Contract for Marriage (7 page)

Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. When her lids fluttered open, the sadness cut straight through him.

He leaned forward. “Is everything all right?” He nodded at the piece of paper still clutched in her hand. “Did it help?”

“Help?” she whispered.

“Convince you?”

She laced her fingers together and stared at her drink. “I was hoping it would give me a way out,” she said with a sigh. “Something I could take back to Tim or my lawyer, but it’s the opposite. The whole letter explains why she left the house to both of us and why she wants you to buy me out.” She paused as her voice shook. “If Mum felt so strongly about you and Stella having the house, then maybe it’s time I honored her wishes and gave it up.”

Christo put his palm flat on the table. She couldn’t back out now. Things had changed too much, morphed into possibilities he never could have imagined in the beginning. “But she didn’t know about your baby.”

“No, she didn’t.” She touched the tiny pink beads of her pearl bracelet, moving each one like a rosary.

“She may have changed her will if she had.”

She wiped her hand across her cheek as if brushing away tears. “Maybe you’re right. Mum mightn’t have done the right thing for her immediate family, but she was so close to her brothers Lorenzo and Matteo that I’m sure she would have been different as a grandmother.”

He rolled a shoulder as the tension inside him eased. “Is that why you stayed away? Because your relationship with your mother had broken down?”

For a second it seemed as if she’d deflect his question. He willed her to give him an answer, to confirm his suspicion that she’d been avoiding him all these years.

Brushing a blond strand over her shoulder, she shifted in her chair. “I didn’t want to be here anymore.”

He lifted a bottle of beer to his lips but spoke before he drank. “And you didn’t want to come back and see your mother? Your father before he died?”

She pulled the lip between her teeth again. Damn if he’d let himself be distracted.

“I was in touch with my father. I came for the occasional holiday.”

“That’s all?”

She leaned forward and her voice dropped. “I found out some things that changed the way I viewed my parents, my family.”

He rested his wrists on the table and clasped his hands together. Should he feign innocence, or finally reveal the truth, the things she didn’t know about her family? “Things?”

“I found out…” She hesitated and moistened her lips. “That my mother had been having an affair.”

He nodded slowly, keeping his features neutral. “I see.”

She took another sip of the soda. “Not just a one night stand or a fling. My mother had been having an affair for years.”

“How did you find out?”

“I heard her on the phone one night,” she said softly, “not long after you’d been sent away, and I questioned her.”

The memory of how he’d felt the evening he was banished was still so vivid, but he pushed it aside. “And how was she?”

“She didn’t deny it. Said she was sorry I’d had to find out like that.” Leaning back, she crossed her arms under her breasts, the pain of telling him stamped on her face. “And then I knew I couldn’t live under the same roof while she did that to my father. I couldn’t see him devastated, so I told her I’d keep her little secret, and I left. It was the best thing for everyone.”

He dragged a hand through his hair. “And you never spoke to her about it again?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what happened to her lover. I never even found out who he was or how long the affair continued. My parents stayed in the house together until my father died of a stroke, so she was either still keeping things a secret, or she’d moved on. We pretended it wasn’t there in the beginning, that in not discussing it, it wasn’t real.” She drew in a long and labored breath. “But the less we talked, the more distant we became.”

He dropped an arm to the table and scraped his other hand across his chin, all the while holding her gaze to his. It was now or never, let her know everything or shut this conversation down.

The air between them stilled and he heard the breath draining from Ruby’s lungs. “What do you know, Christo? Mum said in the letter that if I wanted to know more to ask you.”

Tilting his head, he shrugged. “There’s no need to go over all this, Ruby.”

“Need? Of course there’s a need. In the space of two days I’ve found out the ownership of my childhood home is in dispute, that there’s no money to fight it, and I have to marry to get what’s rightfully mine. In seven months I’ll have a child who’s lost most of its family, a child who deserves to have me fight for any link to its heritage, including that house.” She blew out a breath. “Yes, there
is
a need.”

Christo hesitated then frowned, weighing up how much to tell her. The power and passion in her voice caused him to hesitate. “It won’t change anything.”

“I need to understand. Maybe if I understand what’s led us here I can find a way out.”

He leaned back in his chair, surveying her, and the desperation in her soft face unbuckled a part of him that had been locked down for years. “Your father knew about your mother’s affair. He was blackmailing her by threatening that if she didn’t stay with him he’d publish an exposé on her brother’s crooked business dealings, Lorenzo’s links to gambling dens, and corporate embezzlement.”

Ruby fell against the back of the chair as if his words had been a physical force. Her voice dipped. “Mum stayed with him to protect Uncle Lorenzo?”

“And to protect you.”

She watched him warily. “How would that protect me?”

“Are you sure you want to know this? After all this time?”

She looked at him without flinching. “Tell me everything, Christo. I need to know.”

He nodded once, satisfied she was ready. “He said you’d never be able to work in publishing back here if your uncle was exposed. Your mother was desperate for you to come back and would have done anything to make it happen. Your father knew that if the scandal came out, not only would he have no chance at the local government career he wanted, you’d have no future in Auckland either.”

She shook her head. “Why didn’t my mother tell me any of this? My father’s been dead for over a year. Surely she could have told the truth after that.”

Christo shrugged. “She knew you idolized him. And since she believed everything was lost between you, she thought it was better for this to be left unsaid.”

Ruby stared at a watermark on the table where her bottle had sat. “I don’t know whether to feel more sorry for Mum, or Dad. To go to those sorts of lengths, Dad must’ve been desperate to stay with her.”

Christo scoffed. “Desperate to keep his own public persona squeaky clean.” The injustice of being banished seared hot in his memory. “Your father had a procession of girlfriends. The night before he kicked me out, he’d seen me at a society polo match. I saw him with a couple of much younger women. That was the real reason he threw me out. He didn’t want you to know.”

…

Ruby fought the nausea climbing in her throat. She didn’t want to revisit that night right now or listen to Christo’s excuses. The news about her father blackmailing her mother was enough to cope with. “Did my mother have a procession of lovers as well?”

Christo shook his head. “Just one. For fifteen years.”

“Fifteen?” An ache of confusion burned behind Ruby’s eyes. “Does that mean…she was still with him when she died?”

He nodded slowly and she scoured her mind as to who it might’ve been. “One of her friends? Someone I knew?”

“Someone you knew very well. Someone who lost his home about the same time I did.”

Ruby’s heart stopped beating. “David? The gardener, David?” She remembered the quiet man with the gentle smile. As a little girl she’d taken his hand as they’d walked the flowerbeds, and he’d recited the names of the roses her mother had loved so much. She’d helped him bring bunches of them to fill the house with vibrant color, sweet perfume. Things her mother had held so dear.

“He was the love of her life. He left for Europe when your mother died.”

Like a wave building from the depths of the ocean floor, Ruby realized what had happened all those years ago and tears began to sting.

Christo spoke her thoughts. “Your father didn’t want the shame of your mother having an affair with the hired help. He didn’t want that from you either. Both revelations would’ve tainted his shiny public image.”

Ruby slumped back in her chair as Christo’s announcements spun a web around her. “Did he care about it that much?”

“He was standing for council. His reputation as a big shot publisher should’ve stood him in good stead. If the fact that both his wife and daughter had been having affairs with the lower classes got out, it might’ve affected voters. As would a scandal where his wife left him for the gardener.”

Ruby sat in stunned silence for what seemed like an eternity. Christo waited, sipping his drink, giving her the time she needed to gather together all the scattered pieces. One thought pushed above all the others.

“You knew all this when he kicked you out and you didn’t tell me?” It was a betrayal—keeping information about her own family from her, as if he knew what was best.

Christo gave a cold laugh. “You didn’t want to know the truth, Ruby. About me or your mother.”

She couldn’t help bitterness slipping into her voice. “You’re saying you weren’t dating other women? That being at that polo match was for the enjoyment of the game and nothing more? I asked you for an explanation back then, but you couldn’t get away quickly enough.”

For a moment, his mask dropped and he looked at her with frank honesty. “I was nineteen, Ruby. Cancer free and ready to meet the world head on. A boy who could suddenly see the full implications of the difference between the haves and have-nots. Before you and I became close, I had offers and propositions, women who said they could take me places. I won’t deny being at that polo match to develop connections for my business ideas, but I wasn’t dating anyone else. As we began spending time together, you were all I could think about.”

A flush swept her body. Was he speaking the truth?

It didn’t matter. His charm was part of what had made her fall so heavily for him before. The fact that he could use it to suit any need, or any person—honorable or not—was what made him so untrustworthy. Whether he’d cheated on her or not, he was using her for his own gain back then and he was still doing it now. “All I knew from that time is that you didn’t want to communicate with me after my father told you to leave. I waited for an explanation but you gave me nothing. Instead of finding me and answering my questions, you left and never returned. I didn’t serve your purpose anymore.”

“And I didn’t serve yours. You’d shocked your father by sleeping with me, as was your plan all along. If you’d had faith in me you wouldn’t have needed an explanation.”

“Faith is earned through identifiable actions, Christo. Respecting someone enough to move heaven and earth to give them the answers they deserve. Not using people for your own ends.” Pushing their history to the side to think about later, she refocused on her family. “I don’t understand why Mum stayed with Dad. If he was so awful why did she remain in the house?”

“She had no choice. She’d poured all her own money into rescuing Lorenzo. Your father had control of the house. David had lost his home and his job. Your mother was trapped through blackmail.”

A vision of her mother, trapped and lonely, filled her mind. She twisted in her seat, body aching with the tension in her limbs. “At least she had the house when he died.”

He shook his head. “She didn’t even have that. Your father had it tangled up in a complicated trust. Only after she fought through the courts when he died were the house and grounds returned to her name.”

“If things were that tight, how on Earth did she afford things like the upkeep and your mother’s wages?”

“I paid for everything.”

Ruby gasped, but after all she’d discovered in the last day she shouldn’t have been surprised. “Mum was such a proud person. I can’t imagine her accepting your money.”

His shoulder lifted in a lazy shrug. “She didn’t know it was mine. I arranged it with her lawyer. As far as she knew the cash came from some bonds your father had forgotten to hide from her.”

Her heart swelled for what he’d done for his mother and hers. “That was an incredibly generous thing to do.”

“If I hadn’t, the house would’ve fallen into disrepair and my mother would’ve lost the job she held dear, the home she loved.”

As his declaration sank in, Ruby tried to untangle the ruthless, take-no-prisoners Christo from the man who’d sheltered her mother from more heartbreak. How could she dig beneath his steely exterior to find the softer part of his heart that must beat sometimes?

“What I don’t understand is why mother did the same thing my father did in his will. Instead of passing the house on to their next of kin, both left it in tangled and complicated circumstances where their family has to fight for it.”

“Understand this.” His voice had returned to the distant, cold tone she’d heard so often in the last two days. “My mother stood by Antonia through your father’s recriminations and double life, through you abandoning her, through Lorenzo’s shady deals. Antonia wanted to acknowledge my mother, but she wanted to provide for you too. She couldn’t leave the house to my mother outright so she left it to both you and me, knowing I had the wherewithal to buy you out. That way both of you would be taken care of. She hadn’t counted on any resistance from you.”

“If only I’d known all this, she and I could’ve talked about it, sorted things out. If she’d only given me the chance.” Her heart squeezed. “But now it’s too late.”