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want to talk about you.”
    “There’s nothing I can tell you.”
    A thick, cold silence hung over us. I didn’t want to think of my father, but I couldn’t not. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know how to react to the knowledge that my father, the man who had raised me until he’d had enough, had also had a hand in Curtis’ upbringing. I couldn’t begin to think about the laws we might have been broken by sleeping together. It wasn’t illegal, was it? We hadn’t broken the law, had we?
    Curtis offered no further information and I knew he wouldn’t; not while he was closed off and appeared to lack all human emotion. I knew I had to break through his walls; it was the only way I would get any truth from him.
    “I never blamed him,” I confessed, digging deep for the confidence to have the conversation I’d never had. Not even with Thomas. “Not once. I thought it was my mother’s fault and I’ve hated her for years. I thought he left because she was a drunk. She just switched off and I thought that’s why Dad left us. I thought he was ashamed to have us as his children.” I felt my lip trembling, but Curtis offered no warmth. He gave no comfort, although I knew he was listening. I continued, desperate for something from him. “Maybe he was, maybe Mum did push him away. Maybe it was her fault he went searching for your aunt.”
    “There’s no point having the chicken and the egg argument,” he uttered, not looking at me, but lifting his hand to rest it on my leg.
    It was some comfort and I took it, confused by his response.
    “What does that mean?”
    He sighed, his fingers flexing against my leg. The butterflies moved into my stomach, a frenzy of uncertainty.
    “What comes first? The chicken or the egg? The drink or the bigamy?” he dragged his other hand through his hair, settling it on the back of his neck. “He was married to Lois before you were born.”
    “Lois?” I asked, stumped. “Your aunt’s name is Lois?”
    He nodded, offering no words.
    “Curtis,” I sat up, my body suddenly alert with a fraction of fight. “He has another wife.”
    He dropped his head and covered his face with his hands.
    “I’m sorry.”
    He shook his head, one leg bobbing up and down as he kept whatever emotion that was fighting to burst out contained.
    “Who is she?” he asked, his voice muffled and full of hurt. Then he shot to his feet before I could answer and turned his back on me.
    He moved to his bag in the corner and rummaged through it, tossing a pair of sweats and new t-shirt on the bed. I watched him cross the room, the tension that had marginally eased last night returning in full force. He entered the bathroom and moments later I heard the shower running. He returned to the bedroom, still refusing to look at me and rested his hand on the door handle.
    “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes. Take a shower.”
    I sat up and climbed warily out of bed. “Will you join me?”
    I waited as he bowed his head and banged it on the door. I was naked, embarrassed, but willing him to look at my body, to find the connection we’d once had that had disappeared over the years and been replaced by a strange chemistry that was neither passionate nor extinguished. It was dangerously electric. I lifted my hands to my hips, knowing it had always had an effect on him, but he refused to look at me.
    “No.”
    He opened the door, left the room and took the warmth with him, leaving me with nothing but the humiliation and rejection I should have expected from him.
    I stepped into the shower, the water burning my sensitive skin as it pounded against the marks left after last night. There were small thumbprints on my hips from where Curtis had squeezed me and pulled my body onto his, reaching depths that made me come around him and beg for more. As I squeezed shower gel onto my hands and lathered it over my body, the Curtis-scented steam enveloped me and the warmth returned. The wild heat that left me feeling