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‘You think I will?’ she exclaimed. ‘You think I’m that desperate?’
He gave a slow smile. ‘Oh, yeah, quite definitely.’
Her chin went up. ‘I’m not that person.’ Oh, yes, said the voice in her head, you are, Lily. You really are.
* * *
Lily was going to have a chance to find out sooner than she had anticipated. It was two days later that Emmy’s discharge was agreed.
The discharge papers were signed, the outpatient appointment booked, but there was a last-minute rush when the medication Emmy needed had not come up from the pharmacy.
Lily was in the middle of packing when the nurse who had been sent for them appeared.
‘Sorry about the delay, but I’ve got them now.’
‘Don’t worry, I still haven’t finished packing. I’ve no idea how we accumulated this much stuff in a few weeks,’ Lily huffed, trying to stuff Emmy’s favourite blanket into the open bag while she balanced her daughter on one hip, a task made more difficult by the tingle on the back of her neck that told her Ben was back in the room.
He handled delays, or anything that smacked in his opinion of incompetence, badly, so in the end she’d begged him to go walk it off because him glowering was not helping.
‘Here, let me help you.’ The nurse took Emmy and handed her to Ben, saying, ‘Dad can hold her.’
Lily straightened up in time to see her daughter pull her father’s lip, twisting the skin experimentally between her small fingers.
‘Emmy, that hurts!’ Lily knew from experience that it did.
‘Aww, kiss Dada better...’ cooed the nurse.
The baby landed a damp smack on Ben’s cheek and giggled. ‘Dada, Dada...’
Above their daughter’s head she met Ben’s eyes. The emotion she saw there made her throat close over until she closed her eyes and felt a tear squeeze out. Damn, she had spent the last two days building her walls and one look and they were gone.
Share a house? He was right: it was insanity!
* * *
Two weeks later Lily had changed her mind. The only insane thing here was her. It had been building up, but the actual crisis point came as she was sniffing a sweater that Ben had left slung untidily on a chair.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked herself.
She could have the man and she was sniffing his clothing like some sort of...addict! If this went on she would go insane; it was killing her!
And Ben knew it, she thought darkly. Oh, he hadn’t said anything, but she knew he did. She did not think for one minute that there was any real need for him to walk around the house half naked and brush against her the way he did. He was torturing her and... She pressed a hand to her heaving chest and closed her eyes. God, but she ached with love for him.
She sank weakly into a chair. This had been totally unrealistic, a crazy idea... Share a house...? What had she been thinking?
She hadn’t; she should have told him the truth. Oh, yes, and that would have worked—I can’t marry you, Ben, because I love you, and I know you won’t ever feel the same about me.
She gave a laugh and then stopped. Was it a joke? She was so emotionally worn down by this point, she was such a mass of hormonal craving and blind lust that once she started talking it would all come out.
And why not? she thought recklessly. Why not be honest and come clean?
Would her honesty have a price?
It didn’t matter because being around him every day and being forced to conceal her feelings was a form of slow death and anyway didn’t he deserve to know the truth?
He had asked her to marry him—didn’t he have the right to know why she had refused? And had she been right? Was she selfish wanting more? Emmy loved him; he was a great father.
Her thoughts went round in dizzying circles, until the doorbell rang. Lily leapt to her feet. Someone had their hand on the bell and she knew from bitter experience that if Emmy woke early from her nap she would be cranky all afternoon.
‘Idiot,’ she muttered before calling, ‘I’m coming!’
* * *
A total waste!
His morning had been a total waste.
He had come very close to cancelling.
There had been several points during the excruciatingly polite conversation over breakfast when she had not even looked him in the eyes and he had been this far from snapping.
There was a certain black irony to the situation. All his life his focus had been on maintaining a safe distance from emotional entanglements; he’d seen marriage as a trap.
He’d called it common sense but it had been fear. The irony being that he was frequently referred to as fearless, a risk taker, but, when it came to the things that were important in life, Ben recognised he had been nothing but a coward.
