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Where could they discuss it?
There was no approved course of action. All his experience had left him completely unprepared for this. He was encased in ice, preserved and separate, untouchable, unreachable—as Lizzie had complained he was all those years ago.
He registered without emotion that this strange state of non-feeling stillness must be the calm before the storm. When he blew he would take everything with him.
And then Thea stood up.
At first he stared at her, as if she were an automaton in a museum, safe behind glass, and he was a visitor showing a passing interest in one of the exhibits. If he felt anything it was curiosity—that he could look at his daughter and not know what to feel.
But then she lifted her bow and started to play.
CHAPTER NINE
MUSIC COULD TOUCH HIM. It always had been able to touch him. Thanks to his father’s passion, music had always played a huge part in his home-life when he’d been growing up. Music could unlock him, and now Thea had freed emotions inside him that he hadn’t even known were there.
They must have been locked away for years as he drove forward with the business, allowing nothing to distract him. At the time he’d thought emotion a selfish indulgence and it had become a habit, he supposed. His focus had been all on working as hard as he could so his father could retire. It was only now, as Thea wove magic with her violin, that he realised how empty his life had become.
His daughter was filling it—filling him—with emotion, until it threatened to overflow. The melody she was playing so skilfully was uncomplicated, but it tugged at his heart and forced a response from him. Eleven years he’d missed of this child’s life. Eleven years. Feeling her kick in the womb, seeing her born and holding her in his arms for the first time, celebrating her first birthday and the elation of watching as she took her first steps—all gone. Hearing her first words and encouraging her to stride out bravely on her first day at school—
‘Damon? Damon...?’
Someone was shaking his shoulder, he realised, coming to fast. Feeling tears on his cheeks, he swiped them away.
His aide dipped down to speak to him. ‘I’m sorry to break in on your private time,’ the man whispered, ‘but we have an emergency at one of the plants—a fire. It’s contained now, but we could do with your steer on to how to handle the aftermath.’
‘I’m with you,’ he said, getting up. His workers were another family to him, and almost as close as his own. Whatever they needed, he was there.
Thea was family. Thea was his family.
His stare met Thea’s as he rose from his seat. It was a magical split-second. Fate had dictated that she finish her solo just as he stood. Everyone was standing to applaud. He had hoped she wouldn’t notice him leaving. He might have known she would know immediately. She was his daughter, after all.
She smiled at him—a smile that lit his world. It was innocent and happy and he smiled back, held his daughter’s open, trusting gaze, while the woman at his side—Lizzie—tugged at his arm repeatedly.
He pulled away sharply. Her hand was an unwanted intrusion on his naked skin. Raising his hands to applaud Thea, he ignored his aide’s edginess and obvious desire to go. He could spare these few seconds to let Thea understand and see how deeply he had appreciated her performance.
For each second he held eye contact with Thea he could feel Lizzie’s distress. Her tugs were becoming more insistent, and her voice, though it seemed to come from a long way away, was obviously distraught. But he couldn’t be distracted. His attention was centred on his daughter—as if in these few seconds he was making up for eleven years of separation.
‘Damon—’
‘I’m coming,’ he snapped at his aide.
With one last long look at Thea, he moved into the aisle and strode away.
* * *
Lizzie sat in her seat motionless long after the other audience members had left. People moved past her. She barely registered them. She felt cloaked in doom, and it was a doom of her own making. Of all the ways for Damon to find about Thea, this had to be the worst. How must it have felt for him to be sitting next to his daughter’s mother, only to discover that the woman he had made love to was apparently as untrustworthy as her scumbag father?
She had felt Damon quite literally shrink away from her. And she’d seen the look he’d given Thea. It had been the leader of the wolf pack acknowledging his cub. If the thought of a blood relationship between Damon and Thea hadn’t struck anyone else yet, it soon would. The ease between them, coupled with their incredible likeness, signalled their bond like a flashing beacon.
Thea was a bright child. How long would it take her to work it out?
Having never heard Thea express the need for a father, Lizzie began to wonder if that had been to save her feelings. They had been a team of two for ever, and now they were three—though not a team, and without any explanation from Lizzie.
She found herself flinching when Thea came running down the aisle, swinging her violin case as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
And why should she?
But everything was about to change for Thea. Remembering how that had felt for herself when she was eighteen—almost twice Thea’s age, with twice Thea’s experience of life—Lizzie shrank a little more inside.
‘Mama!’ Thea exclaimed. ‘Did you enjoy the concert?’ Thea was hopping from foot to foot, still fired up on adrenalin, when she reached Lizzie’s side. ‘Did you notice that note I got wrong?’
‘I only noticed that you played beautifully,’ Lizzie said honestly, on a throat so tight she could hardly breathe.
‘I played for you,’ Thea announced, throwing her arms around her mother to hug her tight.
This was the wake-up call she needed, Lizzie realised. She wasn’t a useless mother. She was just a mother and she’d always done her best. She was a hostage for life, and she welcomed that knowledge. She’d no doubt get things wrong again in the future, but she’d always strive to put them right. She would never stop trying when it came to Thea.
‘I can’t wait to hear you play again,’ she said warmly when a few of Thea’s friends gathered round. ‘I think you’re amazing—all of you.’
Lizzie’s heart melted when Thea turned a beaming smile on her friends, as if to say, This is my mother and she really gets us.
‘Love you, darling!’ Lizzie called out as Thea raced away with her friends.
Glancing across the playing fields, Lizzie could see Thea and her group of friends gathering up a feast from the buffet, to carry off and eat beneath the shade of the olive trees. Sensing Lizzie was still staring at her, Thea turned and gestured vigorously that Lizzie must join them.
Lizzie drew a deep breath and told herself firmly that whatever happened next she could deal with it. She had dealt with things for eleven years now, and would continue to do so. She would do anything to protect Thea.
And Damon? What about him?
She’d lost him before she’d had chance to know him. He could never be part of her life now—though he would surely be part of Thea’s. That would be up to Thea, Lizzie determined as she hurried across the parched playing field to join the children.
‘There he goes!’ Thea yelled, pointing to the sky as Lizzie approached.
Shading her eyes, Lizzie stared up as the rhythmical thwack of a helicopter’s rotor blades passed overhead. Damon would be flying off to wherever he was needed most, she guessed.
Guilt flooded her again. She’d worked so hard to get things right for Thea, and now she’d fallen at this, the last hurdle. She might never get the chance to speak to Damon again except through lawyers, and she had always planned to bring Thea and Damon together carefully, sensitively—anywhere but in a courtroom.
She shuddered at the thought. There was no excuse, although
her reasons for not telling Damon sooner were complex and mostly rooted in the past. Believing he’d deserted her too, so soon after her father’s rejection, she’d vowed never to love again, never to risk her heart again—and she had kept that vow until Thea was born, when she had discovered a love so deep it had almost drowned her.
Her father’s rejection, coming at such a vulnerable and hormonal time in Lizzie’s life, had left her with an overwhelming desire to protect Thea from that same pain.
Looking back, she saw that the world her father had aspired to was shallow, and based on what people had in the bank rather than what they were really worth, and that in turn had left her with a lifelong suspicion of wealth. She knew deep down that Damon was a different kind of rich, and that he’d not only worked hard for everything he’d got but had done good with that money. But the glamorous world he inhabited still troubled her. She would never belong in a world like that—though in time Thea might, Lizzie allowed.
