Page 27

He cleared his tight throat. 'My father. On the sofa. With my mother's best friend. And they weren't playing cards.'

Bella gasped softly. 'Oh, God.'

'Quite.'

'So you ran and hid,' she murmured.

'Wouldn't you?'

'I expect so. But didn't you yell or something?'

'Of course.' He summoned up a humourless smile. 'I guess they were too busy to hear me.'

'But what about the staff?'

'It was their afternoon off.'

She frowned. 'And your mother?'

'Here in London. Visiting friends.'

'So how did you get out?'

'The cleaner found me there the following morning.'

Bella's eyes filled with sympathy, her hand resumed its wanderings and his chest contracted. 'How awful,' she breathed.

Well, yes, it had been, thought Will, but weirdly enough it didn't feel as awful right now as it used to.

'It wasn't the best afternoon I've ever had,' he muttered, slightly baffled by the fact that his brain seemed to be more interested in the feel of the woman lying beside him than the memories and ghosts that had haunted him for years.

'And it wasn't the first or last time my father was unfaithful to my mother,' he added, offloading a bit more and feeling something inside him lighten a little.

Caroline had been on to something, he thought, his mind briefly visiting the conversation he'd had with his aunt that afternoon in the vault.

If he'd known unburdening himself would feel like this he'd have told someone years ago.

It was seriously good to finally let the truth out. At least, some of it.

'So what did she do about it?'

A familiar twinge of guilt that he hadn't done more to help jabbed him in the stomach. 'Absolutely nothing. Just grinned and bore it. And suffered pretty much every minute of her life.'

Bella frowned. 'So why didn't she divorce him or something?'

Will sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. 'I told her to. On countless occasions. But unlike my father she believed in her vows.' He shrugged as if it couldn't matter less. 'And then she had a stroke and it was all over anyway.'

'I'm sorry,' she said softly and something in her voice made his chest squeeze.

'Yes, well, it was a long time ago.'

'Was that when you went to the Cayman Islands?'

He nodded briefly. 'And why. I had to get away.'

'Because you couldn't forgive him?'

And because he couldn't forgive himself. For any of it. 'Exactly,' he muttered thinking there were limits to what he was prepared to offload.

Bella blinked and stared at Will. Though she'd wanted him to open up to her, she hadn't expected any of this.

She hadn't expected to have her heartstrings tugged at the thought of a ten-year-old boy huddled in a cupboard, in all likelihood terrified and hungry and confused while his father got up close and personal with a family friend on the drawing-room sofa.

She hadn't expected to burn with anger at the selfishness of Will's father and ache with compassion.

But she was doing both. And it was highly unsettling because she didn't want to be feeling any of this.

To be honest, she'd assumed Will's aversion to commitment had had something to do with a failed relationship and if she'd known that probing was going to result in this kind of conversation she'd never have asked.

Not at all comfortable with the heart-wrenching emotions rolling around inside her, Bella determinedly pushed them to one side and focused on the bafflement that was battering her brain.

'But I thought your parents had the love affair of the century,' she said, lifting her eyes to his and feeling her heart squeeze at his rigid expression despite telling it not to.

'That's what everyone thinks. But the reality was actually something quite different. They weren't a one-off either,' Will added.

Huh? 'What on earth do you mean?' she said cautiously, not at all sure she wanted to know.

'It's a pack of lies, Bella,' he said. 'The whole damn lot of it. The men in my family are incapable of keeping their marriage vows much beyond the wedding night. Sometimes not even until then.'

She opened her mouth. Then closed it as she struggled to process the implications of what he was saying, but it was almost too great to comprehend. She didn't know where to start. 'But the collection…?'

'Founded on the spoils of infidelity.'

'What?' She felt her eyes widen and her eyebrows shoot up. 'All of it?'

'Most of it.'

'I can't believe it,' she breathed, as one by one her illusions of the Hawksley family's romantic affair with jewellery crashed to the floor and shattered.

'Nevertheless, it's true. I'm sorry to disillusion you,' he said gruffly.

And just like that Bella snapped herself out of it.

Yes, to learn that something she'd always admired and believed in wasn't true was something of a shock, but it paled into comparison when it came to what Will had gone through.

A ribbon of shame wound round her insides.

'You've been disillusioned too,' she said softly.

Will shrugged. 'I've had a long time to come to terms with it.'

But had he? She thought about what his childhood must have been like.

How much he must have suffered with no siblings to talk to and nowhere else to go.

Just a great mausoleum of a house and two parents together, yet not, inside it.

Having kept it all bottled up inside, would he ever come to terms with it?

'No wonder you're so anti-commitment,' she murmured, thinking that in his situation she probably would be too. 'Isn't it lucky all I'm interested in is a casual fling?' she added with a lightness that she didn't really feel.

'Casual flings are all I ever have, Bella,' he said, his expression more serious than she'd ever seen it. 'And all I will ever have.'

Bella felt a tiny shiver sprint down her spine. If that wasn't a warning she didn't know what was. And maybe that was no bad thing. Maybe she'd needed a warning, because Will would be such an easy man to fall in love with.

Oh, she was immune, of course—she still had her long-term goals at the forefront of her mind—but it wouldn't hurt to take a little extra care and remind herself to ignore the heart-tugging stuff and concentrate on the sex.

Speaking of which…

With ruthless determination Bella stamped down hard on the disturbing emotions churning around inside her and focused on the way he could make her body feel instead. 'So this minor thing you have a tiny problem with…'

Will relaxed a little and glanced at her. 'What about it?'

'Don't you think thirty odd years is kind of a long time to be so completely held in its thrall?'

He propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at her. 'I hadn't really thought about it like that.'

'I'm kind of surprised you'd let it.'

'Yes, well, I've always believed that if something's worth doing it's worth doing well.'

Bella grinned. 'Have you ever tried to get over it?'

'Frequently.'

'How?'

'The usual things.'

Her eyes widened. 'Therapy or hypnosis or something?' Somehow she really couldn't see it.

Will grimaced. 'Inner strength.'

Ah, that. She tilted her head, and injected a teasing glint into her eye. 'Perhaps it's time you tried something else.'

'What do you suggest?'

'Perhaps me and the automatic locking mechanism of my handcuffs will be able to think of something.' She sat up, dangling one from her finger and shooting him a saucy smile.

A muscle began to pound in his jaw. 'Perhaps,' he said, and then reached out, plucked the handcuffs from her fingers, pressed her down and cuffed her to the bed.

Bella gasped as excitement whipped through her and set her nerve endings on fire. 'Oh, that's really not fair.'

Will's eyes blazed into hers and her heart raced. 'Having enticed me here under totally false pretences, I don't think you're entitled to talk about fairness.'

'But I always knew I could release you,' she said breathily and squirmed a little. 'How good are you with a hairpin?'

'Lousy.'

'So I could be here for some time?' And didn't that sound more appealing than it ought to?

Will nodded and sat on the edge of the bed, his arms folded across his chest as he looked slowly down the length of her body. 'You could.'

Every inch of her burned and then began to melt. 'What about your therapy?'

Will unclipped her stockings and slid them down her legs, so achingly slowly that Bella trembled. 'Later,' he murmured, running the silk through his fingers and giving her a devastatingly wicked smile before leaning forwards and wrapping the stockings over her eyes. 'Much later.'