I hit the water I thought, This is it, I’m going to drown. I remember wondering how long it would take and whether it was going to hurt. I remember struggling below the surface, trying to get my legs free of the weeds, watching his back as he walked away, thinking, He’ll come back and save me in a minute. He didn’t.’ He kept his back to her, his voice strangely flat as he recounted an incident so sickening that for once Katie found herself without words as she struggled to absorb the full implications of that driven confession.

‘No.’ Her voice trembled with uncertainty. She thought about her own father, of the games they’d played where he’d tumbled her upside down and tossed her in the air. ‘It must have been a joke that went wrong. He must have been playing a game.’

‘He wasn’t playing. Afterwards I tried to rationalise it to myself. I’d been messing around instead of raking the leaves. I’d had it coming to me. I was so young I didn’t really understand.’ He recited the options in a flat tone. ‘I thought it was me. My fault. I thought if I did the right thing, he’d love me. It isn’t easy for a child to absorb the fact that isn’t ever going to happen.’

He’d wanted his daddy’s approval, the way all little boys did.

He’d wanted love. Wasn’t that the minimum any child should expect from a parent?

Katie felt the numbness spread through her body. She’d never felt so inadequate, not even when her father had died and the whole ghastly mess he’d left had come to light. She wanted to say exactly the right thing but how could you say anything right about something so wrong?

Nathaniel turned his head to look at her. His eyes were hard and his mouth slanted into a cynical smile. ‘Poor Katie. Now I’ve destroyed your essential belief that all human beings are good and that life always ends in a happy ever after.’

She roused herself. ‘I don’t think that. I don’t think that all human beings are good, but …’ She drew breath, struggling to imagine how it must feel to have a father that brutal. ‘What about your mother?’

‘Ah, my mother …’ His expression altered. ‘Well, the one thing you need to know about my mother was that she was in love with my father. She only ever wanted one thing and that was for him to love her back. He didn’t, of course. My father didn’t love anyone.’ His tone was derisive and contemptuous, layered with bitterness and years of pain and rejection. ‘He was the wrong guy for someone as sensitive and fragile as my mother. It was like placing Venetian glass under a sledgehammer. He shattered her. She … left.’

Katie winced at the image he drew. ‘So you were left alone with your father?’ The man he’d described was a monster.

Not on my own. Some aristocratic English families collect Renaissance art or Louis XV furniture. My father collected women. And those women had children. Children my father was never interested in.’

‘He didn’t want children?’

‘My father was interested only in himself.’

Katie stood and the swing creaked. Her feet silent on the deck, she took two steps and placed her hands on his shoulders. Her fingers encountered knots of tension under hard solid muscle. ‘Who rescued you from the lake that day? How did you survive?’

‘My half-brother Jacob. He was nine years older than me and it wasn’t the first time he’d fished me out of the lake.’ Something flickered in his eyes. ‘His role in the family was to clear up my father’s mess. He hauled me choking out of the water, pumped the water out of my lungs and kept me out of the monster’s way until he’d drunk enough to forget I even existed.’

‘Nathaniel—’

‘It’s all right. You don’t have to try and find the right thing to say. In this case, there really isn’t anything. Even someone with your sweet, sunny nature can’t put a positive spin on a father like mine, although for years I tried to do just that.’

‘Is he still alive?’

‘No. He died when I was nine years old.’ His voice was savage. ‘You think you’ve heard the worst? Ask me how my father died, Katie. Ask me that question.’

The air around them felt thick and heavy. ‘How did he die?’

‘We were all home from boarding school for the holidays. My sister had taken advantage of his absence to sneak out of the house to a party in the village. She wasn’t even fourteen, but she was already stunning and that night she decided to flaunt it. Lipstick, miniskirt—’ He broke off, his face several shades paler than normal. ‘It would have been fine, except that he came back early.’

‘Your father?’

‘He’d seen her flirting in the village and when he arrived home he took a whip to her.’

Katie flinched, her imagination making it all too easy to imagine the cruel bite of the whip. ‘He beat her?’

‘His intention was to make sure no boy would ever look at her again, but he was drunk and out of control and he beat her so brutally that he would have killed her if Jacob hadn’t stopped him. And the whole time I stood there shaking and yelling, “Stop it! Stop it!”’ He stared down at his shaking hands. ‘That night I learned how it felt to be helpless. Powerless.’

Katie’s face was soaked with tears. ‘Nathaniel, you were a child. What could you possibly have done?’

‘We should have fought him. But we shouted at him, Sebastian and I,’ Nathaniel said hoarsely. ‘And just when I thought it was all over, that he was going to kill her with us watching, Jacob walked through the door.’

‘He stopped him?’

‘He killed him.’ Nathaniel turned his head to look at her. His eyes were empty. Tired. ‘It was an accident—he was so drunk that he fell and his head cracked against the stairs and then …’ His brow furrowed. ‘There was so much blood. My father’s blood, Annabelle’s blood, her beautiful face a torn mess. Jacob was frozen with shock. And my father was dead.’

Annabelle?

Annabelle was his sister?

Digesting that fact, Katie stood still, hopelessly inadequate in the face of so much pain. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.’

‘I wasn’t.’ He turned and locked his hand in the front of her shirt and hauled her against him, his eyes the deep, menacing colour of a sea in a storm. ‘I wasn’t sorry, Katie. I stood there thinking, Now it will stop. But I wasn’t sorry.’ His voice was thickened with a vile mess of emotion, from guilt to bitter anger. ‘So now you know. Now you know who I really am. Your world and my world don’t even overlap.’ He released her so suddenly she staggered. The intensity of emotion pulsed from him like a living force and suddenly she realised just how much he kept locked inside, hidden away from the world.

‘Do you feel guilty for not being sorry? Is that what’s wrong? You were just a child, Nathaniel.’ She slid her arms around his waist but he stood rigid and unresponsive.

‘He was my father, and I hated him. That makes me the monster.’

‘It makes you human.’ Her throat thickened by tears, Katie rubbed her hands over the tense muscles of his back and then slid her arms around the strong column of his neck. ‘You’re not a monster, Nathaniel. You were a little boy who wanted, and deserved, to be loved by his father.’

‘At the time I assumed it was shock.’ It was as if he was talking to himself. ‘I assumed I’d wake up one day and feel sorry that it had happened. I’m still waiting to feel sorry.’

She pressed her lips to his chest, as if her touch could heal his agony. ‘You have no reason to feel guilty.’

‘I didn’t protect my sister.’

‘You were a child!’

His beautiful mouth twisted into a cynical smile. ‘We weren’t allowed to be children.’

They stood for a moment in silence and then she lifted her head. ‘What happened to Jacob?’

‘There were expensive lawyers in sharp suits. They sorted it.’

So few words to describe such a hideous trauma.

‘But that didn’t make it go away, did it? You all had to live with that. Who took care of you?’

‘To begin with, Jacob. Then one day he just took off.’ In the dim light, his eyes shone a deep, glittering blue. ‘That was the day I really thought Annabelle might die. I guess she saw him as the one stable person in our very unstable family. She loved him so much.’ He gave a crooked smile. ‘Big mistake. If you don’t care, you can’t get hurt. Annabelle cared, and she got herself badly hurt.’

And not just Annabelle.

If you don’t care, you can’t get hurt.

That was why he avoided relationships. Not because he didn’t believe in love, but because he was afraid of love. He associated love with carnage, both emotional and physical.

‘You must have felt so lost and vulnerable, losing your father and then Jacob.’ Katie hesitated. ‘When you walked off the stage that night, you kept saying, “I have to warn Annabelle.” What were you warning her about, Nathaniel? What really happened on opening night?’

‘Jacob was in the audience.’

‘And you haven’t seen him for a while?’

There was a long silence. ‘I last saw Jacob twenty years ago.’

‘Twenty years!’ Katie couldn’t hide her shock. ‘You haven’t seen him since he walked out?’

‘We’re not what you’d call a close family. As reunions went, this one wasn’t exactly successful.’

Katie found it difficult to absorb. ‘No wonder you reacted the way you did—no wonder you walked out.’

‘I kept thinking about Annabelle. How his sudden reappearance would affect her. I just wanted to warn her he was back.’

So he hadn’t been involved in some complex love triangle. When he’d said, ‘He’s here,’ he’d been referring to his half-brother Jacob. And Annabelle was his sister.

When he’d walked off the stage, he’d been intent on protecting the sister he believed he’d failed all those years ago.

Her heart ached for the lonely little boy, hurt and abandoned by those who should have loved him.

The soft sound of the sea licked at the air and the smell of tropical flowers tinged the night with sweetness.

The stark contrast between the idyllic surroundings and his brutal, loveless childhood was acute.

His mother had left. His father had beaten him.

He had little or no contact with his family. No wonder he was hard and cynical when she talked about family. She winced, remembering all the things she’d said. Katie-land. She’d been insensitive. If she’d known …

‘Have you spoken to Annabelle?’

‘We exchanged a text.’

‘A text? That’s it? No conversation?’

‘This is the Wolfe family.’ His tone mocking, he reached out and picked a brightly coloured hibiscus from the profusion of flowers that crowded the terrace. ‘If our background taught us one thing, it was how to survive alone. A text is a lot for Annabelle.’

‘But you love your sister.’ She said it as fact, not as a question. ‘And Jacob—’

‘When I saw him in the front row of the theatre I felt nothing but uncontrollable rage, but those feelings were all mixed up with seeing my father beating Annabelle that night.’ Nathaniel stared at the flower in his hands. ‘I left without speaking to him. And I still don’t want to speak to him. It’s in the past. I don’t want to go back there.’

Instinctively she knew who was making those calls he ignored. ‘The two of you must talk.’

‘Talk.’ His tone mocking, he turned to her and slid the scarlet flower into her hair. ‘Katie’s answer to all life’s problems.’

Katie blocked out the sensuous stroke of his hands in her hair. ‘If you’ve never talked about that night, then surely it’s time you did.’

‘Why?’ His eyes were bleak and empty. ‘We can’t change what happened. We can’t change who we’ve become. It isn’t possible.’

‘But it is possible to change the future. And the present. And the way you feel about the past. You didn’t let Annabelle down—you wanted to help her.’ She tried not to feel disappointed as his hands dropped to his sides. ‘I’m glad you told me.’

‘Why? Because now you have a juicy story to tell the press?’

‘You know I wouldn’t do that.’ She reminded herself that he was raw and hurting.

‘Go to bed, Katie. We should never have started this conversation.’ He turned away from her, his broad shoulders forming yet another barrier between himself and the world.

Braced for rejection, she placed her hand on his back. The heat of his skin burned through his shirt and she frowned.

‘You’re burning up.’

He turned, his eyes glittering dangerously—a cold, fierce blue loaded with warning. ‘I don’t want your sympathy. Go to bed.’

‘Why? So that you can wallow and feel bad in private? I’m not leaving you, Nathaniel. You’ve tried dealing with this on your own. Now try the other alternative. I’m not walking away.’

‘Why? What is it that you want?’

She stood, poised and breathless as a diver on the highest board about to plunge. ‘I want you.’ She’d never wanted anything so much. She wanted it more than she wanted to protect herself. Because of that, the words were remarkably easy to say. ‘I want you.’

‘I’ve been offering you that all week.’ He kept his hands by his sides. ‘You rejected it.’

‘You offered me Nathaniel Wolfe, the actor. I’m not interested in him. I want the man. I want to know it’s real.’

‘You don’t want the man and you can’t handle real.’

Katie caught his arm before he could turn away again. ‘Don’t tell me what I want. Don’t tell me what I can handle.’

‘Real isn’t always pretty, Katie. Most people prefer their reality tempered with a little gloss. That’s why they go to the movies. They don’t want real.’

‘I do. I’m not afraid of that. I’m more afraid when you’re acting because then I can’t trust anything you say or do. Don’t hide from me, Nathaniel.’ Her fingers threaded through his and she felt his hesitation. And that hesitation punctured her confidence. Insecurity spread in widening ripples through her body. There was assertive and then there was pushy. He wasn’t just ‘a man,’ was he? He was Nathaniel

Wolfe, A-list movie star and sex god. What if he didn’t really want her? What if the flirtation had just been his way of relieving boredom?

When he still didn’t touch her, Katie took a step backwards, wishing she could vanish.

The embarrassment was hideous.

‘Right.’ She conjured up brightness to cover the oceans of humiliation. ‘Well, obviously you can’t always have what you want, so I’ll just—’ The words were crushed under his mouth as he hauled her against him, his hands rough and his body hard.

‘Is this real enough for you?’ He spoke the words against her lips and his eyes blazed hot into hers. When she didn’t answer, he took her mouth, his kiss rough and demanding. His movements were jerky and unsynchronised and yet the desperation in his touch was more erotic than any of the smooth, choreo graphed movements of their previous encounters. The hands that dug into her hair shook slightly, and when he yanked at her dress he fumbled in his desperation to strip her naked.

‘How does this—?’ Impatient, he tore it from neck to hem and she gasped, excited and nervous at the same time.

‘Nathaniel—’

‘I want you.’ His mouth was at her throat. Her head tipped back and her nerves exploded with heat. ‘I want you so badly ….’ His hands were rough as he scooped her up and deposited her on the bed but she revelled in the desperation she sensed in him.

For once, he wasn’t in control.

It wasn’t about camera angles or movements—it was about a primitive, elemental driving force that transcended everything. It was just about the two of them. And an explosive physical attraction like nothing she’d ever felt before. It felt real. It felt right.

His hands were in her hair, his hungry mouth awaking feelings so intense that she shook with the force of it. She ripped at his shirt and he helped her, his mouth still on hers as he tore it off so that she could touch him. And then he was crushing her against the bed. His fingers skimmed her body, exploring her intimately until fire licked through her veins and heated her skin. And she touched him too, fascinated by the dip and swell of muscle, by the contrast of sleek and rough.

Sounds mingled in the night air. The swish of the sea on the beach, a soft sigh from low in her throat as his touch grew more intimate. The pleasure rose to burning excitement, every part of her trembling and quivering as she writhed in a fever of anticipation.

And then he was above her and she sobbed in desperation as she felt the hard heat of him against her. With a single thrust he filled her and she gave a sharp cry of shock because it was so much more than she’d anticipated. Holding herself tense, she was aware of his harsh breathing, of the tension in his powerful frame as he forced himself to hold still.

‘Katie—’

‘I—I’m OK … it’s OK.’ But she was afraid to breathe, afraid she couldn’t accommodate the size of him.

With a soft curse, he started to withdraw but she closed her hands over his hips. ‘Don’t stop. I don’t want you to stop ….’

His head dropped to her shoulder and he paused for a moment, buried deep, his breathing unsteady. Then he lifted his head and his eyes burned into hers.

‘Look at me.’

And she did.

Holding her gaze, he lowered his head and kissed her gently, seducing her mouth with slow, practised kisses until her whole body was shivering.

‘Relax, sweetheart …’ He murmured the words against her lips, holding himself still as her body melted around him, until she was moaning and quivering. Then he started to move, slowly at first, infinitely gentle as he taught her what her body could do.

It was overwhelming. Like nothing she’d ever experienced or imagined.

‘Nathaniel—’ Her voice broke and he slid his hand under her hips and drew her against him, controlling her pleasure.

The excitement was fierce and hot, clawing at her as he increased the rhythm, and she met each driving thrust with wild abandon. It was wild and crazy and the climax hit like a violent storm. As it crashed down on them, Katie clung to his slick shoulders, shattered by the violence of the emotion that swamped both of them.

‘It was your first time.’ Nathaniel lay on his back, his forearm over his forehead, not sure whether he was supposed to feel guilty or smug. The truth was he didn’t recognise any of the feelings inside him. He didn’t know whether what they’d just shared was a mistake or a miracle.

Damn.

She snuggled against him. ‘So?’

‘If I’d known, I would have stopped.’ Or would he? Nathaniel shifted uncomfortably, disturbed by how out of control he’d been. When had he ever felt like that before? Flirtation, dinner, jewellery, sex—it was a well-rehearsed sequence that required no thought, effort or emotional engagement.

What he’d shared with Katie was different.

He’d shared something with her he’d never shared with another person.

Himself.

The knowledge sat in a tight, uncomfortable knot in his stomach. Something close to panic gripped him. It wasn’t just the fear of what she might do with the information that bothered him, it was the fact that he’d told her at all.

Why had he told her? He never talked about his family. He went to extraordinary lengths to conceal his past. He’d reinvented himself as someone different.

But rescuing the toddler had brought it all rushing back. He’d been a child again, plunged into the dark, oily waters of the lake. Unfortunately Katie’s internal radar for anyone in distress was alarmingly sophisticated.

And long range, he thought grimly, remembering how she’d tracked him down.

Unlike other women who were only interested in the glitz and glamour of life, Katie wanted reality.

And he’d given her a hefty dose.

Realising that she was unusually silent, he turned his head to look at her and discovered she’d fallen asleep, her hair a wild tumble around her shoulders, a smile on that gorgeous mouth. A strand of hair had curled itself around his arm and he lifted his hand and touched it, feeling the silken softness coil around his fingers.

She was the most optimistic person he’d ever met.

Apparently even the ugly truth of his childhood hadn’t been enough to send her running.

She’d had sex with him because she believed she’d finally seen the ‘real’ Nathaniel.

And that, he reflected bitterly, had been his biggest mistake in this whole crazy mess, because he had no wish to be the real Nathaniel. He’d left the real Nathaniel behind decades ago and that was the way he wanted it to stay.

Bad Blood

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