“She must have been very beautiful, then,” he said, eyes warm with sympathy and appreciation as he ran his gaze over her face.
Clearing her throat and feeling blood warming her cheeks, she murmured, “Yes, well. Thank you. What about your parents? Are they still alive?”
He stiffened and looked away, not meeting her gaze. “I don’t know, but I’m sure they are. But that’s a story for another time.”
Wondering about his reaction, and the way his eyes shuttered before he looked away, she opened her mouth to reply, but paused when the oven timer went off. Practically hearing him think saved by the bell, she grabbed her wine glass and stood.
“I need to get the lasagna out of the oven. You’re welcome to join me. I’m going to put the garlic bread in and toss a salad while it cools.”
Seth stood slowly and followed Amelia into the kitchen, taking a seat at the island after she declined his offer to help. Guilt needled him, but he tried to push it away. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to talk about the past. Yeah, that was a large part of it. Not even the fighters knew the whole story. But he found, to his surprise, that he kind of wanted to tell Amelia, something he never thought he’d see happening.
The main problem was it revolved around his shifter status, which she didn’t know about. There was no way he could just blurt out that he was kidnapped when he was a young child by a rival clan, and held hostage. That when he was finally returned home, even though it wasn’t his fault, his abduction tainted him in the eyes of not only his clan, but his family. That after being shunned and ostracized for years, he set out on his own as soon as he was old enough to take care of himself.
No, there was absolutely no way of explaining any of that to her, especially without telling her about his cat. She would be horrified, and rightly so, even if she knew about his dual nature. Humans didn’t understand shifter cultures, not unless they were educated in their ways. And even then, she probably wouldn’t. Hell, he was born to it and lived it for years, and he didn’t understand most days. Different cultures had different customs, and those of the clan of his birth were borderline horrific, and they were strict, hard and fast rules. There were no exceptions, even for a family as prominent as his. Maybe more so because they were revered and looked up to in his community, so they had to follow the rules to the letter.
But even knowing that, the guilt he felt was still threatening to quickly overshadow the evening. She was being open and honest with him tonight, opening up about a painful part of her past. She might not have come out and said it, but her gorgeous hazel eyes showed her hurt and sadness.
The way she was so honest was refreshing. She was an open book. Her every reaction was sincere. Shifters could hear lies. She never once spoke with anything but the truth, and she had no reason to be so honest about everything. He’d been around enough humans to know they lied, a lot. Most of the time it wasn’t malicious, just little white lies, and a lot of times it wasn’t even for their benefit. It was to spare someone else’s feelings.
Amelia didn’t do that, and she wasn’t aware of his ability to hear a lie, so it wasn’t deliberate. Hell, even when she did start to fib, she quickly corrected herself and told the truth. Her honesty was one of his favorite things about her.
And that made him withholding the truth from her even worse. Not just his shitty past, but what he truly was. In all his worrying about how this would end, whether she could get past his flaws, he hadn’t thought once about how he was going to tell her he was a leopard shifter, or whether she could accept it.
She could flip her shit and run back to England as fast as she possibly could. Or the scientist in her would make her hesitate long enough to ask questions, giving him the chance to explain everything and tell her how he felt about her. He was betting on the latter. He’d seen numerous glimpses of her curious mind, her insatiable thirst to always know more, even with small things. She didn’t hide that part of herself well. Really, she didn’t hide anything, and the thought just made him feel worse.
Despite everything he had to tell her, he still thought none of that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. He lacked a high school diploma, and she was twenty-five and already had a PhD. She was technically a doctor, and there he was, two years older, with nothing to show for his life. He thought that would be the hurdle she might not be able to get past.
See, she can accept me. It’s you who’ll cause us to lose her.
Shut the fuck up, pompous flea bag.
Laughing inwardly as his cat hissed, Seth smirked a bit over his juvenile insult. For once, a little exchange with his animal brought some of his good mood back, but he could feel the worry at the edge of his mind, waiting to pounce.
“Are you sure you don’t need help?” he asked, watching as she poured some kind of clear dressing over the salad. “I can set the table, if nothing else.”
Shooting him a warm smile, she nodded. “Yeah, that would be great. Plates are in the cabinet there, and glasses are next to it. Silverware is in the drawer next to the sink.”
Thankful she was letting him do something, and needing a distraction from his thoughts, he jumped up and hurried to get everything on the table.
“There’s a trivet in that drawer over there,” she said with a nod as she took the garlic bread out of the oven.
“What the hell is a trivet?” he asked, frowning.
She gave a light laugh. “I always forget most people don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s a pad that you put hot dishes on. It protects the table from the heat of the dishes. Although there’s not much you could do to make that old table look worse,” she said, brows twitching as she shot a look at the old table.
Seth got the pad out and put it in the middle of the table, studying the table as he did. It was clean, but he could see old stains, scuff marks, and gouges all over it, and the chairs were no better. And there were only three, so one must have broken at some point.
Walking back to grab the lasagna, he set it on the trivet, mind racing. He had a table he was working on back at Rocky River. He’d planned to sell it at the general store in town, but he could give it to Amelia instead. He was planning on making two chairs and a bench for seating, and if he was giving it to her, he wanted to add some embellishments, carvings, make it beautiful for her. But making something beautiful out of wood was his gift, and it would take no time at all.
She was planning on leaving, but he had every intention of changing her mind. Even if the worst happened, and she went back to England, she’d still be here for a while, and she deserved to have something beautiful to eat her meals on while she was here.
“I know it looks pretty bad,” she said, walking up beside him with the salad and plate of garlic bread. “But I promise, it’s clean.”
“No, I can see that. I wasn’t worried about it. I was just thinking about something,” he replied, pulling out her chair for her before grabbing their drinks and bringing them to the table. He quickly topped off her wine before he took his own seat.
“Dig in,” she said, gesturing for him to take some lasagna while she dished salad into their bowls.
They were quiet for a little bit while they ate, and he used the silence to look around him. He hadn’t paid much attention the last time he was here, but no