relieved to even cry. ‘We never went back. She walked out on Nathan and Lena. She was finally furious enough to get past her own fear. Not for what they’d done to her. But to me. You should have heard how they used to talk to her. I’ll never forget it.’
‘And how did they talk to you?’
Yeah, he didn’t forget that either. How unwanted he’d been. How useless. How, if he wasn’t bringing them money, he wasn’t worth anything.
‘Ellen worked every job she could—taught me how a work ethic enabled a person to survive. Cooking, cleaning, picking crops, bussing tables, stocking supermarket shelves in the small hours...and she wasn’t young then, Jade. And it was hard and some days there was nothing much to make a meal with. And I was so hungry.’
‘So you worked hard too.’
He nodded. But he’d been on his own a lot—learning to cook as best he could, not just for himself, but for Ellen too. So she had something to come home to.
‘My birth mother had been a kid who made a mistake. But her parents? They were wealthy and they could have afforded to do the right thing. They could have gone through a proper adoption agency or something. But they were too obsessed with their own perfect image. So they passed her little mistake—me—off to someone else—never taking responsibility, let alone any kind of care for anyone other than themselves.’
‘What happened to her—your birth mother?’
‘No clue.’ He shrugged.
‘And her boyfriend?’
‘Apparently they paid him off too. My grandfather told me he took the money and didn’t look back.’
‘You’ve never tried to trace him?’
‘I don’t want to know,’ he said bluntly. ‘I don’t need that rejection all over again. Ellen and I got through—we got out of it. I’ve never seen any of them again and I never, ever want to.’
‘Alvaro, I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m not,’ he said, meaning it completely. ‘Not any more. I don’t need people like that in my life. People who only want to use you? Who’re only interested when you have something to offer them—like money. Or status. People who can’t stand there and take responsibility for their own damn actions.’
Jade looked upset and angry and he shouldn’t have told her. But once he’d started he’d been unable to stop and now she was...
‘They should have been more to you,’ she said with a broken voice. ‘They should have been there for you. They should have supported you.’
He shook his head. ‘Having it hard made me better. Made me fight in a way that maybe I wouldn’t have if everything had come easily. It made me appreciate Ellen and work my ass off to get her what she deserved.’
‘What you deserved too.’
Yeah. Becoming strong, becoming independent, had been everything. He’d refused to be a ‘burden’ to anyone any more. He would repay Ellen a million times over. And he would always make his own way with full independence. And he would never, ever need anyone again the way he’d needed someone that day when he’d been abandoned.
Only now Jade was watching and to his absolute horror a need deep within him was unfurling...for her. He needed her. Right now.
To lose himself in, right? To find that mindless obliteration in sex with her. Because he didn’t want—couldn’t want—to need her any other way.
But he couldn’t seem to move; his body was leaden. And his damned head hurt. Not just his head. His heart too. Everything. It all still hurt.
She carefully took the plate from him and picked up the black witch’s hat that had been placed there as that stupid Halloween decoration, putting it on her head to make room for the plate.
He nodded, because it was perfect. She did bewitch him. And that was all this was, wasn’t it? An ephemeral thing that wasn’t even real. She was like a beautiful witch. She looked at him unlike any other woman he’d known too. There was heat certainly, but tenderness too. None of that avariciousness in her eyes, no awareness of any kind of quid pro quo, it was almost an innocence. It was, he finally realised, an authenticity. And now she curled into him, wrapping her arms around him, holding him in an embrace that he couldn’t help returning. Enfolding his arms around her, feeling her soft skin and warm body, her gentle breath on his chest and the regular beat of her loving heart.
He should move, but he couldn’t. She was like an anchor in his lap. Not letting him