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He arched a brow and looked amused by her faltering explanation and guilty admission. ‘I had no mobile signal but he caught me later. He did mention he’d tried the landline.’
‘A family party sounds lovely.’
Three weeks’ time. Where will I be...?
She pushed the thought away and reminded herself that she was going to live in the moment. She flashed a covert glance up at his perfect profile and felt her tummy muscles quiver. The problem was she wanted the moment to last for ever. ‘You’ll be able to introduce Declan to his cousins,’ she added brightly.
‘I am not free.’ He paused, the sea breeze ruffling his hair as he watched the animated approval fade from her face. She really didn’t have a mouth made for compressing, he decided, staring at the full lush outline he had been thinking of all day. His focus had been shot to hell lately. A woman had never distracted him like this before in his life, but then he had never wanted a woman the way he wanted Rose.
‘Oh, I just assumed that you’d want to introduce Declan to his family. Sorry, it’s none of my business.’
He didn’t contradict her. Asensibleresponse to his closed expression would have been to drop the subject, but the emotions tightening like a fist in her chest would not be contained. They just spilled out.
‘You have no idea how lucky you are. You have a family who love you, who want to be part of your life!’ she yelled and saw the shock move across his face. ‘And you push them away, at every turn you push them away!’ she condemned. ‘Well, fine, that’s your choice, but this is about Declan and he will benefit from an extended family.’ Zac’s jaw had taken on an uncompromising angle, which vanished at her last quivering, ‘He never needs to feel l-lonely.’
‘Were you a lonely child?’ he asked, things squeezing in his chest as he imagined her alone—the idea hurt.
Her eyes slid from his as she hid behind her lashes, her shrug saying,If I have issues, they are mine—an attitude that should have pleased him. Instead her stubborn self-reliance caused the protective walls he had spent a lifetime building around his emotions, dividing them into neat compartments, to crumble.
He wanted to share her pain, he wanted to take it away.
‘You can be lonely in a room full of people.’
Zac recognised the avoidance and the truth of her words. He had frequently felt lonely in the midst of his loving, noisy family, which was in part why he avoided putting himself in that situation.
‘That is not answering my question.’
‘What quest—’ she began, then met his look and gave a resigned sigh. ‘All right, maybe, but no more than any other only child. We moved around a lot. It was hard to make friends.’ She turned back to him, shading her eyes from the evening sun but unable to read his face, her efforts frustrated when he stepped in close.
She stood still, fighting the urge to put her head against his chest, craving the physical contact, the illusion of safety it offered.
Wasit an illusion? she wondered, remembering her unthinking response when he had asked if she trusted him, and she did. Becoming his lover had not been a decision she had questioned, any more than she would have questioned a tidal current. The feelings he awoke in her were just as elemental and primal, but she realised that it would not have happened if she hadn’t trusted him.
‘I know about scars that are invisible...’
‘I have no scars.’
He ignored her protest and framed her face with his big hands, capturing her eyes with his dark obsidian stare. ‘Are they why I was your first lover?’
That he appeared to have tuned in on her own train of thought startled Rose. For a moment she considered denying it, instead she hid her unease behind a flippant retort.
‘Well, I wasn’t keeping myself pure for Mr Right.’ He didn’t react to her weak laughter, which trailed away in the face of his stare. ‘OK, my dad is a very convincing liar.’ She took a step back and his hands fell away. She immediately missed the warmth. ‘So I suppose,’ she conceded, ‘I do have a few trust issues.’
Watching her bare toes tracing swirls in the sand, she missed the expression that spread across his face.
The implication of her words was she trusted him, the irony not lost on Zac, who had been lying, at least by omission, from the outset, and now...
Is she the only person you’re lying to, Zac?
He was able to switch off the inner dialogue but not the guilt, which remained like a sour aftertaste in his mouth. He tried and failed to spin his actions. Doing it for a friend just didn’t cut it, especially when that friend would definitely have issues with Zac’s own interpretation of the role he had been given.
He might be selfish, actually there was no might about it, and he rarely chose the option that was not in his best interest, an acknowledgment that did not make him proud. He could keep her in ignorance and keep her here in his bed. The logic was inescapable, or it might once have seemed that way.
The simple fact was she deserved to know that she had the family she craved for. He didn’t have the right to deny her that and neither did Marco.
His plan was to tell her before he reported back to Marco. He owed her that much. The sooner this farce was brought to an end, the better as far as he was concerned.
It would be a very short report, basically because there wasn’t one. There was nothing to report on except to say that with Rose Hill what you saw was what you got.
