The Spanish Tycoon's Temptress Page 0,46
he’d have to delve into. Maybe over dinner.
Gaston knew that he hated Rufus, but he’d always thought that Elana had a good relationship with him. His curiosity got the better of him and he couldn’t stop the question. “Why didn’t you think to stay with your father?” he asked almost reluctantly because if it wasn’t an option for her before, he didn’t want her to go that direction now.
Elana turned her face away so Gaston couldn’t see the pain in her face. “I guess I could do that,” she said.
Gaston noticed that she had faced in the opposite direction and the mystery deepened. “What’s going on between you and your father?” he asked, stepping closer, not letting her avoid him any longer.
She backed up a step, but her overstuffed chair got in the way. “My father is happy and healthy. That’s all you need to know.”
He watched her carefully and knew that there was more to the story than she was letting on. “How often do you see him?”
She shrugged and looked to the left of him. “I see him often enough. I just had dinner with him.”
Again, there was that look. It wasn’t a lie, but he could tell from her expression and the way she was being evasive that she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. He reached up and touched her cheek, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “What’s going on between you and your father, Elana?” he asked softly, tenderly. His hand cupped her cheek, feeling the softness there. And then his eyes noticed the wetness on her lashes. She was fighting back the tears? Why?
“My father and I don’t speak very often. He’s a difficult man to love. Let’s just leave it there, okay?”
He shook his head. “Let’s not. Has he done something to hurt you?” Gaston demanded, his body tensing for her answer. So help him, if Rufus had hurt her in any way, he would kill the old man!
Elana laughed and shook her head, but that unfortunately pushed one of the tear drops off of her lashes. “My father would never hit me,” she said firmly. “He’s a very sweet man who cares for me a great deal.”
Reading between the lines, and knowing that Rufus had shown him the picture, Gaston said, “Maybe he loves you too much?” And with her grimace he changed it to be, “Or he loves you in ways that you’d prefer he butt out of?”
She laughed and looked up at him, then quickly away. “Let’s just drop it, okay? The apartment looks wonderful. And you’re right, it would make more sense to stay with my dad tonight instead of a hotel. I just hadn’t thought of that because he’s a very independent kind of a guy.”
He waited for more information, but when she stopped, he shook his head. “What did he do, Elana? Did he do something when we were together before?” As soon as he said the words, he knew he’d arrived at the right conclusion, it was just a matter of the details now.
“Did he push you into another man’s arms?”
“No!” she gasped. “What a horrible thing to say!” She leaned back, feeling angry and crowded all of a sudden. She hadn’t even looked at another man, not even in the past seven years and for him to suggest that her father had instigated such a betrayal was ludicrous.
“What did he do then? I know that he never liked us being together.”
She shrugged. “That’s pretty much all that happened, Gaston. He was elated that you’d disappeared and didn’t care how I felt. He was always telling me horrible things about you but I never believed them. But once you’d gone, even then he told me how horrible you were. I stopped listening to him at that point. And I haven’t really been close to him since then. I didn’t want to listen to him putting you down before you left and I didn’t want to hear about you at all after you left.”
Gaston thought about pointing out that he wouldn’t have left if she hadn’t been with another man, but that was in the past. And now, hearing her tell him that she’d fought with her father over him made him feel even worse. Maybe that was why she’d gone to the other man, to see if some other man would have the same reaction from her father? It made more sense. It would at least explain why she’d done it.
He thought about asking