speak, as if she didn’t start now, she’d forget what she was going to say.
As she recalled a visit to an amusement park, her eyes flashed with excitement. “My dad carried me around on his shoulders all day, hunting down every storybook character for my autograph book.”
God, he loved the musical quality of her voice and her enthusiasm for just about anything. He could listen to her forever as she talked about purple toucans, fairy princesses, hot buttery corn and caramel apples.
“Do you still have it? The autograph book?”
The night turned suddenly quiet and she picked at her salad. “Yeah, I do,” she said softly.
What had just happened? Why was she sad? “I’m sorry. Seems I have a knack for asking tough questions.”
“No, not at all. It’s just that I made my dad sign the last page before we left the park. Several days later was when he disappeared. That autograph book is kind of special, that’s all.” For several beats of her heart, her eyes had a melancholy, faraway look, but when she lifted her chin a moment later and smiled at him, her expression was warm and inviting again. “I guess I’ve had a bit of sadness in my life. I just hope I don’t come across as depressing or morbid. I try not to think about the past too much and dwell on things I have no control over.”
“You couldn’t be morbid or depressing if you tried.” He stared at her for a moment longer, wanted to comfort her, to draw her into his arms, but he didn’t because of that damn promise. Instead, he rose from the table and returned with their dinner plates.
“Okay, your turn,” she said as she flaked off a piece of fish.
He shoved the food around on his plate. She never thought about the past and that’s all he could think about. “Mine involves my family, too. My mother.”
Mackenzie angled toward him on the settee and he felt himself moving slightly toward her, as well. Her knee brushed his leg and she left it there. He was careful not to move and break the contact when he began to speak.
“I grew up in Europe and we traveled a lot, as well, given my father’s occupation. He was a politician of sorts. One night—day, I mean, when the Council was in session, my mother took us to a small art gallery in the plaza. Many artists had taken up residence in Paris at the time.”
“Oh, like who?”
Shit. Of course she knows art history. He couldn’t very well name any of the 19th-century artists his mother knew, some of whom Mackenzie most certainly would be familiar with.
“Nobody famous. She, like you, loved the whole atmosphere of creativity, although she didn’t have artistic talent as you do. When we went into the gallery, an old man with a terribly crooked spine swept my mother into his arms and twirled her around the room. He was so fragile-looking, I wouldn’t have believed he could move that way. My mother laughed and I can remember dancing around the room with them. Turns out she had posed for him and the painting sold for quite a large sum of money. It was a nude.” He ran the backs of his fingers over her arm and thought he felt her tremble.
“And your father…he was all right with your mother posing nude for someone?”
“Yes. Although my father was a very jealous man, the old man was a dear family friend, very talented, but very poor. He refused to take any monetary help from my father. So he and my mother came up with the idea of her posing for him. He was known for— He made enough money to barely scrape by with his paintings at the time, but at least my parents felt they were helping.”
“You said ‘we.’ Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“I have a sister who lives in the UK. But it was my brother who was with me at the gallery.”
“And where does he live?”
“I don’t know. We are not…close.”
“I’m sorry. When did you last see him?”
His chest tightened, an iron fist squeezed his heart into a ball. “Many, many years ago.”
She clasped both of his hands and brought his fingers to her lips as if she were trying to take away his pain. “And your parents? Where are they?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They died a long time ago.”
A gentle caressing of energy passed from her hands to his and