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‘Yes,’ Ben ground out.
He didn’t want to discuss Thea with his father. Didn’t want any shadow cast over her. Not by his father—not by anyone.
‘She has nothing to do with my decision to leave the Army.’ It wasn’t strictly true, but he wasn’t leaving for Thea. He was leaving for the life he wanted away from the Army, which happened to include Thea.
‘Sir James tells me she’s a very accomplished young trauma surgeon,’ his father continued levelly.
‘She is.’ Ben felt a rush of pride, momentarily loosening his tongue and making him forget who he was talking to. ‘She’s one of the most gifted trauma doctors I’ve known.’
She was also caring, compassionate and strong. So strong. And he might have thrown all that away just because he had thought closing himself off emotionally was the only way to be strong. She’d shown him how wrong he was. She was the reason he was now able, for the first time in his life, to ask his father questions he would never before have been able to. She had made him realise that this was where he’d learned to suppress his emotions—from his father. But he still didn’t understand why his father had shut them out.
‘Was I the reason you returned from Afghanistan? Gave up your post?’
‘Benjamin, I don’t think this is the right time for this conversation...’
‘Was I?’ Ben pushed, refusing to back down.
‘I... I thought I’d lost you, son.’ The Colonel jutted his chin out defiantly but suddenly, if only for an instant, he stopped looking like the driven, emotionless, inflexible Army Colonel Ben knew, and Ben caught a fleeting glimpse of a shaken, frightened, uncertain father.
And then it was gone.
But still, it had caught Ben off guard and unsettled him.
‘Where has all this compassion, this emotion been for the last twenty years?’ he bit out in frustration. ‘Where was all the grief when my mother died?’
He expected his father to shout, to reprimand him for his insolence. Instead the old man offered him a sad smile.
‘I was trying to do what was best for you. For us.’
‘By getting rid of all traces of her?’ Ben shook his head. ‘By never discussing her?’
Thea was right—it wasn’t healthy for anyone to bottle things up. His relationship with his father was a mess. He had no idea if it could ever be repaired—or if his father would ever want to repair it. But Ben did know that he was going to do everything in his power to salvage his relationship with Thea. She was good for him. She’d helped him heal when he’d never known he was broken. He was never going to find it easy to express how he was feeling, but he now knew he had to try—for himself as much as for Thea. She made him want to be a better person.
‘How did you think pretending she’d never existed would help?’ Ben urged.
For a moment he thought his father was going to shut down, he could see the old man struggling, but—incredibly—the Colonel met his glower.
‘I thought keeping the past behind us would help you to move on. I thought it would help me too.’
To Ben’s horror, his father faltered. He had never seen the old man struggle to control his emotions—any emotions—before.
‘I was wrong. I’m...sorry.’
So Thea had been right along. He needed to tell her that. Needed to tell her how he felt. Everything. Before it was too late.
If it wasn’t already.
‘I have to go. There’s someone I need to talk to.’ Ben stalked to the door, hauling it open and striding outside just as his father’s parting words reached his ears.
‘Perhaps one day you’ll allow us to start to rebuild our relationship?’
Ben turned back, the closing door still giving him a visible line to his father.
‘One day.’ He nodded. ‘I’d like that.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THEA SANK DOWN onto the bench to change out of her flight gear. Exhaustion was a daily occurrence these days. She’d told her colleagues nothing more than that Ben had returned to active duty, but as though they’d sensed the depths of her sorrow they had sent as many call-outs as they could her way in order to keep her busy.
