“He insisted she read to us, and when she stumbled through a passage, everyone laughed. He laughed the loudest and said something about Catarina being an empty but decorative head.”
Eli felt the sudden heat in her body as she flushed a deep rose. She was humiliated all over again. He hadn’t expected that either, but it stood to reason. Childhood experiences shaped everyone. Catarina’s childhood had not only been traumatic, but she’d grown up thinking she wasn’t worth anything to anyone.
She was beginning to actively struggle against him, fighting, not him, but her past. Elijah had brought it too close and the dark ugly memories were flooding her mind.
Eli leaned down, his mouth a whisper from her ear. “Settle,” he advised softly. “This is all crap. It’s over. You aren’t with him, and you aren’t what he said you were.”
He transferred one hand to the back of her head, shaping her skull with his palm, pushing her face into his rib cage and holding her there. Was it possible they all had Cordeau wrong and Catarina meant far more to him that he let on? That entire time, when he was convincing everyone around him, Catarina included, that she meant nothing, that he was even embarrassed by her, was Cordeau really protecting her from his associates?
Eli didn’t want to think so. He didn’t want to see Cordeau as having any redeeming qualities, but the truth was that no one was one-dimensional. All that time, Cordeau could have been pretending indifference to protect her. He tried not to think about the incident when she’d fallen out of the tree and Cordeau had nearly lost his mind. Had that been the act of an indifferent man?
“It wasn’t even a difficult piece, that poem,” Catarina said, her voice devoid of all emotion. “A child could have read it.”
Eli’s heart bled for her. “Let’s go home, baby. It’s been a long day. We’ve still got a ways to run this evening before we’re done.”
She turned away immediately, not looking again at Elijah or the other two men. As soon as they were away from the fence, she stepped away from him and began to jog back in the direction of the ranch house.
Eli stared after her for a moment and then turned to wave at the three men. Elijah lifted his hand in salute. All three men wore somber expressions. Eli couldn’t blame them. It was impossible not to feel the pain radiating off of Catarina. She’d been cut deep more than once. How many cuts like that could a person take before their soul was ripped away?
He fell into step behind her, jogging easily, covering the ground with his longer legs to catch up to her. She’d never had a chance. Not a single chance. She was beautiful and intelligent and so sweet he wanted to eat her up like candy, but never once had she had any real choices. If he were any kind of man at all, he’d let her go and hope she came back to him, but the Han Vol Dan was too close and his leopard would never allow its mate out of his sight. Did that make him every bit as bad as Cordeau? What the hell did that make him?
It took a good half hour to get home, and that was with them making good time. Catarina set herself a grueling pace. Twice he’d tried to slow her down, but she didn’t even acknowledge his warnings. He let it go when ordinarily he would have forced her to stop. Yeah. He was that kind of a man. He controlled things. He got his way. He looked after his own. Was he just like Cordeau? Did she see him that way?
He cursed with every step he took. Darkness streaked the orange sky in long layers, stacking one on top of the other, first sandwiching the orange and then squeezing slowly until all that color was gone. He thought he had a kitten on his hands, and he’d actually acquired a little tiger. Because Cordeau had essentially taught her she was nothing, she didn’t recognize that she was a tiger, not a kitten.
The house was dark when they arrived, but neither switched on any lights. Catarina held herself away from him, averting her face as he reached past her to open the kitchen door. He stepped back to allow her inside.
“I’m going to take a bath,” she announced.
He wasn’t surprised. She spent a lot of time in the bathtub and he knew it was a form of escape. Not certain what to say, he simply nodded his head. He watched her go, his heart sinking. What kind of man was he? He clenched his teeth. He already knew. He’d made the decision almost the moment he laid eyes on Catarina. Some part of him recognized her and what she meant to him. She’d given herself to him, committed to their life together. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, that decision, but there was no real choice for her. No other choice.