Page 17 of Loving the Beast (Beauty 5)
“And ten years older than you. You aren’t fooling anyone, sweetheart. Definitely not him.”
Erin gasped. She didn’t want this woman to mess with her head, but that was her fear. Not that she was using Blake, but that he’d think so. Not that she didn’t truly love him, but that he didn’t truly love her. No, she wouldn’t let Bel mess with her. “You’re obviously angry and bitter over something, but you don’t know me. And I’m thinking you don’t know him.”
“I know enough. I know he’s rejected everything we’ve ever stood for, including a life in politics, including our friends, including the kind of woman who would have been a good wife to him.”
“I will be a good wife.”
“And I know you came from trash. That’s all you’ll ever be.”
* * *
Blake wanted to be anywhere but in this office, where he’d been lectured many times for some dumbass antic or another. He had quite a rap sheet at the prep school he’d gone to—ironic considering he was now a professor.
His father didn’t sit behind his desk. Instead he sat in one of the high-back leather armchairs by the fire, and Blake joined him there. Equals? Blake doubted that would ever be true. And maybe that was the way of fathers and sons, for one always to be the leader, even if the son had stopped following years ago.
“It must be serious,” his father remarked idly. “If it’s taking you this long to come out with it.”
Blake huffed a laugh without humor. “Serious, yes. I have a question to ask you, but I’m afraid I won’t like the answer.”
His father was silent, staring into a fire grate with no fire. Long minutes passed. “I know you thought I hated that you enlisted. And you’re right. I did.”
“Glad we cleared that up,” Blake said dryly.
“I was scared. Scared you’d never come home. And I was right, in a way. You never did come back to us.”
His throat was dry. “It wasn’t me you wanted. It was some other kid. One just like you.”
“Not just like me. I never had your courage.”
There was a finality to his words that made Blake’s gut clench. “I didn’t cut you out completely. I’m here now. And you’ll be invited to the wedding.”
“Even if you don’t like my answer to this question you’re going to ask?”
It was Blake’s turn to be silent, because he couldn’t make any promises. His loyalty was to Erin, and beyond that, it was to do the right thing. Any gratitude he had for his parents was like this house—old and creaking under the weight of the present.
“Dad, what happened with Sophia Raider?”
Silence. Stillness. His father had heard him, and understood him, every nuance of the question.
Blake gave him time to answer, because he’d rather have the truth. And he knew that for all that his father could spin a lie, in this room with just the two of them, he’d hear it.
His father spoke slowly. “How do you know about her?”
“She worked here, didn’t she? I could have known her that way.”
A slow shake of his head. “You were at university then, and coming home as rarely as possible. You never met her.”
Suspicion turned dark. “Why would you remember that? Something so specific, about your maid meeting your son?”
“Because she wasn’t just my maid.”
Blake closed his eyes. “Jesus.”
“It was wrong. I’m not defending myself. I’m just answering your question.”
“Did you hurt her?” he demanded. “Did you…” He couldn’t even say the word. “Did you force her?”
“What?” His father turned to him, a rare shocked expression on his lined face. “Christ, no. I would never force anyone, never hurt any woman. And definitely not her.”
