“You have no idea,” he said.
“Then tell me.”
“I already told you that I don’t share. I don’t sit and spill my guts to everyone that asks me my life’s story.”
“I’m not just anyone.” Although, maybe she was. Maybe she meant nothing to him. But part of her, a stupidly optimistic part of her, likely the same part who’d thought a rebellion for the benefit of the press was a good idea, was certain she had to be. That she had to matter to him.
“All the more reason to keep it to myself,” he said, not denying it. She shouldn’t have found satisfaction in that. But she did. “You’re my client, or, more to the point, your father is my client. Our relationships is a business association. Making it anything more is senseless.” He turned his focus to the view. She tried to do the same, but it offered her no comfort.
“We don’t have to make it more.” Boldness surged through her. “It is more.”
“Not to me,” he said, his voice flat.
He was lying. That practiced emotionlessness was a put-on, and she knew it now. The calmer he seemed, the more he was hiding. That much she was certain of. She just wasn’t entirely sure of what he was hiding.
“My mother died when I was young,” she said slowly. “She brought the laughter into our family. She was the one who gave hugs and stayed in my room if I had a nightmare. I don’t think I remember my father ever hugging me. Not once.
He couldn’t even cry when my mother died. He doesn’t do emotion either. He can’t even do it for his own kids. Couldn’t show it for his own wife.”
She swallowed hard. She’d never talked about this, not to anyone. Never to Xander, because Xander had left. Never to Stavros. Because beneath his easy charm he was all practicality and duty. Moving forward and doing what had to be done.
Though she remembered seeing him cry for their mother. He’d shown that much emotion at least. So she hadn’t been alone.
“I lost one of the only people who ever really made me feel like I was a person. Like I was more than duty to my country. My mother wanted me to have dreams. She used to talk to me about the things I would do in my life. And somehow, after she died, all of those things died with her. There was no talk of me going to college, of finding what I might be good at. No talk of me finding the man of my dreams, or traveling, or … anything. Some days I want her back so badly I’m afraid my heart will fold in on itself.”
She looked at Mak. “You’re the first person to really treat me like I matter since she died. And yeah, you do it reluctantly, and you make sure I know sometimes just how reluctant you are, but you at least ask me what I want. No one else does. Ever. So, to me, this is more than business. Sorry.”
Mak didn’t say anything, his focus on something that went beyond the view, beyond the mountains. Silence stretched between them, the air turning thick despite the elevation.
“Her name was Marina. As I mentioned, I married her without her family’s blessing. We ran away together when we were seventeen. I told you, I’ve made some very bad decisions.”
“Was marrying her such a mistake?”
“I think it was. Marina and I were married for two hours when a man who spilled a hot drink on himself crossed into our lane and hit us head-on.”
Eva’s stomach dropped, her fingers going numb. “Did … she die then?”
“No,” he said. “But sometimes I wonder if it would have been a kindness to her if she had.” He leaned forward, elbows rested on his thighs. He looked down, his focus on his hands, tented in front of him.
He didn’t speak, he didn’t move. His face looked leaner, somehow. Harder.
“What … happened?” Her words put a crack in the silence, but Mak still didn’t move.
“She couldn’t feel her legs and I … I was fine, I was cut, but nothing more. I’m not sure how that happened. She was talking to me though. And she was rushed to the hospital and taken into surgery. They knew then that the chances of her ever walking weren’t good. She told me I wouldn’t want a wife who couldn’t give me children. Who couldn’t do everything a wife should do. And I promised her that I would always be with her.” He looked up at her, his gray eyes dull, flat. “I promised.”