Ryder’s eyes became stormy. “He’s well and truly alive, just not a part of our lives. He turned up at Sam’s last Tuesday night. Tore strips off her for not asking him to walk her down the aisle. Father of the bride carries some social weight, don’t you know. She was hiding out in the bathroom when she called; he refused to leave until she changed her mind.”
While Ryder’s voice grew hard as ice, Nadia’s scalp felt all hot and prickly as she tried to picture Sam huddled in her bathroom, scared of her own father. “Ryder, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. What a creep.”
Ryder’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “No apology necessary. Though I’d go more for bully. Or asshole. Selfish bastard pretty much covers it as that comes with the knack for abusing the trust of anyone who dares care about him.”
Ouch. Literally. Nadia’s heart gave her such an unexpected little pinch she rubbed the heel of her palm over the spot.
“When she rang he was... I could hear him... While Sam was...”
He stopped. Breathed deep. While Nadia couldn’t breathe at all.
“Sam’s had panic attacks before, but not for a long time. Not this bad. She was so distraught by the time I got to her I ended up calling an ambulance. It was nearly three before she was calmed and back home asleep in bed.”
Nadia’s fist curled against her ribs. Poor Sam. Poor Ryder. While Nadia had been pouting and kicking things and generally thinking the guy was a big jerk, he was going through all that. She felt like a fool. Then, “Where was Ben?”
At that Ryder’s granite gaze skewed back to hers. Behind the surface she saw such a deep river of concern it made her thumping heart twist.
“She didn’t call him,” said Ryder. “She only called me.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah. Pretty much my first thought too.”
After a few loaded beats, they both began walking again, close enough they were as good as bumping shoulders. The ground was hot and steaming beneath their feet, the rest of the world a blur as they remained lost in their thoughts.
After a good minute, Nadia asked the one question that had been left unanswered. “Where does your mother fit into the picture?”
A flare of something warmer pierced the granite. “My mother was...something else. A sculptor of found objects. A champion for the beauty redolent in bits and pieces others had cast aside. She could make something inspired out of detritus the rest of us wouldn’t even notice.” Then, as if he’d been working up to it, “She was sick for some time. I was eleven when she died. It took my father mere months to marry Sam’s mother. And Sam was born weeks after that.”
Nadia didn’t ask how long after. She didn’t need to. It was there in the set of his big shoulders, the tension of his beautiful mouth. His father hadn’t waited for his ill wife to pass before knocking up wife number two.
Nadia couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for a kid to go through that. Her relationship with her own mother was complicated, to say the least, but, even when she hadn’t been around, she’d always been there. Even if “there” was the other side of the world.
In the end it hadn’t taken a flashlight, a map, or a millennium. This big strong man had just given her a most unexpected glimpse behind the iron curtain. A glimpse at hidden depths, at the moral struggles that had been waged beneath that slick exterior. And even while she tried telling herself it didn’t mean anything, that it didn’t change anything, it felt like a precious gift.
Feeling a sudden urge to even out the score, Nadia picked the path of least resistance. “I never knew my dad.”
Ryder’s dark eyes flicked to hers.
“He was someone in the dance world, I gather. My mother was a dancer too. From bits and piece I gleaned over the years I think he was one of the owners of the ballet, or on the board.” From the incessant mutterings of her sober grandmother, Nadia had also gleaned her mother had slept with the man in order to get ahead, and it had backfired spectacularly. No solos for a prima ballerina up the duff.
“Are you close to your mother?” Ryder asked.
“She lives in Toorak.”
It wasn’t what he’d meant, of course, and the clever glint in his eye, and hook to the side of his mouth, told her he was well aware of her prevarication. But he didn’t push. Didn’t ask for more than she was willing to give. This man holding her groceries. The same man who’d given her his jacket to keep her warm. The man who after every lesson—bar the one he’d fled to take care of his sister—had walked her out to make sure she stayed safe.