“The happy ending is right there in front of you,” she told him, her body swaying slightly as she leaned in to make her point. She was so warm, so sensual, that his blood heated even as he warned himself to cool it. “The screaming woman ended up figuring out her life and they all triumphed in the end.”

Sebastian was amazed that Charlie saw positive messages in a plan gone totally wrong. Ever since his parents had gone completely off the rails, he’d spent the past two decades on constant alert for the ways things could go wrong. Then he devised the right fix before everything got sucked down the tubes. He was always moving, planning, doing, acting—and encouraging others to do the same. But Charlie soothed something inside him with her unselfconscious laughter and relaxed sensuality. She inspired him too, with the way she approached her art so openly. So freely. Plus, she felt absolutely perfect against him.

“What were your favorite shows when you were a kid?”

In an instant, he went completely still inside, the relaxed feeling gone as if it had never been there at all. Sebastian didn’t hide his history from people, but he’d learned how to talk about his childhood on stage and in interviews without getting upset about it. He used his past as an example, treating his story as an object lesson in his talks: You didn’t have to be controlled by your past, but you did need to make sure you learned from it so that you wouldn’t end up repeating those mistakes.

But he knew he couldn’t do that with Charlie tonight. Not if he wanted her to know more about him than the billionaire façade right there on the surface.

“Are you okay, Sebastian?” she said softly, breaking through the fog he’d let descend around them.

He stroked her cheek, her soft, warm skin helping to bring him back to her. “Just thinking.”

Thinking about how he hadn’t watched TV as a kid because he’d been too busy looking after his parents. As far back as he could remember, they’d drunk too much and partied too hard. When they were drinking, they’d had huge fights, but they’d never hit each other or him. Mostly they’d just loved to party, staying out till all hours of the night until their bodies gave out, forcing them home to pass out in their bed. Or as close to their bed as they could manage. Once his mother had recovered from their latest binge, she’d always promised they’d change their ways. But then his father would reel her into another drink, another party, another great night out.

Until the day things went from great to deadly in the span of a heartbeat.

Sebastian had learned that you could love someone with all your heart and still be the worst thing for them. Like his dad had been for his mom. Each other’s worst enemies. It was a lesson he’d never let himself forget—just how much love could hurt and how toxic it could be when two people were a bad fit for each other.

Finally, he told her, “I didn’t watch much TV. I grew up in a seedy neighborhood of Chicago and my parents were alcoholics. TV wasn’t a priority.” Keeping them alive was. Until he couldn’t even manage to do that anymore.

Her lips parted, then her gaze moved over his face like a caress. When she put her hand on his arm, her heat highlighted his cold skin and how easily she warmed him up again. “That must have been tough. That’s why your friends mean so much to you, isn’t it? Because they were there for you when you needed them?”

He not only appreciated her questions—none of the women he’d dated had wanted to know more about his past than they could read in an interview or hear him speak about from the stage—but how matter-of-fact she was about it. Concern without pity. Strength and support without anyone being considered weak.

Charlie Ballard was an extraordinary woman. So extraordinary that he understood less now than ever about what could possibly be holding her back from the glittering success she deserved. With her heat seeping into his bones, his marrow, his heart, he silently vowed to give her the world. Whether she was ready for it or not.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The words had rolled off Sebastian’s tongue as if they were no big deal. I grew up in a seedy neighborhood of Chicago and my parents were alcoholics.

Maybe most people let him get away with that because they were so wowed or intimidated by the billionaire with the entire world at his feet. But the pain she’d heard—the pain he’d clearly been working so hard to hide—made Charlie desperately want to reach out to him, to help him in any way she could. Even if it was just by listening, she hoped he’d know he wasn’t alone.

“You’re right. If my friends hadn’t been there...” There was little inflection in his voice, but from the way he played with the ends of her hair, curling it around his fingers in a repeated loop, she knew that what he was saying bothered him. “My parents were big partiers. My mom might have been able to make it on her own. But my father was always about the next party. Until he burned them both out.”

“You took care of them, didn’t you? Even though you were just a kid.” She wished she could absorb the pain of his childhood and erase it, but for now, the stroke of her foot along his leg was a small connection he seemed to appreciate.

“I did my best.” He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, obviously needing comfort. Comfort she so badly wanted to give him. “But when my parents couldn’t hold down jobs anymore, I moved in with my friend Daniel’s parents for good. I was about thirteen then.”

Thirteen. Just a child. Anyone else who had grown up in Sebastian’s shoes would have been filled with darkness. But even as he exposed his past to her, he was sweet, caressing, gentle.

“They must be wonderful people.”

“Bob and Susan have greatness in them. Kindness. Caring. They had it tough too, but they still shared everything they had with us. Everything and more.”

She recognized the love threaded through every word—not only when he spoke about Bob and Susan, but also about his parents. “What happened to your parents?” Something told her she should slide her hand into his before he answered.

“They fell off the wagon one too many times.” The pain of their passing expressed itself in the slight tightening of his fingers around hers. “I was a senior in high school when Mom had a bad fall. She never recovered and died a couple of weeks later.”

“Oh, Sebastian.” Even bracing herself hadn’t helped. She still felt the pain of his loss arcing through her...just as she knew he had to feel it himself.

“A few weeks later my dad died in a drunk-driving accident. Luckily he didn’t hurt anyone else.”

Heartache spread to her entire body. To have to use the word lucky while talking about his father’s death?

It speared her, all the way to the core.

She slid her hand from his to take his face in her hands. “I’m sorry.” Not that she’d asked, but that he’d had to live through it at all.

“I am too. They were good people. Good people who couldn’t beat their addiction.”

It was an amazingly kind way of looking at the situation. But even though kindness was great, so, Charlie knew from personal experience, was anger. At least in small doses, if only to purge it from your system.

Had Sebastian ever given his anger wings—or four wild horses to drag it on a chariot through the streets until the wind, and the rain, burned it out?

“How did you get from there to—” She paused and swept her hand in front of her to encompass the huge house and property. Even the helicopter now waiting for its next flight in the nearby hangar.

“I’m a big talker.” Now that he was no longer telling her about his parents and his childhood, the tension began to leave his body. “I didn’t go to college, but I always liked telling people what to do. I especially liked it when they listened.” He grinned. “And, of course, when their lives got better as a result. A talk-show host who liked my shtick gave me my first big break.”