Courtship

Part 39

He glanced over at her, and wondered whether he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life by pushing her to be honest. "I'm not big on keeping secrets." Was his opening gambit. Rafe figured he would lay his cards on the table. Honesty, trust, sincerity were key elements he expected in a relationship. They had been dating for nearly two months now, and given he wanted things to go further he needed her to know he wanted that to happen from a solid base. And keeping secrets was not conducive to establishing a solid base. So time to put all his cards on the table and hopefully she would too. If not, then what, said a quiet voice in the back of his head.

"Sorry?" Taken by surprise at that rather unexpected comment, Marina repeated, "Sorry, what?" Why was he suddenly fixating on keeping secrets? Where had that question come from? Just the word secrets had her heart pounding. Her family had a huge secret. One they had kept for years, one that some people might think made them look really silly, given the Sojour D'Sa had fooled them for years. "Secrets?" She muttered.

Marina was tempted to laugh and hope that a sense of humour could distract him.

"Yes. Secrets. I'm not big on being kept in the dark about things." Rafe said just as the car reached the front door. He applied the handbrake, turned the ignition off and looked across at her before he asked quietly, "What about you?"

"Me?" She tried not to gulp. Where was this coming from? Had he heard something? From where? No one knew about their financial situation. So was he just guessing? Had something they said given them away? She was pretty sure he was not the type of man to take too kindly to being fooled.

Rafe unclipped his seat belt. "Yes. What about you? Are secrets your thing?"

"Urhm. Sometimes there's a need for them." Marina answered honestly. But it felt as if she had just dug herself a hole.

"Like when?" Rafe thought that if he kept things matter of fact, he would be able to tease out what exactly she was keeping from him. Her reaction just now suggested that his intuition was spot on. She was keeping him in the dark about something important.

To side step his question Marina dropped eye contact, reached for her seatbelt and unsnapped it as she mumbled, "What's this sudden interest in secrets? This is all rather odd, isn't it?"

"Odd?" Rafe turned in his car seat so that he could see her profile. "In what way?" She sounded worried. That just served to confirm his conclusion. Something very dodgy was afoot. She not only sounded nervous. She sounded worried.

"Well, we leave the party early..."

"You wanted to be home by eleven." He interrupted quietly and tried to use the lights from the portch to read her expression and her body language, for her voice suggested nerves were kicking in.

"Yes, I did. But, well, it's not even ten fifteen right now." She told him and wondered whether she should just get out of the car before this conversation got really tricky. "And then you start on some weird conversation, out of the blue, I might add, on secrets and being kept in the dark."

He said firmly. "Secrets are like lies. I'm not overly keen on being misled."

Marina gulped. He must know something. Otherwise why start on this topic of conversation. But how? No-one out with the family knew that the family were practically destitute until fairly recently. But his focus on secrets and lies suggested he knew about their secret and their lies. "I see." Maybe coming home early was because he now knew that the Sojour D'Sa family had misled their social group. Misled him. Before she could decide whether to apologise profusely and hope that he understood why they had kept secrets, he posed another unexpected question.

"Marina, what do you want out of a relationship?" He asked her, surprising her again, by that sudden change in topic.

"What?" She was still reeling from the potential fact that he might have found out about them, and how they had misled their community for years.

"A relationship, what are you looking for in a relationship?" He repeated his question. Marina blinked, " Because what I want in a relationship, at the very least, is someone I can trust."
Marina nodded. "Me too."

"I want someone who wants at least some of the same things in life." He said softly, she agreed. Shared goals were important. "Someone who does not keep me in the dark." He carried on, and she did her best not to gulp. He definitely knew something. How? No point worrying about that now. "Someone with the same values and strengths." He saw her nod again but could tell from the tenseness in her shoulders that she was clearly worried. "Someone who doesn't mislead me." Marina's heart sank to her feet. Marina reached for the car door handle, and opened the door. Rafe's hand reached for her arm. "Isn't that what you want?" She nodded. Rafe sighed, "The thing is Marina, this relationship is going nowhere because ..."