Page 33 of Hunted By the Guardian
But she did like what he had said. It was enough to make her set down her own book, grateful that there was someone to discuss this with. She even turned slightly in her chair so that she was facing him more directly.
“That’s the reason I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was lying awake thinking about all he’s been through. He’s had such a hard life. I wish there was something I could do to take all that away. Not child deserves to go through ordeals like that.”
“I agree,” Jonathan said, his voice low and brooding. “When I think about that story he told us, about him being abandoned by his mother, waiting for her to come back only to realize it wasn’t going to happen…well, it puts the struggles of my life into perspective, I’ll say that. No matter what I went through, I never had to fear that I would be abandoned or out on the streets. I always had a roof over my head. I always knew where my next meal was coming from. A little boy shouldn’t be without that kind of comfort and security.”
“You really do care about him,” Violet said softly. “I’m sorry I accused you of pretending to care. I was very wrong about that.”
“I’m not angry,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting it either. I did think I was just making the extra effort to prove a point at first. I was never doing it out of any desire to manipulate Noah. But perhaps…it’s possible I was trying to manipulate you.”
“Of course you were.” Her voice was milder than she had ever expected it to be when talking about this. “We’ve both been doing that to one another, since this whole thing began.”
“Well,” he said, “perhaps it’s time we stopped.”
She glanced at him and saw that he was smiling, and she smiled back. “Perhaps it is,” she said.
For the next several minutes, the two of them went on reading together in a silence that was something like companionship. Violet couldn’t quite let go of the feeling that they were watching one another, that each of them was waiting for a sign of something from the other. But she didn’t know what that thing was or how to incite it, and eventually she gave up and focused on her book.
And that was when he spoke again.
“You said you needed this house.”
She looked up and nodded slowly. “I did,” she conceded.
He leaned forward. “Would you tell me why?
CHAPTER 18
Immediately, he wondered why he had asked the question. Did he really want to know the answer? Or rather, he did want to—curiosity was certainly getting the better of him—but would she tell him?
What if this is a mistake? If she really does need this place, finding out more about that could give me a reason to let her stay. I am certainly not looking for reasons to convince myself to keep her here.
But that was going to be enough trouble anyway, he knew. It was already getting hard to imagine life without her. The bond he had formed with Liam seemed so much richer when she was included in it. And then there were all the little stolen moments. Moments like the one they were in right now.
She filled up the house, in a way. It was more vibrant, more alive, because she was here. And it was difficult to think about what things might be like after she was gone.
“I would tell you why,” Violet said carefully. “If you really want to know. I didn’t have the impression you were that interested in things about my past.”
“Perhaps it’s time we all learned a little more about one another, though,” Jonathan suggested. “We’re both glad to know more about Noah, aren’t we? Even though the things we learned are so horrifying, it’s better to know.”
“It is,” she agreed. “I’m glad to know. And I’m glad he’s safe with us now, away from the people who treated him so miserably.”
“So tell me about you,” he urged.
“Well, nothing in my life was ever that bad,” she told him. “My father never cared much about me or my well-being, but he wouldn’t have raised a hand to me, and he kept a roof over my head until recently.”
Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “Until recently?”
“When he remarried—my mother died when I was young—he gave in to his new wife’s wish to have me out of his house,” Violet explained. “But even then, he didn’t put me out on the street. I don’t think he wanted to give in to his new wife’s demands, but he simply thought he might lose her if he did otherwise. He is a weak man. In spite of his bluster, he doesn’t have the strength of his convictions. Not that his convictions ever favored me that strongly in the first place,” she added. “He never cared to be a father. At least, not to me. So while I think he might have felt a bit strange about turning me out, I’d imagine that the only thing he feels now is happy to be rid of me. If he thinks about me at all, that is.”
“That’s rather sad,” Jonathan said, frowning. It wasn’t as awful and tragic as Noah’s story—Violet had been a grown woman, not a child, when her father had turned her away. Still, it made something deep within him ache with sadness to think that her father had never cared for her, that he had been all too happy to let her go because he had married a woman who hadn’t wanted her there.
“And so you need this place,” he surmised. “Because you can’t return to your father, and you need a place to live.”
“That’s right,” she murmured.
He leaned back in his chair, considering that.
He didn’t want to do as her father had done. He didn’t want to turn her out of the life she was trying to build. Especially not if she had nowhere else to go.
