‘Nicole gave birth to me, but that was it,’ she told him, tugging once more on her fingers and then giving up. She liked her hand being in his, she decided. It didn’t mean a thing, she knew-but she liked it.
‘And your father?’ he prodded and she made herself go on.
‘Charles fathered me but there wasn’t any attachment there either. I was the only link they had to each other. They hated each other and I was a financial obligation. I was placed in boarding-school when I was younger than Karli. Then they fought over who should pay-and who had to shoulder responsibility for me during the long holidays. Which of them had to fork out for hotel bills for me.’
‘Hotel bills?’
‘You don’t think they’d care for me themselves, do you?’
‘I guess not.’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t mind the hotels so much. But school… Every now and then the school would ask that I be taken away as no one had paid the fees. The kids gave me a hard time about my celebrity parents who refused to pay and never came near me. Then, when I was fourteen, the school said I couldn’t stay any longer. My fees were so far overdue that the school wrote to my parents and said to come and collect me.’
She hesitated, but she’d gone this far. She might as well tell him everything. ‘So I lied and forged a letter from Nicole and told the school authorities I had to catch the train and meet my mother in London.’
He frowned. Still his hand held hers. ‘Why did you lie?’
‘Because no one was ever coming to get me,’ she said, and the old anger echoed in her voice. ‘Every girl in the school knew that my fees hadn’t been paid. I hated it. I think… I hated everyone then. Anyway, I caught the train and went to London and tried to get work. I lived on my wits for months until a reporter from a tabloid daily found me.’
Riley was rubbing her fingers, caressing each in turn. ‘How did he find you?’ he asked gently, and she flinched at the gentleness in his voice.
‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me.’
His lips curved into a half-smile. ‘I daren’t.’
‘I was fine,’ she told him, almost belligerently. ‘I had a job washing dishes in a little Chinese restaurant where they didn’t ask any questions and they paid cash. Neither of my parents even knew I was missing. That was okay by me. But I was stupid enough to talk about my background to one of the kids in the squat I was living in and he told the press what Nicole Razor’s daughter was doing. For money. The press had a field-day.’
‘Tough,’ Riley said softly, and she flashed a suspicious glance at him. But his face was almost impersonal. That was how she needed him to be, and somehow he knew it.
‘So what happened then?’ he asked, and she made herself continue.
‘My parents were mortified. Of course. Their daughter living as a street kid. But they weren’t as mortified as I was. I was dragged back to school by one of my father’s employees. My mother’s agent rang me and told me I was ruining Nicole’s career and I should be ashamed. I had to put up with the girls at school reading the whole story in the scandal pages of the newspapers.’ She shrugged and managed a small smile. ‘Okay, you can feel sorry for me now a little bit, if you like.’
He smiled back, just a little. ‘How much can I feel sorry for you?’
‘Minimum,’ she told him. ‘I don’t need it. I didn’t need it then.’
‘Why not?’
She grinned. ‘Because from then on it was better. It was like I’d hit a wall and managed to get through. I’d learned some street smarts and the bullies at school learned to leave me alone.’
‘I might have guessed they would,’ he said, and there was no mistaking the sudden admiration in his voice. ‘Any woman who conquers my roofing iron must have run rings around a few school bullies.’
‘I did,’ she said, and her smile deepened. This man had the capacity to lighten her spirits. Lighten her…life?
‘So then what?’ he prodded, and she had to force herself to remember where she was in her pathetic little story.
‘I’d had enough,’ she told him. ‘I stayed at school until I was old enough to get into a nursing course, and then I was out of there so fast you couldn’t see me for dust. I didn’t talk about my parents and they sure as heck didn’t talk about-or to-me. I worked my way through my nursing training and I’ve asked for and accepted no help from either of my parents since. That’s it. End of story. If it wasn’t for me finding out-via the tabloids again-about Karli’s existence, I’d have had no contact with them since.’
Silence.
It had been a long speech for Jenna, she decided as she sat still with her hand still in his. She’d so seldom talked about her life. Just once, as a lonely fourteen-year-old, she’d told someone the story of her upbringing. She’d thought the kid in the squat was a friend and he’d sold her story for money.
She’d learned the hard way to shut up.
Riley could sell this story for money, too, she knew. The tabloids would have a field-day with what was happening, especially now with Nicole recently dead.
She looked across the table, absorbing the fact that he was still holding her hand and he didn’t look as if he intended to give it up.
‘I…you won’t tell? I mean, it’s private. I don’t…’
‘Do you really think I’d sell you out?’
She blinked. Riley was looking at her as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. But the expression on his face…
She could trust this man. She knew she could trust him.
‘You really are on your own,’ he said slowly, but she shook her head.
‘I’m twenty-six. I have a career, and back home I have friends. I’m not alone any more. It’s only Karli who’s desperately alone. Nicole’s dead, but Karli’s still legally dependent on Brian. I don’t know what will happen to her now.’
His eyes were on hers, asking questions. Receiving answers? Maybe. He could see into her, this man. The more she saw of him, the more she knew she was exposed.
He was still holding her hand.
‘You’ll try and keep her with you,’ he said softly, as if he was stating the obvious, and she nodded.
‘Yes.’
‘And who’ll pay?’
But it was a mistake. She’d been telling all, he’d been pushing the boundaries and suddenly here was a boundary she didn’t want broached.
‘Back off,’ she said, and her anger startled her as well as him. But it was the way to go. In truth she had no answer to his question and she’d learned-the hard way-that in times of crisis it was infinitely better to attack rather than defend. She hauled her hand away from his and stared at him across the table-to see him looking astonished.
‘Hey, I’m not about to push. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine by me.’
He looked taken aback.
Maybe she had overreacted.
‘Um…whoops.’ She gave a rueful grin, but she kept her hand very firmly on her side of the table. ‘Sorry. It’s just I’m not used to people helping. I’m not used to people asking questions when they don’t want something of me.’
‘I don’t want anything of you.’
‘I know that.’ She did.
‘You really are by yourself.’
‘No,’ she said, and, despite her regret at her reaction, the anger was still there, try as she would to fight it. ‘Alone I can cope with. I’ve learned that alone is a really good way to be. But now I have Karli and it’s a whole new world. Somehow I have to figure out a way to keep her safe. If she’d been left money…’
‘But Brian’s robbed her of that.’
‘As you say.’ Her face closed. It was time to move on. For heaven’s sake, what was she thinking of, telling her personal problems to this man? Just because he was big and kindly and he’d given a gift to Karli that had made her want to weep…
