Modern Romance February 2020 Books 1-4. Louise Fuller

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      Downstairs, enjoying a second glass of wine, Jai heard her choked sob. He squared his shoulders and breathed in deep, deeming it only natural that at some point on such a day Willow’s control would weaken and she would break down. There had been no visible tears at the funeral, no emotional conversations afterwards that he had heard. Throughout, Willow had been polite and pleasant and more considerate of other people’s feelings than her own. She had attempted to bring an upbeat note to a depressing situation, had behaved as though she had already completely accepted the changes that her father’s death would inflict on her.

      When the sounds of her distress became more than he could withstand, Jai abandoned his careful scrutiny of her father’s books—several first editions, he noted with satisfaction, worthy of the fine price he would pay for them. He drained his glass and forced himself to mount the stairs to offer what comfort he could. All too well did he remember that he himself had had little support after his father’s sudden death from a massive stroke. Thousands had been devastated by the passing of so well-loved a figure and hundreds of concerned relatives had converged on Jai to share his sorrow, but Jai hadn’t been close enough to any of those individuals to find solace in their memories. In reality only he had known his father on a very personal, private level and only he could know the extent of the loss he had sustained.

      Willow was lying sobbing on the bed and Jai didn’t hesitate. He sat down beside her and lifted her into his arms, reckoning that she weighed barely more than a child and instinctively treating her as such as he patted her slender spine soothingly and struggled to think of what it was best to say. ‘Remember the good times with your father,’ he urged softly.

      ‘There really weren’t any…’ Willow muttered chokily into his shoulder, startled to find herself in his arms but revelling in that sudden comforting closeness of another human being and no longer feeling alone and adrift. ‘I was always a serious disappointment to him.’

      With a frown of disbelief, Jai held her back from him to look down into her tear-stained face. The tip of her nose was red, which was surprisingly cute. Her wide green eyes were still welling with tears and oddly defiant, as if daring him to disagree. ‘How could that possibly be true?’ he challenged.

      ‘I didn’t do well enough at school, didn’t get into the right schools either,’ Willow confided shakily, looking into his lean, strong face and those commanding ice-blue eyes that had once haunted her dreams. ‘Once I heard him lying to make excuses for me. He told one of his colleagues that I’d been ill when I sat my exams and it was a lie… Dad wanted a child he could brag about, an intellectual child, who passed every exam with flying colours. I had tutors in every subject and I still couldn’t do well enough to please him!’

      Jai was sharply disconcerted by that emotional admission, which revealed a far less agreeable side to a man he had both liked and respected. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to make you feel that way,’ he began tentatively.

      Willow’s fingers clenched for support into a broad shoulder that felt reassuringly solid and strong and she sucked in a shuddering breath. It was a kind lie, she conceded, liking him all the more for his compassion. Even so, she was still keen to say what she had never had the nerve to say before, because only then, in getting it off her chest, might she start to heal from the low self-esteem she had long suffered from. ‘Yes, Dad did mean it. He honestly believed that the harder he pushed me, the more chance he had of getting me to excel! He didn’t even care about which subject it might be in, he just wanted me to be especially talented at something!’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Jai breathed, mesmerised by the glistening depth of her green eyes and the sheer passion with which she spoke, not to mention the unexpected pleasure of the slight trusting weight of her lying across his thighs and the evocative coconut scent of her hair. The untimely throb of arousal at his groin infuriated him and he fought it to the last ditch.

      ‘Dad wasn’t remotely impressed by my studying garden history and landscaping. And that’s why I’m crying, because I’m sorry too that it’s too late to change anything for the better. I had my chance with him, and I blew it!’ Willow muttered guiltily, marvelling that she was confiding in Jai, of all people. Jai, who was the cleverest of the clever. It didn’t feel real; it felt much more like something she would imagine to comfort herself and, as such, reassuringly unreal and harmless. ‘I never once managed to do anything that made Dad proud of me. My small successes were never enough to please him.’

      And the sheer honesty of that confession struck Jai on a much deeper level because he wasn’t used to a woman who told it as it was and didn’t wrap up the ugly truth in a flattering guise. Yet Willow looked back at him, fearless and frank and so, so sad, and his hands slid from her back up to her face to cup her cheekbones, framing those dreamy green eyes that had so much depth and eloquence in her heart-shaped face. She looked impossibly beautiful.

      He didn’t know what to say to that. He did not want to criticise her father, he did not want to hurt her more, and so he kissed her…didn’t even know he was going to do it, didn’t even have to think about it because it seemed the utterly, absolutely natural next step in their new understanding.