Читать книгу: «Bad Blood», страница 6

He’d stopped believing in happy endings when he was nine years old.

Sipping her drink, Katie stared at the platinum-white sand of the distant beach. Her limbs ached and her skin stung from the combination of sun and sea water but she’d never felt happier. She’d even stopped sucking in her stomach.

Her gaze slid to Nathaniel, who was neatly looping a rope.

The chemistry between them had boosted her confidence.

And he wanted their relationship to go all the way. If he’d had his way they would have spent last night together.

He was Hollywood’s hottest leading man, voted Sexiest Man by no fewer than ten leading women’s magazines. Women screamed when he arrived at premieres.

And she’d said no.

Was she mad?

Raucous laughter from the nearby boat cut through her thoughts.

Katie glanced over her shoulder and saw two of the girls flirting with the men at the front of the boat. Missing the peace and wishing they hadn’t chosen this part of the ocean for their sail, she was about to look away when movement caught her eye. Putting down her drink, she squinted into the sunshine. ‘Nathaniel, that child is standing on the rail and she’s not wearing a life jacket.’

As Nathaniel turned his head, the toddler leaned over a little too far and plopped helplessly into the deep water.

Katie shot to her feet in horror. She cupped her hands either side of her mouth and yelled, ‘Hey!’ at the top of her voice, but the distance and the music drowned out the sound and the adults on the boat were too busy partying to notice that the toddler had fallen in. ‘Ben, turn the boat! Do something! We need to—’

There was a splash from beside her and droplets of water showered her as Nathaniel plunged into the sea in a smooth dive.

Still in shock, Katie stared as he powered through the water. It was an astonishing display of athleticism and if it hadn’t been for the urgency of the moment she would have stopped and watched in awe. Instead she was frantic. ‘Ben—’

‘I know …’ Ben was pulling up the anchor and Katie stood, agitated, helpless and wanting to help.

‘What can I do?’

‘Sit down and watch for Nathaniel. He’s a strong swimmer. If anyone can get to the child, he can.’ Ben started the engine and turned the boat. ‘I daren’t get too close because of the propeller. Can you see him?’

‘No. He’s diving down exactly where the toddler fell in, but it’s so deep, Ben.’ Katie’s palms were slippery on the side of the boat. Panic weakened her limbs. ‘I’m going in too. I might be able to help.’

Ben didn’t try to stop her and Katie plunged into the water after Nathaniel.

He still hadn’t surfaced and it seemed impossible to her that he could have held his breath for all that time.

Under the water Katie realised that she should have grabbed the mask so that she could see more clearly. She kicked her legs and dived as deep as she could but her lungs were already bursting for air and she could see nothing. The mysterious underwater world that had captivated them earlier had now formed a deadly trap.

Heart pounding, her chest aching, she was about to surface when she saw Nathaniel a few metres away, manoeuvring something wedged under a large boulder. She saw a white arm and a leg and realised with a flash of panic that the child had somehow become wedged under the rock. The burning in her chest was so intense that she had no choice but to surface and breathe. How Nathaniel could have stayed under for so long, she had no idea.

The group on the nearby boat still hadn’t noticed the absence of the toddler, their music and laughter drowning out everything around them.

Nathaniel surfaced next to her and dragged in a lungful of air. His dark hair was plastered to his head, his sodden lashes framing eyes blazing with determination. Almost immediately he dived under the water again.

A commotion from the other boat told her that the toddler’s absence had finally been discovered and there was a pounding of feet and shrieks as they realised what had happened. They hung over the side, yelling the little girl’s name and Katie felt hot tears scald her eyes, horrified by how quickly paradise had turned to hell.

She kept watching, hoping.

And then Nathaniel finally surfaced, the limp toddler in his arms.

‘Ben—’ The strain was visible as he swept his hand over his face to clear the water. ‘Take her. Get her on a flat surface.’

Ben reached down and took the child in his large hands, laying her on the floor of the boat, and Nathaniel immediately put his hands on the side of the boat and levered himself out of the water in a smooth, fluid motion.

Envying his athletic ability, Katie struggled back into the boat. Nathaniel was performing mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions with grim focus. He seemed oblivious to the screams and sobs coming from the occupants of the other boat. It was as if this was one challenge he was determined not to lose. ‘Come on, baby girl—’ he turned his head to listen to her chest ‘—breathe for me, sweetheart. Breathe …’

Moved by the tenderness in his voice, Katie dropped to her knees next to him. ‘Nathaniel—’

The toddler coughed and vomited weakly and Nathaniel immediately rolled her on her side into the recovery position, his hands gentle and confident.

‘That’s a good girl. You’ll be all right, now. You’re going to be fine ….’

Weak with relief, Katie looked at him expecting to see similar emotion reflected in his face but instead saw a man who was clearly traumatised.

Underneath the bronzed good looks, his face was ashen.

Realising just how much the rescue must have taken out of him, she put her hand on his arm.

‘You did it,’ she croaked, wondering if he realised what he’d achieved. ‘Nathaniel, you saved her. You were so brave. And determined. If it hadn’t been for you—’ Unashamed to discover that she was crying, Katie was about to say something else when the little girl wriggled weakly onto all fours, still choking and coughing.

‘Want Mummy …’

Nathaniel rubbed the child’s back gently, his strong hands soothing as he comforted the toddler. ‘You’re going to be fine, angel.’ But there were dark shadows in his eyes that Katie didn’t understand.

Shouldn’t he be celebrating?

There were shouts from the water and lots of splashing as two of the adults from the other boat swam the short distance towards Nathaniel’s boat. ‘Nina? Is she alive?’

In a single decisive movement, Nathaniel rose and vanished into the saloon.

By the time the couple boarded the boat there was no sign of him.

‘Oh, thank God, thank God …’ The couple scooped up the toddler and thanked Ben profusely.

He accepted their thanks calmly, suggested they take the child to be checked by the doctor who worked on the island and pointed out that the little girl should have been wearing a life jacket.

Katie wanted to yell that they were thanking the wrong person but she understood that Nathaniel hadn’t wanted to be recognised and the couple were too relieved to have their child safe to show too much interest in the identity of the rescuer.

She sat, numb, as Ben skilfully moved the two boats alongside so that the rapidly recovering toddler could be transferred with the minimum of fuss.

Now that it was over, Katie found that she was shaking and shivering like a leaf in a storm. She grabbed a dry towel from the deck and wrapped it around herself but the shivering wouldn’t stop. The sun shone high overhead, and yet she felt cold. Really cold.

If she felt like this, how was Nathaniel feeling?

Nathaniel leaned over the toilet, retching violently. The horror of it gripped him like a physical force. He’d taken refuge in the cabin, not because of the risk of being recognised, but because he’d been afraid he was going to humiliate himself right there in the middle of the boat.

Water. A drowning child. Sick panic.

Wasn’t it ever going to go away?

Lifting his head, he looked in the mirror. Staring back at him was a face so deathly pale he would have made a corpse look healthy. And as for his eyes—he gave a humourless laugh—if the eyes were windows to the soul, then he was definitely in trouble.

Not wanting to see what was through those windows, he closed his eyes, but immediately saw the child flailing, helpless in the water. Drowning, her lungs screaming for air as she sank in her watery grave.

Nathaniel turned on the taps and tried to splash his face but his hands were shaking so badly most of the water landed on the floor. His stomach churned like the ocean in a storm and his body felt shaky and weak.

Alpha Man? He gave a bitter laugh at the evidence of his own weakness.

Under his feet, he felt the shift of the deck and realised the boat was moving.

Ben, he thought gratefully. Thank goodness for Ben.

He needed to get the hell off the water.

CHAPTER SIX

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