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‘He was premature?’
He nodded. ‘They never stood a chance. It went across the central reservation and hit them head-on. Dead instantly, the inquest said, like that was some sort of comfort.’
Rose didn’t say anything, afraid that she would stop the flow of confidences.
‘The driver had a heart attack but survived.’
‘Poor man,’ she exclaimed, eyes wide with horror, before catching Zac’s expression and adding, ‘To have to live with that knowledge must be terrible.’
‘Too early for me to be philosophical. I think, to quote from the beginner’s guide to bereavement and other equally useless books on the subject available, that I’ve moved from denial to anger.’ He gave a bitter laugh. The stages of bereavement sounded so straightforward on the page of a book—in reality they were anything but.
‘I’ve never lost anyone close,’ she said quietly. Anything she said would come from a position of ignorance. ‘But I’m a good listener...’ The offer was there with the silent addition of no pressure.
The soft words brought his eyes to her face, her eyes wide and soft, her expression pensive as her teeth dug into her plump lower lip.
What is this? A therapy session?
His spine stiffened. For some bizarre reason he was indulging in some sort of soul-baring exercise instead of fulfilling his promise to Marco.
‘I’ll keep that in mind but if I feel in need of therapy I’ll gotalkto a professional.’
He saw the hurt in her eyes but didn’t allow it to influence him. In his opinion if anyone needed talking therapy it was her. If she carried on leaking empathy the way she did she’d be drained dry before she was thirty.
‘So your parents are alive?’ he said, belatedly taking charge of the conversation.
‘My dad is—didn’t I tell you this? He’s alive, and I’ve no brothers or sisters.’
‘Your mother?’
‘She left...she didn’t want me.’ She blinked rapidly, her lashes quivering dark against her cheek, confused as to why she had told him that. Shenevervolunteered information about the mother who walked away when she was a baby. ‘That doesn’t make me a victim,’ she added quickly. ‘Not all people are cut out to be parents... Oh, I didn’t mean you.’
His bark of laughter dissolved some of the invisible tension that had built up. The half-smile that followed held no humour as he added in a hard voice, ‘Why not? It’s probably true.’ His shoulders lifted in one of his inimitable shrugs. ‘But I’m the only option Declan has. Let’s hope I don’t let him down.’
His comment opened up a range of possibilities that she had not considered. He seemed so impregnably confident that the possibility, no,probabilitythat he could experience the same insecurities that anyone faced with parenting was surprising. Acknowledging he had weaknesses made things shift inside her in a way she couldn’t explain even to herself.
‘I’m sure every parent who brings a baby home feels the same pressure.’
Conscious of a sudden weariness, he ran a hand across his forehead almost expecting to discover lines gouged into his skin—he felt he’d aged half a lifetime in the last few weeks. ‘Liam and Emma never got to bring their baby home, never got to worry.’
Her eyes misted as she leaned forward, her hands clasped tight in her lap. There were no words that would make the anger and pain she saw in his eyes go away. She wished there were. ‘Life s-stinks s-sometimes!’
The hard lines on his face relaxed. If she had said therightthing, along the lines ofIt gets betterorTime healsor any of the trite things that people said on such occasions he would have exploded. Instead her brutal honesty pulled him back from the brink of losing it.
‘You won’t get any arguments from me. You do realise that we have landed?’
Her initial thought was that he was joking, but when she turned to look out of the window her eyes flew wide. They really were taxiing on the runway. Her face mirrored her disappointment.
‘Oh, I missed it!’
He was amused. She sounded soyoung, or maybe he just felt old today.
‘There’s always next time.’
‘The first time is special,’ she said and watched his eyes darken to velvet black. Her smile died as their eyes connected and clung.
‘It should be,’ he agreed, wondering if hers had been, and instinctively not liking the man who had been responsible for her first sexual experience. His own was so long ago—he really was feeling every hour of his thirty-two years at the moment—he barely remembered the event, certainly not the face of the slightly older woman who had provided his carnal initiation, he just remembered her athleticism.
The flurry of activity as the doors were opened managed to shake her free of his dark stare. Even with contact broken, the feelings low in her pelvis didn’t ease.
