Adrian watched her, not speaking, but listening.

“So when my sister and I were growing up she always found a few quid extra here and there to pay for lessons for us. Tina had dance and singing lessons. She had a right lovely voice, she did.” But no real discipline.

“And you? Piano?”

Gillian nodded. “Yes.” She smiled. Those hours had been the best of her week, every week. Once her fingers brushed the keys it hadn’t mattered where she lived or what idiot her mother had gotten mixed up with this time.

“Was she a good mom then?”

Startled out of her memories, Gillian opted for honesty. “No. No, she wasn’t. She never should have had children.”

He paled a little. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “It happened a long time ago.”

“And your dad? Was he around?”

“No. And that was a good thing. My mother was a drunk.” Gillian’s laugh was without humor. “She also loved pills, and when we moved here, found crack cocaine to her liking as well. She also loved men who were easy to anger, hard to rouse when it came to work or any positive activity like cleaning up.”

“Christ. Did they hurt you too?”

“Here and there. I got good at staying out as much as I could. Got quick and nimble.” One of them had tried to break her fingers for fun. Because he’d known she loved the piano and he wanted to steal it from her.

Candace had hit him over the head with a bottle and they’d shoved him out the door. Mother-daughter bonding in Candace’s book.

“There’s not much worse in the world than a man who brutalizes women and children.”

“True. But to my mother, those were the best kinds of men. I used to think she wanted to fix them. But I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. I think perhaps it just got her off. The danger. The drama. Candace loved drama and with the men she chose, she got plenty.”

“Your sister . . .” He shook his head, she knew, probably uncomfortable.

“It’s all right. To be curious about her.” Gillian shrugged.

“It’s just . . . I feel like an ass**le for not remembering her, even after you showed me pictures. And then I feel like an ass**le for feeling like an ass**le because I’d never in a million years forget you. Your voice, the way your skin feels, the way your hair smells. You’re indelible.”

She swallowed back a knot of emotion at his words. At the way he gave her compliments that seemed to burrow deep and barb in her heart.

“You befuddle me.”

His grin was sideways. A little crooked. A lot sexy.

“I do? How so?” He underlined this with a little head toss, artfully tousling his hair around his face, totally aware of his effect.

“Stop it.” She blushed, shaking her head. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

“I do. Erin told me once it was one of my best qualities. Take a compliment, Gillian. God knows you need a few, and I certainly don’t have to lie because you’re one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known.”

“Thank you. I feel very much the same way about you.”

The cockeyed grin changed a little. For a moment he looked like a sweet little boy.

“I like to hear that. A lot.”

“My sister was a lot like my mother. They wanted to be loved so much they forgot themselves. The same love of addictions and shitty men. Present company excluded.”

“Why do you think she never told me or tried to get money from me? I mean, you say she was like your mom. And how come you didn’t call her Mum?”

“I did when I was little. She wanted me to call her Candace. And then when we moved here she wanted to be Mommy or Candy.” She withheld her shudder. “My gran was a mum. I’m a mum. Once I was ten or so, I knew she wasn’t a mum. She sure as hell wasn’t a mommy, though Tina called her Mommy. They were close. Ran together.”

“Was that hard for you?”

“You’re going to think me a monster, but I was just glad not to be part of it. I always hoped they’d find in each other what neither found from anyone else.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t what my mother wanted or expected. I’d say something like how she did all she could with what she had, but that’s a lie. She was lazy and self-centered and she had a great, gaping hole inside that she never filled. It made being around her painful. I preferred my books and my music and later, once we moved to the States, my gran.”

Gillian looked to where her hand lay in Adrian’s. He’d filled something inside her. His gaze met hers and she was glad she’d shared. Felt better for it. He made her want to let him in. Which scared her even as it thrilled her.

“As for why she never used Miles to blackmail you? I don’t know for sure. Using him to manipulate you would have not been out of her behavioral patterns. She was manipulative, and when you were with her she still had her looks and she wasn’t afraid to use them to get what she wanted. But she never did that where he was concerned. I like to think that she loved Miles in her own way. And that he was the one thing she felt like she’d done right. She signed the papers and left me alone to raise him. I’d have given her money, she knew that. I’d have done anything for him. But instead of using it, she respected it.”

He couldn’t know what that meant.

“The way we grew up . . . skint, we call it. You grow up with nothing like we did and it shapes you. For good or for ill, it frames everything in some way or other. My sister was a mess. I can’t deny it. But she wasn’t all bad. How we came up sent me one way and her another. Miles is my anchor in a way my piano never could have been. I weathered a storm and survived it. She just sort of got battered over and over until she couldn’t anymore. She never stopped being a victim.