Page 43 of Vows in Name Only
Well, that meeting, her father and his damn contract.
Not going to think about him. Not now. Not here.
“It’s so beautiful,” she murmured, lifting a hand, fingers splayed and hovering over the pristine glass. As if she could reach right through it and touch the carefully tended hedges and flowers.
“It was my mother’s,” Cain said quietly. She started, not having heard him come up behind her. But his reflection towered over her in the glass mirroring their images. “It was the only change my father allowed her to make to the house that’s been in his family for generations. Even now, I don’t know why he did. Maybe because it added to the property value,” he mused, his voice and the accompanying chuckle bearing a bitter note.
The question that had been nagging her since they’d arrived at his house Saturday night danced on her tongue. And not for the first time. She’d quelled the urge to ask on those previous occasions, but tonight... With the walls they’d both erected to protect themselves a little more nebulous, she risked it.
“Why do you hate this house so much?” she whispered to his reflection.
Silence met her, and inwardly, she winced, regretting the impulse to intrude on his past. Damn her and her curiosity.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“My father abused me when I was younger. This house was my prison and personal hell.”
Horror and a wailing grief welled inside her, and she whimpered at the pain. She tried to whirl around, to wrap her arms around him, but two big hands on her shoulders prevented the movement. Cain didn’t let her turn around, but kept her facing forward, his chest pressed to her back. She ached to hold him, but this wasn’t about her.
However he needed to get through his story, she would respect it.
“Barron was never an affectionate man. He ran our family the same way he did the company—in total control, calculating, manipulative and ruthless. If not for my mother, there wouldn’t have been any love or warmth in this house. But he started beating me when I turned seven, and even her love couldn’t protect me. He called it ‘making a man out of me.’ All I understood was there must’ve been something so defective, so horrible about me that he would backhand me as soon as talk to me. But as bad as the physical abuse was, the emotional and mental violence was worse. Never knowing what awaited me when I came home from school or when he arrived from work. Trying to be perfect, when no matter how hard I tried, I could never achieve it. Suffering from stomachaches and headaches from the stress. Throwing up whenever he summoned me to the library. Because I knew what awaited me there. And nobody could stop him. Nobody could save me,” he murmured.
Devon closed her eyes, biting her lip to hold back the tears stinging her eyes. She hated Barron Farrell in this moment. Detested him for hurting his son. For putting that distant note in the voice of the man the boy had become. As if retelling this story pained him so much he had to speak as if it had happened to someone else.
Oh yes. She hated Barron.
“Did he abuse your mother, too?” she whispered.
“Not physically, no. But he cheated and flaunted his infidelities in her face. Belittled her, called her names... I often wondered why he bothered to marry and have children, and the only reason I can come up with is he wanted victims to torture. My mother could’ve left, could’ve divorced him. But that would’ve meant leaving me behind because there was no way Barron would’ve let her have custody. So she stayed until I was old enough to defend myself. Not long after I graduated college and moved out of this house, she divorced my father, and I never returned here. Until the funeral.”
No wonder he’d been in that garden. Having to return to this hellish place... She frowned at their reflections. “Why stay here then? It’s obvious to me that you can’t stand stepping foot in here.”
“Because it’s another stipulation of my father’s will,” he explained. “I have to live here for a year or risk losing Farrell International.”
“That bastard,”she hissed, fury a living thing inside her. “It wasn’t enough that he tortured you as a child, but he’s still trying to manipulate you from the grave.” She shook her head. “After the year is up, you should turn this place into a home for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. Give them a place to transition between a shelter and being on their own. That would show him from wherever he is now... And just for the record, I don’t think he’s lookingdownon us,” she muttered.
His low laughter rumbled against her back and he rubbed his chin over the top of her head. The casual display of affection had longing for what could never be lodging in her throat. The reminder sent splinters of pain digging beneath her skin. Especially in light of what he’d just revealed.
“I’m sorry for all you suffered, Cain,” she said softly, covering the hand on her shoulder, threading their fingers together. “That man has stolen so much from you. Your childhood. Your innocence. Your brothers. And you didn’t deserve any of that. I can’t imagine...” She shook her head, her grasp on him tightening. “The man you’ve become now is a testimony to the character and strength your father had no hope of ever possessing. Then, after spending years choiceless and powerless, my father comes along and tries to strip both from you again. I’m so sorry,” she rasped, now fully comprehending why Cain hated her father—and her—so much. He’d survived his horror of a childhood, claimed his power and control, and then they came along to remind him of the hell he’d endured.
Spinning around, she faced him, forced herself to meet the scalpel-like gaze that seemed to peer to the very soul of her.
“I have something to tell you.”
Her father had warned her not to reveal the truth to Cain, but given what he’d just confessed, there was no way she could continue deceiving him. She owed him the truth.
“You asked me why I didn’t walk away from this deal between our fathers.” His eyes narrowed slightly, but she inhaled a deep breath and continued before losing her nerve. “He threatened the community center. If I didn’t go through with the engagement and marriage, he wouldn’t just have me fired, but would revoke his financial support and convince other much needed donors to do the same. I didn’t care so much about my job, but too many other people depend on the center. I couldn’t tell you before now because Dad...” She trailed off, shrugged. “Anyway, I thought you should know—”
He cupped her face, cutting off the flow of words. His mouth slanted over hers, voracious and demanding. With a moan, she tilted her head back, opening wider for the erotic onslaught, circling her arms around him and clutching his back for purchase.
His hands fell away from her cheeks, and bending his knees, he grasped the backs of her thighs and hiked her high in the air. Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around his waist, shifting her arms to his neck. And when he laid her out on the kitchen table like a meal he couldn’t wait to devour, she surrendered to his passion. To the need that his kiss had ignited in her.
But even as he removed his shirt from her and drew her nipple into his mouth, she couldn’t silence the voice that whispered Cain would never be able to see past her father’s sins to love her.
Which presented one hell of a problem.
Because she’d fallen in love with him.
