LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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