“Tell me what happened,” Kiley asked.
Julian sighed heavily. “Why do you want to know?”
“I want to know everything about you,” she said.
He shifted so they were lying with her in his arms, his front to her backside, snug as spoons in a kitchen drawer.
“It’s not something I talk about,” he told her.
“Why did that man try to kill you?” she asked to encourage him.
Julian was silent for a long time, his breathing audible in her ear. She knew he was awake, forming the words in his mind before he shared them with her. She waited, not pressing, her hands lightly clutching his arms, one thumb rubbing the wiry hair on his wrist.
“I left home when I was twelve,” he said. “It was after the Christmas holiday and I was on my way back to the boarding school where my father had gone when he was a boy. I had tampered with the stem on the tire, figuring about how long it would take the sedan to get to a stretch of road far enough away from any nearby houses.” He chuckled. “I’ve always been good at math.”
“I haven’t,” Kiley laughed in reply.
“While the chauffer was changing the tire, I got out and told him I had to take a leak.”
“And never came back.”
“And never came back,” Julian echoed.
“Where on earth does a twelve-year-old boy go when he’s running away?”
“To the docks,” Julian answered. “And a ship onto which I could stow away.”
“That was a dangerous thing to do.”
“More dangerous than I realized,” Julian agreed. “I hid inside a crate, thinking I would be able to sneak out at night and find something to eat.” He snorted. “I wasn’t counting on that crate being shoved up against several others with no way for me to get out.”
She gasped. “Oh, my God. You could have starved to death.” Her eyes widened. “Or suffocated.”
“I realized that a bit too late,” he said.
“Just thinking about it scares me,” she said, tears gathering.
“I have nightmares about it,” he told her. “Henri has told me I wake up clawing at the air.” He shrugged. “I guess I’m trying to claw my way out of the crate. I don’t know.”
“You traveled all the way to America like that?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “If it hadn’t have been for Henri, I probably wouldn’t be here today.”
“He found you,” she stated.
“He smelled me,” Julian corrected.
He went on to tell her how Henri had been snooping around the docks, looking for something to steal, and had caught a whiff of the smell of excrement coming from a crate containing boxes of prams—English baby carriages. Of how Henri had used a forklift to move aside the crate jammed in front of the one in which Julian hid and how he had pried open the crate only to catch an unconscious, starving boy in his arms.
“He thought an animal had somehow gotten into the crate. Henri is a staunch animal activist and he didn’t stop to think what he was doing when he illegally opened that crate. It never occurred to him he’d find a human in there,” Julian said. He sighed. “A half-starved boy at that.”
“What did he do?” she asked. “Did he turn you in?”
“No, that wouldn’t have occurred to Henri, either,” Julian replied.
“He took you in,” she said.
“He took me to Celeste. He was working for her at the time.”
Kiley bristled at the name. “Did she pay him to provide boys for her brothel?” she grumbled.
“Henri had numerous ways of making money back then, sweetness. He is a pickpocket of the first order as well as one hell of a cat burglar, a master forger and the best card shark I’ve ever seen. He is also quite the enforcer when he needs to be.”
“Did Celeste Dubois pay him to provide males for her brothels?” Kiley repeated.
Julian tightened his hold around her. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Son of a bitch,” she fumed. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t like that man.”
“He didn’t procure them for her, sweetness,” Julian said. “He introduced them to her. What they did after that was their affair.”
“Yeah, well, did she pay him for those introductions?”
When Julian didn’t answer right away, she craned her neck and looked up at him. The glow of the tinkling lights in the branches overhead shone in his eyes.
“Well? Did she?”
Julian let out a long breath. “Yes, she did.”
“Then he procured for her,” she said.
Not wanting to argue with her, he nuzzled her neck. “She’s not as bad as you think she is, Kiley.”
“So he took you to her,” she said, ignoring his assessment of the woman. “And she nursed you back to health.” Her words were said in a mocking tone.
“You were asking about the man I killed,” he reminded her. “Not my introduction to Celeste.”
“And in gratitude, you became one of her male escorts,” she said, pretending not to take the hint.
“You want to know about that?” he asked, his tone as sharp as hers had been mocking.
“How much did she charge for you at that age?”
Julian squeezed his eyes shut. “Kiley, she never sold me to other women. She didn’t even touch me until she considered me old enough. By then, I’d gotten over the reason I’d run away in the first place.”
“Which was what, exactly?”
“My uncle and adoptive father molesting me,” he replied.
She tried to turn over in his arms, wanting to face him but he wouldn’t allow it. He kept her back to him.
“D-did your mother know?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think she ever did. They were careful to hide it from her. I don’t even think she suspected they were abusing me.”
He told her of his childhood. Of how his father and uncle had hurt him, degraded him, abused him in ways he could not discuss. Of how he had tried twice before to run away only to be caught and punished in such a brutal manner he had spent several days in bed. Of how his mother had stood by witnessing his chastisement that day, unaware of the real reason he was being punished. He told her of his misery and his self-loathing and how he felt unloved and unwanted. Of how his mother often ignored him most of the time, foisting him off on the servants to be cared for.
“I spent a lot of time by myself when my father and uncle were in London on business. I would go out to the woods and lay under this old tree, staring up through the branches, watching the fireflies.”
“That’s why you had this bed built?”
“It was the one place I felt safe,” he replied.
She clutched his arms, trying to pass her sympathy onto him in touch.
“Celeste took care of me,” he explained. “She showed me the love I had not known since I was a small boy.”
“I’m sure your mother loved you in her way,” she said.
“My real mother, yes,” he said quietly. “Not the one who adopted me.”
The knowledge of who was lying beside her surged through Kiley’s mind like a freight train speeding through the night. She jerked around, pulling out of his arms, sitting up to stare down at him. “You’re…you’re…”
“Patrick Sean O’Reilly,” he said in way of an acknowledgment. “If you really want to see the birthmark, I’ll be happy to show it to you.”
“You knew all along why I was here,” she accused. “You knew your mother was looking for you.”
“Not exactly,” he defended. “I knew I was adopted but never knew who my birth parents were. I certainly didn’t know she was looking for me. If I had, I would have contacted her long before now.”
“But you knew why I was here,” she said.
“Something didn’t sound right with the background information Dr. Carstairs provided us. I had Henri check you out. That’s when he found out who you worked for, why you were at the Cay and who had hired you.”
“How did you learn all that?” she said, her brows slanted.
“Ross Bennis really likes his bourbon, doesn’t he? Buy him enough shots and he’ll tell you who shot Kennedy, I imagine.”
“Son of a bitch,” Kiley mumbled. “Greg needs to find a new partner.”
“Greg needs his ass kicked,” Julian growled.
“Well at least it didn’t come as too much of a shock for you,” she said, ignoring his remark. “I guess your adoptive parents had told you already that you were adopted.”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. They would never have admitted something like that. It wasn’t in their best interests for anyone—especially me—to know I wasn’t their real son.”
“How did you find out then?”
“By eavesdropping,” he admitted. “And it’s true what they say—an eavesdropper never hears anything good about themselves when they sneak around and listen in where they shouldn’t.”
She touched his face. “What did they say?”
“I believe my father’s exact words were, ‘I didn’t want the brat to begin with. I despise the little bastard. I can’t wait to get him out of our lives.’”
“Oh, baby,” Kiley said, her throat clogging with tears. “How old were you?”
“Eight, nine,” he answered. “Old enough to understand what it meant when my mother said they should have gone to an English orphanage instead of an American one because an English boy would have suited them better.”
“How awful that must have been for you,” Kiley whispered.
“I don’t know if I was more upset at learning I was adopted or that I was a Yank,” he said with a snort.
“Why did they come to America?” she queried. “How could an English couple—?”
“I didn’t learn the particulars of my adoption until I met Celeste. She hired a private investigator to look into it. He couldn’t find out who my real parents were because he never found any records of my birth. I suspect Albert paid enough money under the table for those records to disappear. I don’t know where I was born—”
“Iowa,” Kiley supplied. “Riverside, to be precise. Future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.”
Julian groaned. “A Midwesterner. How unsophisticated can one get?”
Kiley punched him lightly. “Hey, I was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa.”
“The detective Celeste hired went to England and, after spreading around a rather large sum of money, gathered quite a bit of information from Bellington servants.” He chuckled nastily. “Albert must have been rolling in his grave when those servants gave out information I’m sure neither he nor his brother knew they were privy to. I wasn’t the only one listening at keyholes.”
They were silent for a moment then she asked how he came to be adopted.
“Albert Bellington’s family knew what he was. He was head over heels in debt, very close to being sent to jail for buggering little boys. His grandfather found him a bride, Edwina Cullford Simpson, and forced him to marry her. Edwina was in love with Albert’s brother Clive but Clive was no different than his older brother—a sodomite of the highest order. Edwina was the heir to a vast fortune and both brothers needed that money. They wanted a baronial estate, money to spend lavishly on their male lovers and the respect being allied to the Simpson name could give them. As a wedding present Edwina’s parents gave her a mansion Albert promptly named Bellington Hall and Clive moved in with them.”
“Were they…. Did they…?” Kiley bit her lip, unsure of how to ask the question that nauseated her.
“I always thought so but I don’t know for sure,” Julian replied.
“Albert didn’t love his wife, I take it,” she said.
“He despised her.”
“And she loved Clive.”
“To this day I doubt she knows he prefers males.”
“Then why did they want children?”
“Edwina was an only child. At her father’s death, she inherited a vast amount of money. There was money in the Bellington family as well. More than in the Simpson’s but Albert’s grandfather refused to give either of his sons the inheritance because he knew they would go through it like a hot knife through butter. The only way Albert would ever see the Simpson money was to produce a male heir for his grandfather.”
“Edwina couldn’t have children?”
“Didn’t want to,” Julian told her. “So they took an extended holiday in America, privately looking for a child to adopt.” He clenched his teeth. “Lucky me that they found me, huh?”
“I’m surprised Albert’s grandfather didn’t object.”
Julian laughed mirthlessly. “He never knew,” he said. “The Bellington family was told Edwina was expecting and the physician warned travel was not recommended. That is why she supposedly gave birth in the States rather than in England.” He plowed a hand through his thick black hair. “She and Albert took pictures of her with a pillow under maternity dresses so the old man could see her in the family way. Albert’s grandfather passed away before the happy event took place.”
“That is awful,” Kiley proclaimed.
“It was in the will that the heir to the Bellington estate was to inherit on his twenty-first birthday. If that heir died before inheriting, the money would go to numerous charities. If he died after inheriting the estate, his next of kin—meaning my father—would get eighty percent of the money.” He sighed deeply. “I doubt I would have survived all that long after I inherited.”
Kiley’s eyes widened. “You think they would have had you murdered?”
“That’s exactly what they tried when they sent that man after me in New Orleans.”
He told of opening his door one evening to find Clive standing there with another man. The shock of seeing his “uncle” was surpassed only by the attempt on his life.
“I had turned twenty-one a few months earlier. How they found me, I have no idea. Apparently Clive wanted to make sure I never saw a penny of the money I was entitled to. His hired killer came after me with a knife as good old Clive stood there watching, smiling like a jackal.” Julian scooted up in the bed, leaning back against the wide headboard that resembled a thick tree trunk. “They didn’t count on me knowing how to use a knife, too.”
It had been Celeste who had taught him many things as he grew up—how to make love to a woman, how to run a brothel, how to protect himself. Henri had helped him to hone his skills, teaching him dirty tricks even Celeste didn’t know.
“I never went anywhere without a switchblade. New Orleans’s red-light district isn’t a particularly safe place. Clive’s killer and I fought; I wound up gutting him and would have gone after Clive, too, but the son of a bitch stabbed me in the back with his knife he took out of my kitchen while I was fighting with the man.”
“You lost a kidney,” she said softly.
“I almost lost my life,” he countered. “I think he thought he’d killed me.” He narrowed his eyes. “He should have stayed around long enough to make sure.”
“Lucky for you he didn’t,” she reminded him.
“Henri found me and took me to the doctor Celeste used to take care of her employees. Within an hour, I was on her jet and on the way to Jamaica where I had the surgery.”
“She covered up your murder of the—”
“No, she never had a chance to. She would have if she could have but Clive called the cops and they were all over my apartment before Celeste’s plane ever left the runway. A warrant was issued for my arrest and he told them he would testify I attacked the man without provocation. That’s why I can’t ever go back to the States.”
“She brought you here.”
He nodded. “She owned the island back then. We’ve since worked out a deal whereby I purchased the Cay from her. I’ve owned it for the last fifteen years.”
“I can only imagine the price you paid for it,” she muttered.
Julian grinned. “I suppose you can but you’d most likely be wrong.”
“You aren’t lovers?” she demanded.
“We have been. I won’t lie to you about that, but I haven’t lain with her in over six months. I had decided to end it a year before that.” He shrugged. “But she can be a very persuasive woman.”
“I’ll just bet she can,” Kiley said, her mouth twisted.
“I was waiting for you,” he told her.
“You didn’t even know me,” she countered.
“No, but I knew I’d recognize you when we met.”
“You—”
“Shush,” he said, reaching out to cup her cheek “The past—yours and mine—is in the past. From this day forward, it will be just the two of us.”
“You don’t think she’ll try to keep you?” she asked. “I know I would if I was her.”
“She’ll be happy for me,” he said, pulling Kiley toward him. His lips closed over hers, drowning out any further words she would have spoken.
As his body slid over hers, his hands molding her body to his, the phone on the bedside table chimed softly.
They ignored it.