Kate Hewitt - Bad Blood

Remembering the mother’s frenzied, hysterical relief as she’d held her child, Katie shivered.

Without Nathaniel it would have been so different.

Alpha Man .

Even she could see that with the Sapphire Award ceremony only a week away it would have been a perfect publicity opportunity. And yet he hadn’t taken it. He’d made sure the child was safe and then he’d left the scene quickly before anyone had a chance to recognise him. It didn’t make sense.

None of it made sense.

Katie gave up on the book and swung her legs out of the hammock. She’d just check on him, she told herself, and then she’d give him space.

Barefoot, she walked along the terrace that circled the villa, breathing in the heavy scent of tropical plants. As she approached the terrace of the master bedroom she paused, still worried about intruding. It wasn’t as if they had a relationship. They were castaways, thrown here together by accident. They weren’t friends. They weren’t lovers.

Lovers .

She shivered at the word, thinking of that first night when they’d come so close. And last night on the beach—

Impatient with herself, Katie breathed deeply and walked onto the deck. She was doing what any human being would do in the circumstances. Offering comfort.

She found him sprawled on the swing seat, staring out across the sea as the sun went down.

‘Nathaniel? You didn’t eat dinner. Do you want Ben to bring you something?’

‘No. I want to be on my own.’ Both words and tone were a warning to back off.

Katie ignored the warning and sat down next to him. The decision earned her a cautionary look.

‘I never saw you as a risk taker.’

‘Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.’

And she didn’t know him, did she? She knew nothing about him. He let the world see the actor, never the man. ‘You were amazing today. You know how to play the hero in real life as well as in the movies.’ It still shocked her to think how quickly the day had changed. How death had lurked in those calm, clear waters.

‘I feel pretty shaken up, so goodness knows how you’re feeling.’ She decided to take a risk and plunged. ‘Talk to me, Nathaniel. Tell me why you’re sitting here on your own, pushing me away.’ Show yourself to me. Don’t hide … .

The silence was thick and heavy. ‘Talking isn’t going to change the fact that she almost drowned.’

‘But she didn’t drown. You saved her. She’s lucky you’re such a good swimmer who loves the water so much.’

‘I hate the water.’ The confession was wrenched violently from somewhere deep inside him. ‘The reason I’m a good swimmer is because I hate the water.’ He turned his head and she saw such intense suffering that she sat still, immobilised by the agony reflected in those perfect features.

It was like a veil falling down. She’d wanted him to show himself, but the reality was almost too painful to watch. In his face, she saw nothing but dark, sinister shadows. They lurked in the depths of his eyes, settled around the line of his mouth and haunted the hard angle of his jaw. Emotion. Raw and brutally real. The actor had vanished and she was looking at the man.

Shocked into silence, as far out of her depth as the helpless child in the water, Katie felt a desperate need to ease his anguish in whatever way she could. She moved her hand towards his and then withdrew it, afraid of doing anything that might be a catalyst for his withdrawal. ‘Do you want to tell me why?’

His laugh was harsh. ‘Do you want to hear it?’

‘Yes.’ She held her breath, feeling the fragility of the moment and afraid to damage it with clumsy words. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Are you sure? You and I don’t live in the same world. You live in Katie-land.’

‘Stop saying that.’

‘Why? It’s true.’ It was the low, warning growl of a wounded animal. ‘You believe that people are basically good and that happy endings come to those who wait. You believe in love.’ He spoke the word with cynical emphasis that said everything there was to be said about his own belief system.

This time she did take his hand and held tightly, refusing to let him pull away. ‘We’re talking about you, not me. Tell me why you hate the water.’

The silence stretched for so long she started to think that he was never going to talk.

And then he spoke. ‘There was a lake—’ his voice was hoarse ‘—in the grounds of our house. I grew up in this huge, soulless stately home. Wolfe Manor. A privileged upbringing, or so everyone always told me. It was big. Big enough to play hide and seek and never get found, which was useful because hiding was part of how I lived.’

‘Who were you hiding from, Nathaniel?’

He stared into the darkness, his eyes focused on nothing. ‘The lake was huge. No matter how blue the sky, the water was always dark. Just below the surface you could see the weeds, floating like tentacles ready to grab an ankle. None of us knew how deep it was, but we did know that one of our ancestors had drowned there.’

Katie shivered, although whether it was the words or the tone, she didn’t know. ‘It sounds like a pretty menacing place.’

‘When we were very young we used to believe that a monster lurked in the middle.’

Without thinking, she lifted her hand and smoothed her fingers over his face. Her fingertips registered the roughness of stubble and the perfect symmetry of his jaw. Those smouldering good looks belonged to the man. There was no trace of the boy in his face, but it was surprisingly easy to imagine how he might have been back then, a child, standing by that lake, fascinated and horrified in equal measure, terrified of the monster.

‘What happened?’ She asked the question in the absolute certainty that something had. ‘Nathaniel?’

His blue eyes fixed on hers with a fierce intensity, revealing indecision and a deeply inbred reluctance to share with anyone.

After a moment he stood abruptly and paced to the front of the terrace. His hands curled over the railing, his knuckles white with the force of his grip.

‘It was late evening. Dark. I’d been doing something I shouldn’t—as usual. Messing about. My father picked me up and threw me in that lake.’ His voice shook with repressed emotion. ‘I don’t know whether it was the look on his face just before he hurled me in or the words he spoke, but the shock froze all my reactions. I didn’t even struggle. When I hit the water I thought, This is it, I’m going to drown . I remember wondering how long it would take and whether it was going to hurt. I remember struggling below the surface, trying to get my legs free of the weeds, watching his back as he walked away, thinking, He’ll come back and save me in a minute . He didn’t.’ He kept his back to her, his voice strangely flat as he recounted an incident so sickening that for once Katie found herself without words as she struggled to absorb the full implications of that driven confession.

‘No.’ Her voice trembled with uncertainty. She thought about her own father, of the games they’d played where he’d tumbled her upside down and tossed her in the air. ‘It must have been a joke that went wrong. He must have been playing a game.’

‘He wasn’t playing. Afterwards I tried to rationalise it to myself. I’d been messing around instead of raking the leaves. I’d had it coming to me. I was so young I didn’t really understand.’ He recited the options in a flat tone. ‘I thought it was me. My fault. I thought if I did the right thing, he’d love me. It isn’t easy for a child to absorb the fact that isn’t ever going to happen.’

He’d wanted his daddy’s approval, the way all little boys did.