Not that it crossed his mind that in the long run she would reject the fortune. She'd find a way to trick herself eventually into believing she wasn't betraying her principles. He just had to help her get to that point a little quicker.
'He was the parent,' she quivered out. 'Parents care for their children.'
'In a perfect world, yes.' But, as she of all people should well know, the world was not perfect. It took a very stubborn idealist to retain a belief system like hers in light of her personal experiences.
She gritted her teeth. 'It's got nothing to do with a perfect world. It's called unconditional love. Not that I'd expect someone like you to know anything about that.'
'You'd be right, I don't,' he lied, pushing away the image that had materialised without warning in his head. His mother's thin, tired face, her work-worn hands. The memory was irrevocably linked with pain, which was why he didn't think about it, ever. 'Do you?'
The sudden attack threw her on the defensive. 'I see women willing to lay down their lives for their children every day of my working life.'
'Does that make up for your own mother abandoning you?'
He ignored the kick to his conscience when she flinched as though he had struck her. The illusion of fragility vanished as her chin lifted and she looked at him with angry eyes.
'None of this is about my mother.'
'Are you trying to tell me you're not angry with her for dumping you? My mother left me because she died...and for a long time I hated her for it.' They were words he'd never even thought, let alone voiced before, and they came with a massive slug of guilt and anger that her attitude had dredged up memories he had consigned to history. 'And you expect me to believe that you were never angry that you got dumped on a doorstep somewhere?' Maybe she genuinely didn't remember and that was why she was able to continue to lie to herself.
'It was a car park of a doctor's surgery. She knew that someone would help me, that I'd be safe.'
Safe...He closed his eyes, trying to banish the poignant image in his head of a dark-haired child standing there waiting for a mother who never came back.
'Some people should not have children,' Matteo condemned. He had decided long ago that he was one of them. It was too easy for a bad parent to scar their children, so why take the risk?
'She needed help, she had nowhere to go…'
'I find your determination to see this woman as some innocent victim slightly perverse. She was the one who walked away from your grandfather. And she was an adult, not a child.'
Unable to argue with the facts the way he presented them, she snapped back. 'If this so called grandfather of mine is so anxious to make contact, why isn't he here? Why send you?'
'He's in intensive care.'
It was a slight exaggeration; according to his latest update, Alexander had been downgraded from high dependency to whatever the medical equivalent was. He was the next step up...the walking wounded, maybe?
Her reaction was everything he had expected from someone who seemed to have bleeding heart stamped into her DNA. Like a pricked balloon, her anger deflated with an almost audible hiss.
Her eyes slid from his. 'Well, I'm sorry about that,' she mumbled stiffly. 'But I have no room in my life for someone I despise…' She broke off as he suddenly leaned back in his leather seat and laughed.
'That's it, of course!'
'What's it?'
'It's just I've been wondering who you remind me of.'
The suspicion in her eyes deepened. 'What are you talking about?'
'Someone who doesn't understand the word compromise, who can't forgive anyone who lets them down…in fact, anyone, even family, no, especially family, who doesn't live up to their idea of what is right...' He arched a dark brow. 'Sounding familiar?'
It took her a few seconds to divine his meaning. Her horrified reaction was instantaneous. 'I am nothing like my grandfather.'
'Well, that's an improvement. You admit you have one now. I've never put much faith in the whole gene thing. I might have to rethink it…you've never met the man and yet in your own way you are as stubborn and self-righteous as Alexander.'
'How dare you?'
'Easily.' He dismissed her outrage with a click of his long fingers. 'Your grandfather couldn't forgive your mother so he lost her. You can't forgive him and you're willing to reject him when he makes the first move.'
'A move that was twenty-four years coming!'
'Granted.'
Kat's head had sunk forward, her chin almost on her chest, so that her expression was hidden from him as she muttered, 'I'm nothing like him.'
'Prove it.'
She lifted her head in response to the soft challenge, making herself look at him, mainly because once their eyes were connected it was difficult to break that connection, she observed angrily.
'You are a very manipulative man.'
He gave what she considered a heartless laugh, which sadly didn't make it any the less attractive.
'I'm impressed. It takes most people much longer to figure that one out.'
'And by then it's too late,' she said bitterly as she realised it already was for her. Like it or not, she had been put in a position where she had to prove that the future of the refuge was more important than...what? She realised that it hadn't been spelt out yet what her side of any bargain would be.
'What does he expect from me?'
'Alexander?' His broad shoulders lifted in a negligent shrug. 'You should ask him that.'
She squeezed her eyes closed, then opened them wide. 'Do I have any other family?' The sudden possibility that she had an entire family out there, aunts, uncles, cousins, felt strange...and yet exciting.
'Not that I am aware of,' he said, feeling quite irrationally guilty when the spark faded from her eyes. Another emotion broke through his defences that Matteo couldn't put a name to, didn't even try. It took seconds for him to douse it, but the memory of that nameless feeling remained like a discordant echo as he responded to the question with evasion that came easily.
'But again, I suggest you should ask the man himself. I am not privy to all his secrets.'
She nodded. 'And if I do...see him...how does that work?'
Before he could congratulate himself on a job well done she gave a fractured little sigh and added, 'Does he have any idea what sort of life she led? The places, the men...?'
Without warning an image of the little girl she had once been flashed into his head again, along with a compulsion to ask, 'Do you remember?'
'She used to tell me stories.' Without warning her eyes filled with tears; the stories were true. 'Does he live on an island?' she asked, remembering the wistful quality in her mother's voice when she told those stories. 'He didn't want us and now I…I don't have a grandfather. I don't have anybody.'
He clenched his jaw as the plaintive cry from the heart threatened the professional distance he needed to retain. 'I know this has been a shock.'
She gave a bitter little laugh. 'You think?'
Shock?Was that what you called making someone question everything she'd thought she knew about her life?
'Look, I have no vested interest in this. I am simply the messenger boy. You make your decision and I'll relay it.'
She took a deep sustaining breath and looked him straight in the eye. 'I'll do it.' Oh, God, what am I doing? 'So, what happens now? If I agree to see him, I'm assuming he can't come here...unless that was a lie?'
'He is ill.'
'So that is real?'
He actually took some comfort from the fact that she was not quite as naive as she appeared, though even if she turned out to be half as naive it would be cause for serious concern.
'I wasn't lying. Alexander is seriously ill.'
'Is he in pain?'
'Not that I know of. Do you want him to be?'
Her eyes flew wide in comic-book shock-horror fashion. 'What sort of person do you think I am?'
'I think you're…'