“Mac?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Tell me about yourself.”
Kendall felt the soft warm towel briefly pause between her ass cheeks before he started to dry her again.
Obviously defensive, he simply replied, “What’s to tell? I’m Mac Buchanan, head of Buchanan Enterprises. The information is all in the public domain. My life is well documented. Everything related to my business as a newspaperman is a matter of record.”
Even with her back to him, Kendall sensed from the tone of his voice that he was reluctant to speak about his life before he became famous and feared. “I know all about that. It’s your early life I’m interested in. Tell me about your childhood?”
He spun her around to face him. “Huh, childhood. That’s a laugh. I never had a fucking childhood.”
“But—”
“Listen, honey, it’s all ancient history, something I don’t dwell on. However, I can see you’re curious, so if you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’ll be the one and only time I do. I live in the present. Understand?” His brow was furrowed.
“I understand, Mac. I understand perfectly.”
“Okay. Let’s get this horse shit over and done with. Let’s start with the woman who gave birth to me.”
“You mean your mother?”
“If that’s what you want to call her.”
“Everyone has a mother, Mac.”
“Well, maybe, but I didn’t have one. Not in the true sense of the word anyway.”
Kendall saw how uncomfortable he’d become with her line of questioning and regretted being so curious, or should that be downright nosey. “I’m sorry, it’s not my place to pry into your past. You don’t have to say any more.”
“Fuck it. Now I’ve started, I may as well get it all off my chest.”
As a form of encouragement, Kendall took the towel from him, and started patting the storm water from his powerful arms and broad shoulders. “Go on, I’m listening.”
He let out a long deep sigh before continuing, “Okay. Thirty-eight years ago a woman gave birth to me, but I don’t remember her at all. In fact, I have no recollection of what she looked like. I couldn’t tell you the color of her hair, or even the color of her eyes.” He shook his head. “I have no photographs of her. Nothing. It’s as though she never existed.”
Kendall stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips, then tenderly stroked a clump of stray wet hair to one side. “Oh, Mac, I’m so sorry. Really I am.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be. What you never had, you never miss.”
She saw from the sadness clouding his wonderful silver-gray eyes that he didn’t believe that himself, and because of that, he certainly didn’t convince her. Realizing she needed to be careful how she tackled the sensitive subject of his early life, she kissed his lips again. “Do you want to go on? You don’t have to.”
“Apparently, it was my screaming and constant crying that alerted the neighbors to my mother’s death.”
“Oh, no, Mac.” Her heart went out to him, and she realized that although outwardly he suppressed his emotions well, deep down he was just like any other human being.
“Screaming and crying? How old were you?”
“A few days short of my second birthday. My mother was a junkie. She’d OD’d on heroine. When the neighbors found me, I was clinging to her dead body. Goddamnit, Kendall, years later I found out that she still had the fucking needle hanging out her arm. I don’t blame her, because she was just a kid herself. Barely eighteen, and way out of her depth when it came to looking after a baby.”
“What about the CPS? Didn’t they do anything to protect you and your mom before the tragedy happened?”
“The children’s home I was sent to later told me that my mother moved from one godforsaken shithole to another in search of the next high, with me strapped to her chest. I suppose she slipped through the net, just like thousands of other junkie kids. Don’t be sorry, Kendall. It’s all ancient history. Shit happens. Fact of life. Live with it, or it takes you down, and I was never going to be taken down.”
She figured the resilience and fortitude that Mac possessed in such abundance had been there since a young age, and had probably helped him become the powerful and often ruthless entrepreneur he was today. He was a driven man. One who didn’t let anyone or anything stop him from reaching his goals.
“So the authorities put you in a children’s home aged two? That’s so, so sad, but at least you were being looked after.”
“Christ, you’re so naïve, aren’t you, honey? I long ago lost count of how many children’s homes I was in. Five, six, seven, who knows. Sometimes they’d wrap me in a blanket and move me in the middle of the night. I’d wake up two hundred miles away from where I’d started. The system sucks and leaks like a fucking sieve, and from what I hear, it ain’t no different today.”
Kendall shook her head, finding Mac’s early life difficult to comprehend. “I can’t even begin to know what that felt like.”
After drying all the way from the insides of his muscular thighs then down to his feet, she said, “All done.”
“Thanks, honey. I don’t like talking about my childhood. It wasn’t a happy period of my life, but maybe, sometimes it helps for a guy in my position to let it all out.”
She kissed his lips again. “It does. I’m sure of it.” She needed to choose her next words very carefully, and she hesitantly asked, “I don’t want to upset you by probing further, but where was your father while all this was going on?”
“My father? Huh. Perhaps a better question would be who was he, not where was he, because I don’t believe even my mother knew his identity.”
“Oh, Jesus, Mac. It gets worse.”
“Tell me about it.”
Now she knew why he kept his early life so secret, and Kendall felt privileged that she was the one he’d opened up to. That made the growing bond between them even stronger.
“As the months turned into years, and the authorities moved me from one children’s home to another without any warning, I’d pick up snippets of information from the people around me. Nothing concrete, you understand, just whispers and gossip. I heard rumors that when my mother was desperate for her next fix, but had no money, she’d think nothing of prostituting herself. Poor kid, she never stood a fucking chance.”
Mac was a strong, powerful man, but even so, she saw how hard it was for him as he recalled his childhood in lurid detail.
“The more I heard from those around me, the more I just wiped the slate clean. I’d tell any new kids that I came into contact with that my parents were two wonderful people, who’d been killed in a plane crash just a few months after I’d been born. That made it easier for me to deal with and got me a bit of sympathy in the bargain. Not that I needed it, because with each passing year, I grew stronger and more determined to make something of my life. I figured the only person I should ever rely on was myself.”
Mac took the towel from her and tossed it one side. “That’s a philosophy I still practice to this very day.” He then scooped her up and threw her onto the bed, and almost immediately she felt his weight follow as the mattress compressed beside her.
Both naked, they lay on their backs, staring up at the large overhead fan as it swirled the air around. When she felt the palm of his left hand gently come to rest on her bare stomach, Kendall felt compelled to look at the beautiful man lying next to her. What Mac described was horrendous. The stark, loveless environment he’d endured as a child would defeat many kids to such an extent that they would fail to thrive in adult life, their emotional baggage an insurmountable barrier to moving on. Not Mac though. This guy was made of pure granite mixed with tungsten. He’d overcome crushing adversity to become a huge success in the newspaper world. When he’d confided the trauma of his early years, moving from one kid’s home to another, she hadn’t detected a single ounce of self-pity in his voice. Maybe that was why the legendary Mac Buchanan was so ruthless today. Perhaps he figured that if he could overcome difficult obstacles in life, then everyone else should be able to do the same.
Still staring at the ceiling, he said, “You have something, Kendall.”
“What do you mean, Mac?”
“It’s no secret, I’ve had sex with hundreds of women, but never once have I felt the urge to tell them what I’ve just told you. You’re special, honey.”
“You’re special, too, Mac. Anyone who can deal with the adversity that you’ve had to is obviously made of the right stuff. Going on to become the boss of Buchanan Enterprises is proof of that.”
He patted her stomach with the palm of his hand. “Yeah. I had a shitty start in life all right, and I certainly wasn’t dealt the best hand, but yeah, I’m proud of what I’ve achieved.”