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Netty was wrong, Tia thought sadly. She didn’t have Zeke’s heart.
She never had.
* * *
It took a superhuman effort for Zeke not to look across the harbour to where Tia and one of the other mothers sat, apparently deep in conversation.
However much he tried to push her out of his thoughts, she was still there. Setting his body on fire just by being in the same house as him. The same country.
He could still taste her, feel her, picture her. The very thought of her took him out at the knees.
He grimaced at his own dark humour.
Bringing Tia and Seth out here had been supposed to have been about him getting to know the son who she had denied him for the past four and a half years. That was certainly what he’d told himself. The truth was that he couldn’t drag himself away from her.
He should resent her for those unilateral decisions she had made. Instead, he still wanted her—just as he had five years ago. Ten years ago. Even fifteen years ago.
He still craved her.
And for Zeke that was a weakness that he despised.
Bringing them out here might have given him an opportunity to develop a relationship with his son, but it had also been because a side of him had desperately wanted Tia to see the success he’d made of his life.
That kid from the dirtiest house in Westlake. The kid who her father had tried to keep her away from. The kid she had chosen to marry.
Though he suspected even that had more to do with the death of her mother—grief propelling her to such an emotional act of rebellion—than the fact that she had truly loved him.
She’d been right when she’d told him that she thought they had been more in love with the idea of each other, than they had truly been in love with the people they were.
‘Can we show Seth how to rig the boat again?’
Robbie’s excited voice penetrated Zeke’s thoughts. Both boys were standing, excited and expectant, in front of him.
‘Please, Zeke?’ Seth urged, and Zeke wasn’t prepared for the longing he felt to hear his son call him Daddy.
His son. It was a transformative feeling, this rush of...pride and...love, which poured through him, like nothing he’d ever known before.
‘Sure.’ Zeke laughed, glad of the distraction. ‘Why not?’
* * *
It was a good hour before Zeke looked for Tia again. His pulse momentarily accelerated when she wasn’t where he’d last seen her—of course she wasn’t. Scanning the area, Zeke could only come up empty. She must have gone home without him.
It was ludicrous how let down that made him feel.
He moved around the harbour, interacting with all the kids as he would normally do, Seth and Robbie proudly flanking either side of him. But knowing that Tia had been here and was now gone dampened his mood in a way it surely had no business doing.
He shouldn’t expect her to stay; they weren’t a family. He didn’t know how to be a father. He had hardly had a shining example to follow. But he wanted it. He thought he could learn it. Tia might not agree.
The fear clenched at him more than he could have believed possible. A red-hot poker to his belly.
It was only as he crossed the road bridge to the other side that he caught sight of Netty’s bobbing head. He had no idea how he managed to make his voice light and easy.
‘Have you seen Tia?’
‘Hey, boys.’ Netty smiled happily. ‘I see Robbie and Seth have been having the best time with you, Zeke, so Tia went home. Apparently you have some gala to go to tonight?’
‘She left?’ He heard the flat tone to his voice, but Netty didn’t seem to notice.
