Santina's Scandalous Princess

‘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.