Chapter 54

• Travis smiled grimly. “She was aloof with them both, but she chose my stepfather over my father because he could provide her with the status and security she’d come to enjoy…”
• Travis looked at her and his smile became bleak. “For a long time I never wanted to think about why she did those things...but I have to realise that perhaps for her, security had become the thing she needed most— above warmth and emotion. Above anything,” His mouth twisted. “From an early age I believed instinctively that women could ruin you even if you had money and success. I believed that to succeed I had to hold women at the same distance my mother had always done with the men around her. I wouldn’t ever be weak like my father or stepfather, and never lose control.”
• Travis smiled again but it was impossibly bleak. “And then you came along and slid so deeply under my skin that I didn’t realise I’d lost all that precious control until it was too late.”