Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 1 of 2
derided. Javiero had been young enough that he hadn’t fully grasped what was being asked. Or what it meant.He was a man now, though, hearing it and seeing it as an adult. Val had been a child. A rebellious pain-in-the-ass adolescent, but a child all the same.
The look in Val’s eyes today was one of infinite betrayal. Revilement.
As comprehension dawned, Javiero’s face nearly melted off his head. The ancient rumor that he’d dismissed as salacious and unimportant had had truth behind it. His vision of Val and their shared past broke open, leaving him reeling.
Val’s rejection of Niko’s fortune came into focus under a fresh light. Val hadn’t done it as a deliberate effort to harm Javiero. Val had escaped an untenable situation, plain and simple.
Niko was the one who had used Val’s quest for independence as a benchmark against which he had compared Javiero. Niko had used it as an excuse to yank his support and leave Javiero flailing. Javiero could blame Niko for his struggles and his grandfather’s early death, but he couldn’t blame Val. Not anymore.
Struck dumb, he watched Val and Kiara hold a sharp exchange that resulted in Val walking away from her.
A movement in his periphery dragged his attention to the terrace.
He couldn’t tell if Scarlett had heard, but she was so pale her lips had disappeared. Tears tracked her cheeks. Her hopelessness was so visceral, her heartbreak so tangible, he nearly buckled under the agony of it.
She turned into the house and he felt it as an indictment. Reflexively, he started to go after her.
Kiara stopped him with a distraught hand clenching his sleeve. “Javiero, you have to tell me.”
He splintered, longing to go after Scarlett. Not ready to face the shame wedging into him, cleaving a line through him, splitting Val off the block of hatred he’d nursed all these years.
He told her what he knew, which was only a whisper of gossip about Val and one of their female teachers. He still couldn’t fathom it, but it had to be true.
“Did you tell Niko?” she asked, eyes wide with horror.
“He asked me what I knew and I told him the truth, that I hadn’t seen anything, only heard other boys tease him because she flirted with him.”
Val had been thirteen. Tall and mature looking and, yes, selling a glossy image of sex for stupid amounts of money. That didn’t mean an adult woman having sex with him was okay. That didn’t mean it had been his choice.
“What did Niko do? Anything?” Kiara asked desperately.
Javiero drew a deep, pained breath, appalled as he recalled with a harsh, humorless laugh, “He said, ‘I guess your brother is a man now. When will you become one?’”
Javiero had pushed that out of his head the way he’d pushed away all his father’s disparaging comparisons.
What Val had suffered had been abuse, though. He could see that now and was filled with self-loathing at not having done more. No wonder Val had walked away without a backward glance.
“I have to go after him,” Kiara said, tears in her eyes. “But Javiero, we have to talk about Scarlett. She needs to see her doctor.”
CHAPTER TEN
SCARLETT WAS SHAKING as she paced the upstairs sitting room. She knew there was no avoiding Javiero, but he didn’t follow her right away, which only set her nerves more on edge.
When he did appear, Kiara was with him. They both looked shell-shocked.
“I have to go after Val,” Kiara said in a plea for understanding. “I’ve requested the corporate helicopter and will leave as soon as it gets here. I’m so sorry to abandon you like this. Javiero will explain.”
As Kiara disappeared, Scarlett looked to Javiero, whose profile was stony and unreadable. He stepped onto the small terrace that overlooked the pool. Waves of emotion rolled off him., but they were strapped down beneath layers of acute tension.
He wasn’t railing at her or demanding she come back to Spain, and she realized with deep chagrin that that was what she had been hoping for. She wanted him to want her. Needed him to demand she remain a part of his life.
He was damningly silent.
Nausea cramped her stomach.
“What happened with Val?” she asked in a voice that creaked with the strain she was under.
“I let him down.” His voice was brutally unforgiving. “I can blame Niko and our mothers and the fact I was a child, but—” He raked his hand across his stubbled beard, making a noise of self-disgust. “Kiara tells me I let you down, too.”
He turned, and his one eye was so empty of light it was a depthless sea of futility.
That bleak look cut through what was left of her nervous energy, reaching the parts of herself she kept hidden and protected from everyone.
“You didn’t.” She sank into a chair, exhaustion falling over her the way it did lately. “I didn’t see it. Didn’t tell the doctor how bad my symptoms were. I thought it was hormones or grief or the stress of being fully in charge of Niko’s money. I used to get blue sometimes, during my cycle, if things were particularly difficult. It always passed. I was sure this would, too…” These stupid tears. She was so tired of feeling weak! “I don’t want to be this unhappy, Javiero.”
He blew out a breath as if she had punched him.
“It’s not your fault,” she murmured.
“No?” He studied her as though she was a puzzle he couldn’t work out, his mouth tight with frustration. “You ran away.”
“I couldn’t stay with your mother after blowing up at her like that.” She didn’t know how she would ever face her again.
“You could have stayed in Madrid.”
“I wanted to see Kiara. I knew you wouldn’t forgive me if I went to her in Italy.”
“You could have met her anywhere. Anywhere but here, Scarlett.” His voice was grim. “This was the one place you could come that you believed I wouldn’t follow.”
Anger reared above her emotional exhaustion. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is the closest