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‘I see.’
She didn’t push it immediately. His very choice of words acknowledged there had been something even as he tried to deny it. She let his unintentional admission sink into his own head.
‘It was nothing you should have to be concerned with.’
‘If it affects you,’ she answered simply, ‘I’m concerned.’
She knew he held himself responsible for his mother’s death, and his sister’s death, even though he hadn’t been there. She knew, too, that he held himself responsible for Janine’s convoy accident, even though he couldn’t possibly have had any influence over it. He was Royal Engineers, she’d been Logistics. None of it seemed to make sense, but the worst of it was that Fitz didn’t trust anyone—didn’t trust her—enough to confide in her.
And that hurt more than anything else.
Worse, because she knew she had no right to expect him to want to confide in her, but it didn’t stop her wishing he wanted to. It didn’t stop her falling for him.
Working with him over the last couple of months twenty-four seven had been eye-opening. In a job like this, especially in an environment like this, Elle
knew only too well how soldiers got to know the people working alongside them in a way no other profession allowed. They lived together, ate together, slept together. There was no escape, no chance to step away for a while.
It had also meant she’d spent more days in Fitz’s company than she’d spent with Stevie in probably the last five or six years they’d been together. And she liked the man Fitz was more than she’d ever liked the man Stevie had been turning into.
She couldn’t help it. She wanted to be there for Fitz, she wanted to show him he needed her. And he did need her. Hadn’t he already told her things he’d admitted he’d never told anyone else? Their connection was real, she wasn’t imagining it. It wasn’t just about the sex that first night.
* * *
Fitz spent the entire journey back oscillating between relief and frustration. Relief at the fact that Elle was in the ambulance with Roshan, giving him some much-needed breathing room, and frustration at the realisation that only Elle’s presence next to him would have calmed his uncharacteristically jangling nerves.
He’d been shocked when she’d mentioned Janine, but the anger he might have previously expected to flood out of him had gone, replaced by a deep-seated need to talk it through with someone. With Elle.
It was almost torture when she disappeared into the hospital with Roshan and he had to return to his office alone, searching for paperwork to occupy his racing thoughts. Yet at the same time he was immensely grateful to her for saving both the young mum’s life and that of her baby. As if somehow it made up for the baby he and Janine had lost.
He had no idea how much time passed until a light knock on his door wrestled him from his dark thoughts.
‘I thought you might like to know mother and baby are resting and are fine. I eventually removed the shard and incredibly it had missed the baby entirely and slid into a void between Roshan’s internal organs. They both handled the operation well and I’m hoping she’ll be able to carry her baby to term.’
‘How likely is that?’
‘If they get through the night without any complications, I’ll be a lot happier,’ Elle admitted. ‘Besides, the generators are due in the next few days, and as soon as we have them up and running the first incubators will arrive. If Roshan can at least hang on until then, it would be great.’
He took in her wan smile, the strain around her eyes giving her away.
‘You must be exhausted,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me.’
She blinked.
‘I thought you were going to...talk to me.’
Part of him wanted to. Another part thought he’d dodged that bullet for today.
‘I thought you might prefer to get some sleep. I can’t imagine you’ve had more than about ten hours over the last four days or so.’
‘Right,’ Elle conceded stiffly.
Still, she hesitated as though she wanted to say more. Instead, finally, she dipped her head and stepped towards the door. He should be grateful that she wasn’t trying to push the matter.
‘Janine was my ex-fiancée,’ he announced abruptly, watching as she froze with her hand on the doorhandle. Slowly, so slowly, she drew her fingers back, listening to him without turning around. ‘Not that I think you can call it an engagement really. It lasted less than twenty-four hours and it wasn’t exactly planned. There was a baby.’
She twisted her head back over her shoulder.
‘I don’t understand.’
