He gave a dry bark of laughter. “Did you know that I’d just turned eighteen years old when I bought and sold that stock?” he asked quietly.
“I knew you were young, but not that young,” she admitted.
“I thought I was so smart. Turns out, I didn’t know shit.”
“We’re all idiots at eighteen,” she reminded him. Like last night at the opera, she was catching a glimpse into his inner world. It pained her to see the weight of his turmoil again . . . the weight of his past. No wonder he guarded it so vigilantly. She touched his face gently. He seemed to come out of the hole of his bitterness, making eye contact with her.
“I looked up to Clint back then. Put him up on a pedestal, thought he could do no wrong. The truth is”—he gave a cynical laugh—“I wanted a father figure so bad, I blinded myself to his faults. Until one night, he did something that tore off my blinders forever.”
She absorbed his bitterness, sensing what he didn’t say. Clint Jefferies had altered him. At least in part, Jefferies had made Jacob the secretive, suspicious, jaded man that he was today.
“He did a lot to help you,” she said, hating the self-disgust she saw on his face at the moment. “Jefferies was very accomplished. It’s natural that you’d admire him. He singled you out. Treated you like you were special, which you were. You’re one in a billion, Jacob,” she said, moving her fingertips on his clenched jaw, feeling his tension. “He did something really bad to shatter the trust you had in him, didn’t he? Did it . . . did it have to do with Regina?”
His eyes flashed at her. For a few seconds, she thought he wasn’t going to say any more.
“He hurt her,” he said suddenly, a snarl shaping his mouth. “He took advantage of her when anyone could see how vulnerable she was. But Clint isn’t the type to take care around a vulnerability. He’s the type to take advantage of it. Nurture it, even, because he gets off on it.”
Harper swallowed thickly. His southern drawl—the one she only occasionally heard sliding into his voice—had grown thicker as he spoke. His fury seemed to roll off him in waves.
“Jefferies was no better than a lot of dirtbags out there. It shouldn’t have surprised me as a kid, to see his true colors. I should have known better. That was a lesson learned: a lot of money and a big house and fancy manners . . . and yet he was just the same as—”
He broke off abruptly. Harper’s chest ached at what she saw in his eyes at that moment. Betrayal. Pain. Fury. Tears burned behind her eyelids. Had that naïve young man fallen in love with Regina, only to see his mentor, the man he looked up to, hurt her? Scar her? What had Jefferies done? Whatever it was had not only ruptured his relationship with Jacob, it had twisted the memory of it into a caustic thorn in Jacob’s side.
Harper’s mind went to rape. She cringed inwardly at the idea. Maybe she suspected it because she knew that Regina was still alive. If she’d died, the degree of Jacob’s fury might be close to what she saw right now on his face. Regina lived, however . . . and was clearly very troubled emotionally. It just seemed to fit, somehow.
“It was . . . it was something sexual, wasn’t it? What Clint Jefferies did to Regina?” she asked, dread weighting her voice.
She thought she read the truth in his eyes. A flash of nausea went through her.
“Never mind,” she whispered. She let her legs slide down his hips and touched her feet to the bottom of the pool. An image of the sophisticated, polished man she’d seen last night at the opera flashed into her mind’s eye. Jefferies was a wolf parading in a civilized man’s clothing. Why do men have to be such animals sometimes?
“I’m sorry, Jacob. I’m sorry for prying,” she said, miserable that she’d forced him to talk about a past that obviously still hurt him.
She started to turn away but he caught her hand.
“Are you all right?” he asked her pointedly.
A sharp pain went through her, that he would ask about her well-being when he’d been the one recounting something that still made him ache.
“I’m fine,” she assured. She squeezed his hand. “Let’s go up to bed.”
• • •
She showered quickly in the guest bathroom and came to bed wearing the black nightgown. Jacob probably didn’t want to make love, after what had just happened out at the pool, but she didn’t have anything else to wear.
Harper, on the other hand, experienced a sharp longing to
have his arms around her, to have him deep inside her . . . to have him take her places where only he could. That was just selfishness, though. She felt heartsore, thinking of Regina, thinking of Jacob . . .
Always thinking of Jacob . . .
The drapes had been drawn on the floor-to-ceiling windows. The large suite was dim and hushed. He was already in bed when she came out of the bathroom. He laid back on the pillows, elbows bent, hands behind his head, dense biceps bulging. His torso was bare. The pose highlighted his chiseled upper body, powerful chest, the mouthwatering diagonal from trim waist to broad shoulders, emphasizing his power even in a relaxed moment. He’d been staring up at the ceiling, but when he saw her coming, his gaze flickered down over her without moving his head. Her skin prickled beneath his stare. When she reached the bed, he rolled on his side and flipped back the sheet and duvet, inviting her in.
She slid between the cool sheets next to him.
For a charged moment, they just lay on their sides, facing each other. His face was shadowed, but she could just make out a few amber pinpricks of light in his hazel eyes.
“You’re like Regina.”