BEN glanced up as Natalia approached, trepidation and compassion warring within her. He looked grave and perhaps even grim; was he displeased to see her? Natalia couldn’t tell, yet she could certainly feel the depth of some nameless emotion rising from within him. His hooded gaze seemed to blaze through her senses and as she came to a halt a few metres away they stared at each other for a long moment, neither speaking.
Then Ben gave a strange, cynical little smile and Natalia braced herself for some cutting remark or command to leave. Instead he said, ‘I’ve just been sitting here, thinking what a selfish bastard I am.’
Surprise flashed through her and she came to sit down next to him on the cool, hard sand. ‘That doesn’t sound like much fun.’
‘No,’ Ben agreed, turning back to stare straight ahead again at the darkening sea. ‘It isn’t.’
Natalia stared at the sea for a moment, trying to gather her scattered thoughts. ‘Is it because of Roberto?’ she finally asked.
‘I was working him hard and I should have known better.’
‘Known he would break his leg?’ Natalia said with a lilt of wry disbelief. ‘Because that’s rather a difficult thing to know.’
‘Know that a ten-year-old kid doesn’t need to be a superstar,’ Ben said flatly. ‘Even if you want him to be. Even if you weren’t.’
So this wasn’t just about Roberto. ‘You still couldn’t have known, Ben. It was an accident. And accidents are out of your control.’
He let out a short, bitter laugh. ‘Exactly.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
She didn’t think Ben was going to answer her. He remained silent, his gaze still on the sea, and then finally he spoke. ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to be in control of everything, to feel like I was in control. I told myself I was doing it for everyone’s else sake—my family’s or my mother’s or whoever—but it was really for me.’
‘I told you you were a control freak,’ Natalia said lightly, but Ben didn’t even smile. ‘So did it work?’ she finally asked quietly.
‘Not really. Because I never was. Everything always spins out of control, every time.’
She certainly knew how that felt. ‘You can’t control other people’s actions.’
‘I haven’t even controlled my own.’
Natalia felt her heart freeze for a suspended second. Was Ben talking about his actions with her? Kissing her? Surely not. She swallowed. ‘So. Welcome to the club.’
‘The club?’
‘You don’t think you’re the only one who feels that way, do you?’
Ben let out of a bark of genuine laughter. ‘You’re not going to give me a shred of sympathy, are you?’
‘Poor little princess?’ Natalia reminded him. ‘Nobody loves you? Nobody understands you?’
Ben gave her a sudden hard stare that sent awareness sizzling along her spine. ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ he said slowly, and it took Natalia a stunned moment to consider what he might mean. He understood her? He loved her?
‘Of course it’s not true,’ she said briskly. ‘Just like it’s not true that you’ve ruined everyone’s life including your own because of this obsessive and unhealthy need for control.’
He smiled. ‘Obsessive? Really?’
‘Why are you so concerned about being in control?’ Natalia asked point-blank, without any humour or lightness in her voice to let Ben off the hook and deflect the question. She wanted to know the answer too much.
‘Because I never felt like I had it,’ he replied, his tone turning bleak. ‘Everything about my life—my childhood at least—has been so up and down. So crazy. My mother divorced my father—twice. We moved from house to flat, one minute we were riding high and the next everything seemed a mess. My father was in the Premier League—’
‘Like you wanted to be?’ Natalia asked before she could stop herself, and Ben stared at her for a second.
‘Yes.’
‘You come alive on the football pitch like I’ve never seen before. You seem … happy.’
‘I am,’ Ben said quietly. ‘At least, I was. I’ve always loved football. I was good at it—’
‘And it was a way to feel in control.’
He shot her a wry glance. ‘Yes.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I blew out my knee when I was seventeen. Lost any chance of playing professionally. My father was incredibly disappointed.’
How telling, she thought, that he talked about his dad’s disappointment rather than his own. Natalia suspected Ben’s ambition and need for control had been less for himself and more for his family and the stability of his many younger siblings.
‘That must have been hard,’ she said quietly, and he just shrugged.
‘No one likes to lose a dream.’
‘So then you went into business?’
He gave her the ghost of a smile. ‘I had to do something, didn’t I?’
Something to stay in control. Or at least feel like he was. Was that why he hated the press? she wondered. He couldn’t control them. And yet she had chosen the opposite path … courting the newspapers and acting like she loved the attention because at least then she felt in control.
Yet all of it—any kind of control—was surely an illusion. She certainly wasn’t in control when it came to Ben and her body’s—as well as her heart’s—elemental and overwhelming response to him. She stretched her toes out towards the water, now no more than a sound in the darkness. Night had fallen, soft and suggestive around them. Suddenly Natalia was very conscious that they were alone on a secluded beach, with only the stars to see them. She heard Ben’s steady breathing, felt the heat and strength of his presence just inches from her.
‘What about you, Princess?’ Ben asked, his voice seeming almost disembodied in the darkness. ‘What was your dream?’
Natalia tensed. She hadn’t expected this to get personal … at least not about her. ‘I don’t know if I ever had one,’ she said after a pause. ‘Or at least I haven’t, for a long time.’
‘What did it used to be then?’
She took a breath, let it out slowly. He’d told her so much about himself, surely it was only fair she gave away a few of her secrets. She reached down and cupped a handful of cool, silky sand, letting it trickle between her fingers. ‘I suppose it’s rather predictable, something of the happily-ever-after variety.’
‘Ah. So that’s why you don’t believe in true love.’
She smiled, remembering her disdainful remark. ‘I’ve learned better.’
‘What happened?’
‘You can read all about it in the papers.’ She felt rather than saw him tense.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That torrid affair. You mentioned it yourself. It was big news about six years ago.’ Right before Carlotta had fallen pregnant and trumped Natalia’s own shame.
He