Tempted by Fate (The Fate Trilogy Book Two) by Sherilyn Gray Read Free Book Online Page A

blue eyes
were gazing at my face and a smile was on his lips. He bent his head down to me
and gave me a deep, passionate kiss, then picked me up and turned me around,
leaning backward so that my back was nestled comfortably against his torso, my
head resting on his chest.
    He kissed me once more on my forehead and held me tight.
     

Chapter Five
     
    Lying against Victor’s chest felt warm and
comforting. His hand played with my hair idly as he took several deep breaths.
I reached back and felt his elbow, running my hand up his chiseled arm. Was he
acting nervous?
     
    “I think I’ve told you before that my mother
abandoned me when I was six.”
     
    “You mentioned it briefly,” I conceded. It
was such a delicate topic; I didn’t want to press him on the matter, but I
couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hear him finally open up. “What happened?”
     
    He sighed and stared ahead, seeming to
register nothing of what passed outside the window. “The men in my family are
cursed, it seems,” he finally said.
     
    Cursed? What a strange choice in words. Was he setting me up for some sort of fairy
tale story?
     
    “We fall madly in love with a woman only to
have her turn our entire world upside down and eventually break our hearts. It
first started when my grandfather cheated on my grandmother and left her for
someone younger. Nobody in the house ever forgot the scene she made as she
left. She told him he would never be happy as long as he lived, nor would
anyone close to him. A year later, his new wife suddenly got sick and passed
away. Not long after that, he passed away in an accident.
     
    “And then there was my father. He and my
mother seemed like the happiest couple in the world. I think my father even
believed it. One day I did very well on a test and I wanted to show my mother
my grade. I searched all around the house for her, and even outside in the barn
where she would sometimes be with the horses. She was nowhere to be found.
Eventually I found my father in his office and asked him if he had seen her. It
was the first time I’d seen him drunk. He had a half empty bottle of whiskey in
his hand and told me I would probably never see my mother again.”
     
    He took a deep breath. I couldn’t face him as
he opened up to me, it was too intense. All I could do was run my hand up and
down his leg.
     
    After a moment he continued. “She told my
father that she didn’t love us anymore. Still doesn’t make sense to me to this
day.” He shook his head. “I try to only remember the good times I had with her,
but it’s almost impossible. The abandonment always creeps in.”
     
    “So you shut it up in a box and lock it?”
     
    I felt Victor’s jaw harden against my head as
he squeezed my arm. Should I have let that moment with Evelyn drop? It was too
late now. Thoughts raced through my mind as I wondered whether I had touched a
nerve too sensitive.
     
    After another deep breath, he spoke. “You
can’t quite do that though, can you? If it’s important to you, it will always
creep up. You can’t run away from it forever.”
     
    “Unless you have amnesia,” I said, trying to
make a joke at my own expense to lighten the mood.
     
    He chuckled. “I had never considered the
amnesia angle until I met you.”
     
    I was glad he wasn’t going to clam up again.
“It’s not great,” I said. “So you weren’t exactly good at dealing with your
feelings about your mother growing up then?”
     
    He nodded. “Neither was my father. He
remained cold and distant throughout my childhood and up until his death. I
thought I had moved on. Hell, I was an adult; why would I still dwell on
something that happened more than twenty years ago?”
     
    He sighed. “And then Evelyn came along. She
was in the same class as me in college. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. We
fell in love and married four months later, traveled across the world, made
love wherever we could, and even considered having children. But