She was also quick to laugh, quick to apologize, and had a huge amount of empathy. He suspected that she was a woman of deep emotions and perhaps her father hadn’t appreciated exactly how deep. And he knew himself what it felt like to be unappreciated. To be dismissed and rejected. His entire childhood had been that.
“You find that funny?” he asked quietly. “That your father never wanted you around?”
Her eyes opened and she gazed at him, an expression he couldn’t read in her eyes. “No, it’s not funny. But I wasn’t what my father wanted. It was my mother who wanted a baby, but she died in a car accident a couple of months after I was born. Dad had to bring me up himself. He was a surgeon and, though he hired lots of nannies to look after me, they all left one after the other because I was a ‘handful’. Anyway, Dad had to look after me himself in the end, and his career was severely impacted. I…” She hesitated. “I ruined his career in a lot of ways.”
There was a note of pain in her voice and he could feel the muscles of her back tensing up. This was distressing for her clearly and no wonder. She’d been told her father hadn’t wanted her. He knew how that felt. He knew how that felt all too well. Anger smoldered in his chest, but he fought it down, because this wasn’t about him. Instead he followed his instinct and got up to sit on the lounger next to her, put his hands on her beautiful back and stroke her, massage away that tension.
He could feel her resist a second and then she let out a soft breath and relaxed beneath his touch.
“I was a quiet, studious boy,” he said, wanting to give her something more, something to make her feel good about herself rather than bad. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I was all about study and getting good marks. I didn’t have many friends, because I didn’t really like doing all the stuff other boys did. But I was curious and asked questions too, though I found a lot of answers in my father’s library. I think I would have liked you, though.” He massaged out the hard knots he could feel in her upper back. “I could have answered some of your questions, and you could have dragged me away from my studies to play games in the woods.”
Slowly she turned her head to the side, her muscles now relaxed completely under his hands. “Quiet and studious? You?”
He smiled. “I told you it was hard to believe.”
Her lashes drifted closed and her lovely, almost shy smile turned one corner of her mouth. “When I played in the woods, those friends I made up, they weren’t girls. I don’t know why, but I always imagined my best friend as a boy. Sometimes he would save me from certain death. And sometimes…sometimes I would save him.”
Cedric had never thought he needed saving. He didn’t think it now. But he could imagine that if there came a time where he did, she would be the woman to do it.
“And did this boy ever become real?” he asked softly. “Or was he only ever imaginary?”
“No, he was never real.” She sighed. “Probably a good thing. Dad didn’t like having other kids around. Said they were too loud.”
“My father didn’t care about marks or studying. He always wanted me to go shooting and hunting. And fishing. Playing sports. All the things a proper boy should like.”
She opened her eyes again, flicking him a look. “And you didn’t?”
“Well, things in books always seemed more exciting.”
She turned her head a little. “You never went out and explored the woods at Haerton?”
Something inside him hardened. He didn’t want to talk about his childhood. Especially the part after his parents got divorced. He didn’t want to feel like a ghost here, with her. “Not often,” he said, running his fingers down her back again, lightly. “So what happened with your father? He had a stroke and you became his caregiver, I take it?”
He knew that already, because, after all, he’d done his research. But he wanted to hear the story from her. A shadow passed over her vivid, expressive face.
“Yes. I had to stay with him after I left school, because we had no one else. I took a job in the village cafe, sometimes cleaned people’s houses. I couldn’t afford to get a job anywhere else, because that would have left Dad without anyone to look after him.”
It sounded like a miserable existence for someone like her. All her bright passion subsumed into looking after one old man, who from the sounds of it hadn’t appreciated what he had. Had she had dreams of more? And if so, why had she stayed with a man who didn’t deserve her care? He certainly wouldn’t have done the same with his own father.
“Forgive me, Anna,” he said, unable to help being angry on her behalf, “but your father sounds like he didn’t deserve you limiting your life just to look after him”
Anna looked abruptly away from him, her muscles tightening once more. “He’s my father.”
He shouldn’t push her, shouldn’t make this personal. But he was angry for her. He didn’t like how she’d locked such a vital, beautiful part of herself away and he wanted to know why. Calmly, he began to knead her muscles, easing her tension again. “Fathers have to earn respect just like anyone else. They’re not automatically entitled to it.
What did your father do to earn yours?”
She was silent. He could feel her tension, could sense her gathering herself to move away from him. But he pressed down a little harder, adding some more pressure, because she seemed to like being touched and being held. Gradually, very gradually, she began to relax again.
“He didn’t do anything to earn it,” she said after a long moment. “But the stroke was my fault. Or rather, I feel it’s my fault.”
That sounded like her. He kept up the gentle massage. “Tell me about it.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something. Tell me.”
He didn’t pretend it wasn’t an order, because sometimes she liked him being authoritative. It gave her something to rebel against, which he knew she liked also.