He hated that, too.
‘Yes. Thanks,’ he said, trying to sound civilised, conscious that he probably looked as though he’d walked out of a primitive jungle. He strode over to the sink to wash up. ‘I take it you’ve sent Javier Estes packing.’
‘He’s gone,’ she stated simply.
‘And you want to talk about it,’ he slung at her as he turned on the taps.
‘Yes.’ She opened the door of the small refrigerator and studied what was stocked on its shelves.
At least she was being direct this time, Nick told himself, not silently bottling up her concerns as she had after the visit of his mother. He grabbed the soap and a washing sponge, splashed water over his face, arms and chest, then worked at presenting a cleaner, cooler aspect of himself. He was towelling himself dry as Tess placed a cold can of flavoured mineral water on the sink. He reached out to grab her wrist, to hold her beside him.
‘I never wanted the inheritance, Tess,’ he stated, his eyes blazing into hers, fiercely intent on burning that fact into her brain so it couldn’t ever be in dispute again.
Her gaze dropped to the strong encirclement of his hand. ‘But you did have another agenda, Nick,’ she said quietly. ‘When you proposed marriage to me, you were thinking of getting to your brothers.’
‘Was I?’
It forced her gaze to lift again, to meet his in challenge. He challenged right back.
‘Maybe I used the idea of them as an excuse to go after what I really wanted with you, Tess.’
She frowned, then gave him an aching look that begged the truth, no fancy side-steps, no dressing up what had moved him to change the status quo of their work only relationship. ‘November the fifteenth,’ she reminded him.
The truth…
Strange how hard it was to surrender it, even to instil the trust which he knew was vital to the life he now had. But there was no alternative, no diversionary tactic that would leave him less exposed to her, no shield to hide the poverty which had plagued his life, despite all the material riches that had been there for the taking. Only the truth would serve what he most needed in their relationship.
Nick set down the towel and drew Tess into a loose embrace as he focused his mind on seeking the best path towards understanding. He rested his forehead lightly on hers, needing their minds to meet. ‘You have a family,’ he started. ‘It may be dysfunctional but you’ve met every member of it. You know what they’re like, you know where they come from, and you can mix freely with them, both on your mother’s side and your father’s.’
Her shoulders pulled back, muscles tensing, whether in impatience or resistance he couldn’t tell, but she was not in tune with this talk about her family.
‘That’s not to say you weren’t alone, Tess, and were very lonely most of the time,’ he pushed on. ‘I know this.’
A soft sigh whispered from her lips, relaxing the stiffness, but she said nothing, waiting for more from him.
‘The packet from Brazil…learning I have two half-brothers, illegitimate sons like me, one in the USA and one in Britain…and being told I don’t get to meet them or even know who they are unless the lawyer handling the Ramirez estate is convinced I’ve met my father’s challenge…suddenly I had a family, Tess. I wasn’t alone. There were two other guys out there connected to me by blood.’
‘I do realise that had to be important to you, Nick,’ she murmured.
A derisive little laugh gravelled from his throat. ‘I felt like a long distance runner who’d been forced to run his race alone, not knowing he had brothers running parallel to himself. It made me think…that bastard who was our father kept them from me while he was alive, but be damned if I was going to let him keep them from me in death!’
‘Nor should you.’ She tipped her head back to look directly at him. ‘That’s what I came down here to say.’
‘No, Tess. I don’t want Enrique Ramirez living on in me. I don’t want to see him living on in my brothers, still pulling our strings. Nor do I want the shadow of his influence on any part of our life together.’
‘But…’
He quickly placed a silencing finger on her lips, hating the painful protest in her eyes. ‘No. Listen to me.’ He cupped her face, softly caressing the anxiety lines from the corners of her eyes, feeling an urgent tenderness that had to be expressed. ‘You think I began this journey with you because of the packet from Brazil. And yes, it was the trigger that got me moving, but even as I read my father’s challenge, I thought…Tess. As I stoked the desire to meet my brothers, I thought…Tess. There was never the slightest question in my mind as to whom I might ask to marry me.’
‘You gave me many logical reasons,’ she reminded him.
‘Being reasonable was more acceptable to my long-held cynical view of life, love and marriage, but there was no reason whatsoever in the powerful feelings you stirred in me, Tess, and you must know reason flew completely out the door once you told me about Zack.’
She looked at him wonderingly, not quite convinced by what he was telling her.
‘Surely you understand everything changed that night when I was confronted by you—already the mother of my child—and our son. It gave me the most intimate connections I could have, and I’m not like my father, Tess. I will not walk away. I will never walk away from what we have together and what we can give our children together.’
Tess felt the pain behind Nick’s outpouring, the emptiness of a life that had known far more about rejection than connection. The realisation hit her that the one connection he had lived with—his mother—had never inspired trust in him. The reverse, in fact. Which explained much of how he had dealt with women.
He didn’t trust.
Yet to fulfil his father’s challenge he’d had to trust one woman enough to have a child by her—a woman who wouldn’t cheat him of what was his. He’d chosen her without a moment’s thought to any of the other women who’d streamed through his life. An intuitive choice or not, it was undoubtedly the biggest compliment he could ever give a woman and he’d given it to her.
She’d been standing in the circle of his embrace with her hands curled into fists against his chest, intent on holding off the sexual magnetism he could use to deflect her purpose in coming down here. It was impossible now to stop her fingers from uncurling, spreading across the vital strength of the man, over his heart, her own heart swelling with love for him—for the boy who’d been as lonely as she had been, more so since she had never been cruelly rejected by her father—for the man who’d broken his proudly guarded isolation to take her hand in a marriage aimed at making his own family.