Could he really be serious here? Could he perhaps, like her, need some additional insights in order to put the past behind him? The whole flirtation could just be his cover for a deeper confusion like she felt.
And she was probably overanalyzing. Didn’t men say things were a lot simpler for them?
Regardless, what harm could there be in showing him around the library? She couldn’t think of anywhere safer than here. Now where to start?
If she took him downstairs to the reception area, she would face questions later from the rest of the staff. Better to go farther into the stacks.
She mentally clicked through other areas to avoid. A book-group discussion. A local artist in residence hanging her work. Eloisa discussed the facility’s features by rote.
Jonah reached ahead to push open a doorway leading into a research area. “What made you decide on this career field?”
She looked around. Definitely secluded. She could talk without worrying about being overheard, but also she wouldn’t have the same temptations of being alone in her town house with Jonah. “My mother spent a lot of time staying under the radar. I learned low-key at an early age. Novels were my…”
“Escape?” He gestured around the high-ceilinged space that smelled of books and air freshener.
“Entertainment.” She shoved a chair under the computer desk. “Now they’re my livelihood.”
“What about after your mother married what’s-his-name?” Jonah followed, palming her back as she rounded a corner.
“My mother still liked to keep things uncomplicated.” How in the world had her mother ever fallen for a king? And a deposed king at that, with all sorts of drama surrounding his life? Enrique Medina seemed the antithesis of her stepfather, a man who might not be perfect, but at least had been a presence in her life. Loyalty spurred her to say, “His name is Harry Taylor.”
“Yeah, what’s-his-name.”
Eloisa couldn’t help grinning. Her stepfather wasn’t a bad guy, if a bit pretentious and pompous…. And she knew in her heart he loved his biological daughter more than he loved her. It hurt a little to think about that, but not anywhere near as much as it used to. “While I appreciate your championing my cause, I truly can stand up for myself.”
“Never doubted that for a second,” Jonah answered without hesitation. “What’s wrong with other folks—like me—throwing our weight in along with you?”
She simply shook her head. “I thought you wanted a tour.”
“We can tour and talk.”
Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she could walk and chew bubblegum around this man. She plastered on a smile. “Sure we can. And here’s my office.”
Eloisa swept the door open wide and gestured for him to follow her into the tiny space packed full of novels, papers and framed posters from literature festivals around the world. She placed the Dickens classic on a rolling cart to be shelved later.
The door clicked as it closed. She turned to find the space suddenly seeming way smaller with Jonah taking up his fair share of the room that wasn’t already occupied by her gunmetal-gray desk, shelves and an extra plastic chair for a guest.
Maybe her office just felt claustrophobic because there weren’t windows or even a peephole in the door. Not because they were alone.
Totally alone.
He hadn’t planned on getting her alone in the library.
Yet here they were. Just the two of them. In her tiny, isolated office.
Jonah pivoted away to find some distraction, something to talk about, and came nose to nose with a shelf of books. Art books and history books, all about Spain and Portugal. She wasn’t as detached from her roots as she tried to make out.
Jonah thumbed the gold lettering along the spine of a collection of Spanish poetry. He recalled she spoke the language fluently. “Have you ever met your biological father in person?”
“Once.” Her voice drifted over his shoulder, soft and a little husky. “I was about seven at the time.”
“That’s years after the last-known sighting of him.” Jonah kept his back to her for the moment. Perhaps that would make it easier for her to share. So he continued to inventory her books.
“I don’t know where we went. It felt like we took a long time, but all travel seems to take forever at that age.”
He recalled well the family trips with his three brothers and his parents, everything from Disney to an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. Their vacations would have been so different from that mother-daughter trip to see a man who barely acknowledged her existence. Sympathy kicked him in his gut. “Do you remember the mode of transportation?”
“Of course.”
“Not that you’re telling.” He couldn’t stop the grin at her spunk.
“I may not have a relationship with my father—” sounds rustled behind him, like the determined restoring of order as she moved things around on her desk “—but that doesn’t mean I’m any less concerned about his safety, or the safety of my brothers.”
“That’s right. Medina has three sons.” He clicked through what he knew about Medina from the research he’d been able to accomplish on his own—when he should have been working. But damn it all, this was important. “Did you meet them as well?”
“Two of them.”
“That must have seemed strange to say the least.”
“I have a half sister, remember? It’s not like I don’t understand being a part of a family unit.” Her voice rose with every word, more than a little hurt leaking through. “I’m not some kind of freak.”
He turned to face her again. Her desk was so damn neat and clean a surgeon could have performed an open-heart procedure right there. Germs wouldn’t dare approach.
Jonah, however, had never been one to back down from a dare. “Your mother would have already been remarried by the time you were seven.”
“And Audrey was a toddler.” She clasped her hands in front of her defensively.
Her words sunk in and…holy hell. “Your mom went to see her old lover after she was married to another guy? Your stepfather must have been pissed.”
“He never knew about the trip or any of the Medinas.” She stood straight and tall, every bit of her royal heritage out there for him to see. She ruled. It didn’t matter if she was sitting in a palace or standing in a dark, cramped, little office. She mesmerized him.
And she called to his every protective instinct at the same time. What kind of life must she have led to build defenses this thick?
“Your stepfather didn’t know about any of it?” Jonah approached her carefully, wary of spooking her when she was finally opening up, but unable to stay away from her when he sensed that she could have used someone to confide in all these years. “How did she explain about your father?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “She told him the same thing she told everyone else. That my father was a fellow student, with no family, and he died in a car accident before I was born. It’s not like Harry talked about my dad to anyone else. The subject just never came up for us.”
Jonah skimmed his fingers over the furrows along her forehead. “Let’s not discuss your stepfather. Tell me about that visit when you were seven.”
Her forehead smoothed and her face relaxed into a brief flicker of a smile. “It was amazing, or rather it seemed that way to me through my childish, idealistic eyes. We all walked along the beach and collected shells. He—” she paused, clearing her throat “—uhm, my father, told me this story about a little squirrel that could travel wherever she wanted by scampering along the telephone lines. He even carried me on his shoulders when my legs got tired from walking and sang songs in Spanish.”
“Those are good memories.”
She deserved to have had many more of them, but he kept that opinion to himself. Better to wait and just let her talk, rather than risk her clamming up out of defensiveness.
“I know it’s silly, but I still have one of the shells.” She nudged a stack of already perfectly straight note slips. “I used to listen to it and imagine I could hear his voice mixed in with the sound of the ocean.”
“Where is the shell now?”
“I, uh, tucked it away in one of my bookcases at home.”
A home she’d decorated completely in a seashore theme. It couldn’t be coincidence. He gripped her shoulders lightly. “Why don’t you go see him again? You have the right to do so.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“But surely you have a way to get in touch with him.” The soft give of her arms under his hands enticed him to pull her closer. He should take his hands off her, but he didn’t. Still he wouldn’t back off from delving deeper into this issue. “What about the lawyer?”
She avoided his eyes. “Let’s discuss something else.”
“So the lawyer is your point of contact even if the old guy never bothers to get in touch with you.”
“Stop it, okay?”
She looked back at him again hard and fast. Her eyes were dark and defensive and held so much hurt he realized he would do anything, anything to make that pain go away. “Eloisa—”
“My biological father has asked to see me.” She talked right over him, protesting a bit too emphatically. “More than once. I’m the one who stays away. It’s just too complicated. He wrecked my mother’s life and broke her heart.” Her hands slid up to grip his shirt. “That’s not something I can just forget about long enough to sit down for some fancy dinner with him once every five years when his conscience kicks in.”
He churned over her words, searching for what she meant underneath it all. “I miss my father.”
His dad had died in a car wreck when Jonah was only entering his teenage years.
“I told you I don’t want to see him.”
Jonah cupped her face, his thumb stroking along her aristocratic cheekbone. “I’m talking about how you miss your mother. It’s tough losing a parent no matter how old you are.”
Empathy softened her eyes for the first time since they’d stepped into her office. “When did your father pass away?”
“When I was in my early teens. A car crash. I used to be so jealous of my brothers because they had more time with him. Talk about ridiculous sibling rivalry.” He’d always been different from them, more of a rebel. Little did they know how much it hurt when people said he would have been more focused if only his father had lived. But he refused to let what others said come between him and his family.
Family was everything.
“We almost lost our mother a few years ago when she was on a goodwill tour across Europe.” The near miss had scared the hell out of him. After that, he’d knuckled down and gotten his life in order. His skin went cold from just thinking of what had almost happened to his mother. “An assassin tried to make a statement by shooting up one of her events.”
“Ohmigod, I remember that.” Her fists unfurled in his shirt and her hands smoothed out the wrinkles in soothing circles. “It must have been horrible for you. I seem to recall that some of her family was there…. You saw it all happen?”