His hand tightened on hers.
‘I’ve never talked about it before,’ he said huskily. ‘But now I— For the first few years of my life I seemed to be part of the ideal family. There were my parents, and Darius, my brother, and everything was fine. Then my mother found out about my brother Marcel—the son he’d had by Claire, a Frenchwoman, five years earlier.’
‘While he was still living with your mother?’
‘Yes. I think that was one of the things that hurt her most. That he’d carried on with another woman while still playing the loving husband.’
‘How could she ever believe a word he said after that?’ Freya breathed.
‘She couldn’t. She left him. They divorced and he married Claire. Darius and I lived with our mother until she died a few years later. After that we had to return to Amos.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Eleven. I could never be at ease with Claire. It wasn’t her fault. She was my father’s victim as much as any of us. But I blamed her for my mother’s death.’
‘You don’t mean your mother—?’
‘No, she didn’t take her life. Not exactly. But she went down with an illness that she didn’t have the strength to fight, and I don’t think she wanted to fight it. I was with her when she died, and the last thing she said to me was, “I’m sorry.” Then she closed her eyes and just let go. Meanwhile Amos was playing the field again, with Travis’s mother in Los Angeles and Leonid’s mother in Moscow. Claire found out and left him, taking Marcel. By then Darius was making his own career, so I was alone with Dad for much of the time.
‘It was like living with two versions of the same person. There was the man who’d broken all our hearts and didn’t care—a man I resented. But there was also the “Big Beast”, whom the world admired and feared, and in a way I admired him too. I wanted to be like him, earn his praise. I did some really stupid things, and the stupider I was the more he approved of me.’
‘But approval wasn’t enough, was it?’ she asked.
‘No. I wanted more. I wanted—I don’t know—something else.’
‘Love,’ she said. ‘The kind that puts you first—the kind you should expect from your parents. When grown-ups are so taken up with each other they can sometimes forget what the children need.’
He stared. ‘How did you know that? Surely your parents loved you?’
‘Oh, yes, but they loved each other first. I got lavish presents, but somehow I always sensed something missing. One year my father paid for me to go on a really expensive school trip. I thought he was being generous, finding so much money for me to enjoy myself. But while I was gone he and my mother took a holiday together. I thought there would be another holiday, with the three of us, but there wasn’t. They’d seized the chance go away without me. I know it sounds crazy and self-centred to say it like this—’
‘Not to me, it doesn’t,’ Jackson said. ‘Everything’s fine on the outside, but inside there’s a place that’s sad, hollow.’
As he said it she could see the child Jackson, surrounded by money and success but knowing there was no one who would put him first. The father playing the field with other women...the mother more concerned with her own misery than her children’s needs.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘I grew up knowing that I’d have to be enough for myself. Or at least pretend to be.’
‘Yes.’ Jackson sighed. ‘Exactly like that. It can be good to be enough for yourself, as long as you know when to drop the defences. That’s Dad’s trouble. He never knew. Through all those love affairs he had to be the one in control.’
They looked at each other, sharing the same curious expression.
‘We’ve known each other for six years,’ he said. ‘And we’ve never shared this before.’
‘It was never the right time before,’ she said.
‘Yes. And when the right time comes, you know. And you have to take it because it may never come again. I think you’re the only person I could ever talk to about Dad, and how tense I feel about what I’ve inherited of his nature.’
‘You can’t help what you were born with. And you’re not as bad as he is.’
‘Thanks. I treasure that.’ He added wryly, ‘And a gift for getting your own way can be useful. But sometimes it makes me wonder about myself. I’ve got a bad side.’
‘So have we all,’ she said. ‘Don’t be hard on yourself.’
‘That’s nice of you, but my bad side is worse than you know. And you know plenty, after the harm I did you.’
‘But you didn’t do it on purpose. You made an incautious remark. You couldn’t predict what Dan would do. It was a mistake, but I’ve made plenty of those myself. Let’s draw a line under it.’
He stared. ‘You’ve really forgiven me?’
‘There’s nothing to forgive. You might have been a bit clumsy—’
‘Clumsy, stupid, idiotic, thoughtless—’ he supplied.
‘If you say so. But you weren’t spiteful. You’re not capable of spite.’
‘That’s kinder than I deserve.’
His voice was heavy and she knew he was still deeply troubled—not only by their past hostility but by the burdens Amos had loaded onto him when he was too young to bear them.
He dropped his head, fixing his gaze on the ground. She knew a deep and worrying instinct to protect him. Dazzling, self-confident Jackson had never seemed in need of anyone’s protection before, but this was a new man—one he’d revealed to her and perhaps to nobody else. He trusted her. He’d said so, and had proved it by showing his vulnerable side.
In another moment she would have reached out and taken him in her arms, offering him all the comfort she could, but a warning sounded in her head. That way lay danger. The faint, flickering attraction between them might revive at any time. The memory of his lips brushing hers warned her not to take the risk.
Yet who else was there to help him? His obnoxious father? The women who came and went but never seemed to get really close to his life or his heart?
She could have cursed the malign fate that had given such insight to her—the one person who didn’t dare use it, and yet who wanted to use it with all her heart. It was alarming how much she wanted that.
She ventured to reach out and touch his shoulder.
‘Jackson—’
He raised his head and their eyes met. For a brief moment she saw him defenceless, without the mask that she now realised he wore so easily.
‘What is it, Freya?’ he whispered.
She drew a trembling breath. Another moment and she would have thrown caution to the winds. But alarm came to her aid, forcing her to speak common sense words.
‘Let’s put it in the past,’ she said. ‘We’ve always been good friends and we’re not going to let anything spoil it.’
‘Right,’ he said, and the mask was in place again. ‘Good friends it is—just like always.’
‘Always have been, always will be.’
They shook hands.
‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘It’s there.’
The great pyramid loomed gloriously above them, golden in the fast growing light, full of promise for the day to come.
‘Yes, it’s there,’ he said. ‘It could be there for ever.’