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‘You love that man, and those children—even I can see that, just hearing you talking about them. Not to mention how miserable you’ve been since you arrived home. So you need to go back and be with them.’
‘But—’
Her father put up a hand to stop her. ‘No buts. Whatever reasons you’ve dreamed up to keep you apart from them, I guarantee they’re not good enough. When your mother left...’
‘Dad, you don’t have to talk about this.’ He never had—not once before. She didn’t want to think about how miserable she must look to make him want to talk about it now.
‘Yes, I do. Because you need to understand. When she left...she took my heart with her. All the talk, all the gossip...it hurt, of course it did. But not because of what other people thought about me, or my marriage. It was because every single word was a reminder that she didn’t love me the way I’d loved her, the way she’d said she did, right until that last day. Worse—it was a reminder that she didn’t even love you enough to stay. And that was the part I just couldn’t make sense of. Because you are the best thing in my life, and I don’t understand how anyone could walk away from you.’
‘Dad...’
‘I’m not finished. Because if your Cal feels about you half the way you feel about him... I imagine he’s in a lot of pain right now. Just like I was.’
‘I need your love—not for you to be perfect, or scandal-free.’
Oh, God, what if he’d really meant that? And what if...what if that was all her baby needed, too?
Two parents who loved him or her. A family to be part of.
Cal might not be her child’s biological father, but she knew he’d be his or her dad in his heart, just as he would for Daisy and Ryan.
‘I always thought... I thought it was the scandal that broke you. I spent my whole life trying to avoid bringing that kind of talk to your door again.’
Had it all been for nothing? No. Because it had made her the person she was. The person who’d trekked all the way to Lengroth to do ‘the right thing’.
The person Cal had fallen in love with.
Cal had loved Ross—loved him still, despite all his flaws. And he loved her, too. Maybe as much as she loved him.
‘I can take any words any person throws at me,’ her dad said softly. ‘But I can’t take my only daughter, the love of my life, being unhappy when she doesn’t need to be.’
Heather fell to her knees in front of his chair, letting her father wrap his arms around her as she sobbed into his lap. And when at last she was all out of tears, he helped her to her feet and said, ‘Grab your bag. I’ll take you back to the station.’
* * *
‘What are you going to do now?’
Cal looked up as Mrs Peterson placed a cup of hot chocolate on the table in front of him, then added a tumbler of brandy beside it. She’d been apologetic and full of guilt ever since she’d realised that Anna had tricked her into getting the children alone so she could interrogate them.
‘What can I do? I’ll call Anna’s editor again—manage the story as well as I can now it’s out there. I’ve already paid Heather what I owed her, so that’s sorted. Next I’ll call the boarding school and—’
‘And what?’ Daisy’s voice rang out from the kitchen door, where she stood with her pale hair hanging around her face and her pyjamas hanging off her slim frame. ‘Do we have to go? Now that Heather isn’t here?’
Telling the kids she was gone had been awful. Daisy had pretended she didn’t care, of course, but Ryan had sobbed, and Cal had known that Daisy was lying, so that wasn’t any easier. They couldn’t understand why she’d gone if it wasn’t because she was cross with them, and Cal hadn’t been able to explain because he didn’t understand either.
He knew her reasons. But he couldn’t understand them.
He’d always assumed that when it came to relationships it would be him who couldn’t make it work. Who pulled back for fear of the world learning the truth about his family, or because he really was a product of his gene pool and incapable of true love.
