‘Then I apologise. Without reservation.’ Clearly he’d touched a raw nerve. He had no idea why his throw-away comment had upset her so badly; or maybe he’d accidentally repeated something that an ex had once said to hurt her. ‘I really didn’t mean to hurt you, Melinda. I’d never do that. You mean too much to me.’
She remained perfectly still for a moment, then she nodded, as if reassured, slid her arm round his waist and leaned into him. ‘Apology accepted. So what did you want to talk about?’
‘The idea was to go for a walk. Up on the cliffs, or barefoot on the sand. In the moonlight or maybe watching the sun rise.’
She pulled a face. ‘You want me to get up before dawn?’
‘Yes—No.’ He raked a hand through his hair distractedly. ‘Melinda. Today, when you called me zlato—did you mean it?’
She frowned. ‘Why?’
‘I asked first.’
‘Yes. And it upset you.’
‘Only because it’s been a long, long time since anyone used that word to me. Remember, I’ve lived in England for half my life now.’
‘Didn’t you ever want to go back to Croatia?’
‘There’s nothing there for me any more.’
His face and voice were both expressionless. And Melinda knew without a doubt that this was what haunted Dragan. What caused the shadows in his eyes. And that night she’d stayed here last month and had woken up in the middle of the night to find him standing by the window, staring out at the sea with such a bleak expression that it had almost broken her heart…He’d refused to talk about it, but she had a feeling this was to do with the same thing.
And she also had the feeling that this was the last tiny barrier between them.
Ha. As if she had the right to push him to talk, when she never talked about what had driven her to England. But how could she talk about it? She knew from experience that the minute people knew about her family, they started treating her differently. Either they withdrew from her because they secretly thought that she was just slumming it and didn’t really want their friendship, or they started seeing her as a passport to high society.
Except she didn’t hang out with high society. She’d never fitted in—and although her parents hadn’t actually taken the step of disowning her, they didn’t approve of her life here. On the rare occasions she went back to Contarini they never talked about her job, almost as if ignoring it meant that it wasn’t really happening. To listen to her parents, anyone would think that she was merely living abroad for a while to broaden her life experience, and spent her days shopping and sightseeing.
Most of the time Melinda managed to put it to the back of her mind and get on with her life. And she was happy: she’d never been particularly close to her parents, she loathed her brother Raffi’s playboy friends, and she had nothing in common with her sister Serena’s Sloaney mates, so it didn’t worry her that she was pretty much on her own here.
Whereas Dragan, she thought, was different. Like her, he felt there was nothing for him in his old home but, unlike her, he missed it and it hurt so much that it was like a fracture right across his heart—a fracture she wanted to heal.
She took his hand and pressed a kiss into it. ‘Why not?’
‘I’d rather not talk about it.’
‘Keeping things bottled up inside isn’t good for you,’ she said quietly. Even though she knew she was being a hypocrite. The longer she went without telling him the secret she’d been keeping ever since she’d first come to England, the harder it was to bring up the subject—and the more scared she was about his reaction. He wasn’t the social-climber type, but she really didn’t want him to reject her—to see her as Princess Melinda, second in line to the throne of Contarini, instead of the girl practically next door who’d fallen in love with him.
But this wasn’t about her. She pushed the thoughts away and squeezed his hand. ‘You need to talk.’
‘Whatever.’ The flippant, dismissive drawl did nothing to disguise his pain.
‘Dragan, I mean it. Talk to me.’
‘There isn’t much to tell.’
‘Then tell me anyway.’ She tightened her fingers round his. ‘You trust me, don’t you?’ Even as she said it, she winced inwardly. A trust she hadn’t given to him. But this was different. She could live with her secret because it didn’t hurt her; whatever he was keeping locked inside was slowly eating him away.
‘Ye-es.’
‘Then tell me,’ she insisted softly.
He was silent for such a long time that she didn’t think he was going to talk. And then finally he spoke, his voice very low.
‘We lived in a little village on the Adriatic coast. My family had a boatyard.’
She could see it in his eyes—there was more to it than that. Much more. And she guessed that the only way she’d get him to tell her was to ask questions.
‘So you weren’t always going to be a doctor?’
He shook his head. ‘I was going into the family business when I’d finished my education.’
‘Sailing boats?’
‘In my spare time. My elder brother studied marine engineering and he was good with his hands—he designed and built the boats, just like my father. And I was the one who was good at languages and figures.’
She knew about the languages and could’ve guessed about the maths. Dragan was bright—in her view, he’d be good at absolutely anything he chose to do. ‘So you would be the finance director?’
‘For a while, then the idea was that I should take over from my father as managing director. He was going to retire and spend more time with my mother while he was still young enough to go out and about and enjoy their leisure time.’
She knew all about parents wanting to retire and expecting their children to take over. And she thanked God every day that she wasn’t the one who’d have to take over from her father. Being a girl and being second-born meant that she’d been able to choose her life—to do the job she loved instead of one that would have stifled her. ‘It sounds a good plan,’ she said. Even though she had doubts about the way it would work in her own family. She’d always thought Serena, her baby sister, would make a better job of ruling than her older brother. Rafael had too much of a wild streak.
‘So you were going to study economics?’ she guessed.
‘International law,’ he said. ‘In Zagreb—but I planned to spend the holidays at home in the boatyard.’
Clearly he’d loved the family business, had wanted to be part of it. He’d fitted in. Had been happy.
So what had gone wrong?
There was another long pause.
‘And then the war happened.’
Five tiny words. Spoken so quietly that she could almost hear his heart breaking in the silence that followed. And all she could do was hold him. ‘I’m here, amore mio,’ she said softly.
‘It wasn’t just our village. It was all over the country. The fighting, the bombs, the bullets. Such a mess. Such a waste. Dad and I had gone to Split for a couple of days on business. Everything was fine at home when we left. And we came back to…’ His breath shuddered and his jaw tightened.
She stroked his face, willing the tension to ease. Wanting him to speak. Let out the pain that was eating him away from the inside.
‘Everything was gone,’ he said finally, his voice flat. ‘The boatyard was in ruins. My brother had been killed, my mother, the people who worked for us. All dead.