His voice was wry. ‘You can’t stay out here all night.’
She shrugged minutely. ‘To be honest, the suite … the hotel … it’s all a bit intimidating. I feel like I’m tainting it with my presence.’
Rocco went still. ‘That’s crazy … what are you talking about?’
She glanced at him. and then away again when she saw him frowning. ‘It’s like I’m not meant to be here. When I was about nine one of our foster parents took Steven and I to a stately home.’ Gracie smiled and said self-consciously, ‘She was one of the good ones … It was a grand old house. We had to get the train from London. It had these huge rooms—so beautiful, full of antiques and paintings. After a while I got lost. The group had gone on and I couldn’t find them. I wandered into a room full of tiny porcelain dolls.’
Gracie grimaced a little, remembering.
‘Obviously the people who owned the house had some kind of collection. I was fascinated, and picked one up to look at. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and I got such a fright I dropped it and it smashed on the ground. This woman was standing over me, shrieking about how I was a common little thief and to get out.’ She shivered at the memory. ‘I was so terrified I ran and ran, and finally found the group. I kept expecting to feel that hand on my shoulder again.’
Gracie felt embarrassed. Why on earth had she even started telling this story? But Rocco just looked at her, his face obscured in the dark.
She shrugged again, properly embarrassed now. ‘Earlier, when we came in, and at the function too, I felt as if a hand was going to land on my shoulder at any moment and someone would ask how I’d got in.’
A little roughly, Rocco said, ‘You have as much a right to be in these places as anyone else.’
Gracie half smiled. ‘Well, I don’t really. But it’s nice of you to say.’
Rocco stood up then, with a hand outstretched, as if to leave and take her with him. Gracie stood up too, about to take his hand, but then she stopped. His closed-off expression made something rise up within her—a desperate need for him to understand, and see.
‘Wait. I want to tell you something else.’
He dropped his hand, his jaw clenched. ‘Gracie, you don’t need to tell me these stories.’
His clear reluctance galvanised her. ‘They’re not stories—and, yes, I do need to tell you.’ She continued before he could protest. ‘Steven … my brother … we’re twins.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘Non-identical obviously. I’m older by twenty minutes—he nearly died when he was born. When we were small he was puny and had big thick glasses. I got used to protecting him from bullies. He was never able to deal with things like I could. He never got over our mother leaving us …’
Gracie’s voice shook with passion.
‘He was too smart, too quiet. He was always a natural target. It might be hard to believe because of his actions, but he never wanted that life … to be in a gang, to get involved with drugs.’
‘So why did he, then?’ Rocco almost sneered.
Gracie flinched minutely but stood tall. Emotion constricted her voice. ‘They beat him down—literally. One day he got so badly beaten that he almost ended up in hospital. They broke him. It was easier to go along with what they wanted than to fight it. Even though I did my best to stop him. We were only fourteen. They had him hooked on alcohol within months. Drugs came soon after. He dropped out of school. Gave up.’
‘And yet you defend him even now?’
Again Rocco had that slightly sneering tone. Gracie looked at him, feeling a little disembodied. How could she even begin to explain the rich tapestry that bound her and her brother together?
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I defend him—and I would defend him for ever. Just like he defended me.’
Rocco frowned, impatience palpable in his lean form. ‘What do you mean? Defended you from what?’
Gracie knew her words were going nowhere, but she couldn’t stop now. ‘There was one foster home—it was miraculous, really, that we got to stay together all the time.’ She took a deep breath. ‘There was a man in this home. He used to look at me, and touch me when no one was around. Nothing serious at first—just a pat on the bottom or a pinch on my arm. But then one night he came into my room when his wife was away.’
Gracie could feel bile rising and forced it down.
‘He sat on my bed and started telling me what he wanted to do with me. Steven was in the room next to mine with another boy. I was on my own. I was so scared I couldn’t move or speak. Just when the man was about to get into bed beside me Steven came in. He didn’t say anything. He just waited for the man to get up and leave, and from that night until we left that house he slept in my bed, even as his own life was falling apart. He never left me alone. Not once.’
Rocco looked at Gracie’s pale face. Her words were like atom bombs detonating in his head and body. He wanted to rant and rage—throw the terrace furniture out over the balcony. He wanted to hug Gracie close and never let her go ever again. He trembled with it. Emotion was thick and acrid, gripping him by the throat. To think of that man touching her. And to think of her brother and what he’d been through. That he’d been beaten viciously enough to give in to that awful wasted life. Even now Rocco could see her brother’s face, clear and burning with eagerness in his office, impressing him with his zeal because it had reminded him of his own hunger to succeed.
And yet her brother had still turned around and made a fool of Rocco’s gut instinct, had betrayed him.
Rocco had been through the same trials … worse. And he hadn’t given in—never. He clung to
that assertion now, like a drowning man finding a piece of floating wood in a choppy ocean. He couldn’t touch Gracie right now. If he did he felt as if the emotions seething in his gut would overwhelm him completely and throw him straight back to where he’d come from, what he’d left behind all those years before.
With a huge effort Rocco thrust down the thick, cloying emotion and stepped back from Gracie and those huge eyes.