‘What if you’d been burgled?’ he’d said as he’d taken it from her, his face creased with anger.
‘Then I imagine it would have been like Christmas for them,’ she’d answered flippantly, although it had been the one thing that had worried her during her time there. Doing domestic things for the first time had been easy compared to living with the guilt of stealing the money and then the worry of someone else stealing it in turn.
Now his phone buzzed. He answered it and had a brief conversation before disconnecting the call and sighing.
‘That was the helicopter pilot. There’s a problem with the engine.’
She’d flown in enough helicopters to know this meant it had been grounded. ‘Any idea how long it will take to fix?’
‘Tomorrow at the earliest.’
‘It looks like we’ll be staying another night here after all, then.’ That was all she wanted. One more night in the place where she had felt so close to her mother.
‘I’ll drive us to the airport,’ he said grimly. ‘Get in the car. Please.’
Complying, she strapped herself in. Nathaniel got in beside her, made a call to Alma, telling her to notify the car hire company that he would be leaving the car at the airport, and then started the engine.
Dusk was falling as they set off. It was a sight Catalina appreciated as much as she enjoyed the sunsets here.
‘If it wasn’t to get at me, why did you choose this place to hide in?’ he asked after a good ten minutes of silence had passed.
‘My mother spoke about coming here when she was a child. She always said it felt like Christmas.’ She looked at him, taking in the concentration on his face. The roads in the mountains were extremely well maintained and the car had snow chains on but she sensed he didn’t like driving up here. She attempted some humour. ‘I thought that seeing as Christmas was ruined, I would try and capture the magic of it here.’
He answered with a monosyllabic grunt.
‘And I didn’t think my father would look here for ages. Isabella and I were never allowed to go skiing in case we crashed into a tree and smashed our pretty faces. He thought ruining our looks would ruin our marriage prospects.’
She saw his knuckles tighten their hold on the steering wheel.
‘Why do you dislike it here so much?’ she asked.
He didn’t answer.
‘You keep implying that I’m only here because I wanted to hurt you in some way,’ she probed.
His laugh was tight and bitter. ‘You cannot be so naïve to think I would be happy being forced to come to such a place?’
‘I truly don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You know my history. I was at school with your brother. Do you expect me to believe he wouldn’t have taken joy in reciting to you how I lost my family when he spent our school years pointing out every avalanche tragedy to me? As if dying like that was entertainment to him?’
Her brain caught up quickly as coldness seeped into it. ‘Is that how your parents died?’
A sharp nod. ‘In the French Alps.’
‘I didn’t know.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I knew you were an orphan but...’ She shook her head, unable to think of the words to express her horror.
How had she not known that? She racked her brains trying to remember if she’d ever heard or read about any hint about it, but Nathaniel kept his private life so close that reports on it were negligible. His school had a code of honour even her brother abided by: never speak of their school years to the press. The press had clearly never found another friend or family member willing to discuss his childhood either.
His past had remained a mystery.
She knew perfectly well why Dominic wouldn’t have mentioned it; the last thing he would have wanted was for his sister to have any sympathy for his arch enemy.
‘How old were you?’
‘Seven.’
More silence enveloped them before he said, ‘My parents had taken my sister, Melanie, to a ski bar in the mountains for some lunch while I had a skiing lesson.’
She hadn’t known he’d had a sister either. ‘Did you...?’ She couldn’t finished her question; the words lodged in her throat.
‘See it?’
She nodded.
‘Not while it was happening. But I heard it. They say it sounds like a freight train coming towards you but it doesn’t. It sounds like hell. The whole ski bar was flattened. They didn’t stand a chance. No one in there did. They all died.’
‘Nathaniel...’ She could only imagine the horror he must have gone through. Actually, she couldn’t even imagine it. She’d lost her mother when she’d been eighteen and that had felt like the end of her world. Nathaniel had lost both of his parents and his sister in horrific circumstances when he’d been only a child. A child. ‘What happened to you?’
‘The authorities called my grandmother as my next of kin but she suffers from chronic arthritis and was in no position to have me. So my uncle and his wife took me in.’
There was something hard in his tone that made her stare at him, wondering what was behind it.
‘They didn’t treat you well?’
He slowed the car as they approached a particularly tight bend. ‘Angelique disliked children. She only agreed to take me on the condition I was sent to boarding school.’
‘That’s cruel.’
He nodded grimly in agreement. ‘I was sent away as soon as I turned eight. My parents weren’t wealthy people but they had insurance policies. The funds paid out were spent on my education, which, as you know, doesn’t come cheap at that school.’
‘Why England though? Why not send you to boarding school in France?’
‘My uncle said if I was to be sent away then I should go to the best school available. Angelique didn’t care where I went so long as I was out of her hair. I would go to their home every Christmas and for summer holidays but they were the only occasions where she had to put up with me. And even then she employed help to take care of me.’
‘Did you live with them after your expulsion?’
He jerked up his chin. ‘For a time.’
‘A time?’
‘A time.’
She wanted to press the subject but could tell by the set of his jaw it would be futile.
She wished she’d known. She should have known.
No wonder he was such a lone wolf, always flitting from one woman to the next, one country to the next, always moving. He’d lost his love and stability at seven and what he’d lost had never been replaced.
If she’d known... She couldn’t honestly say she wouldn’t have taken off as she’d done but she would have called him from the start. She wouldn’t have kept him in limbo while she carried his only real family inside her.
‘How did they react to you being expelled?’ she asked quietly. ‘Were they cruel about it?’
‘My uncle was never cruel to me. He did the best he could under difficult circumstances. He was in Germany at the time on business. Angelique was there to take me in.’
‘Angelique the child hater.’
He paused for long moments, slowing the car again as they approached a small village. ‘I was no longer a child then.’
‘You