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Hurt, loss, sadness, but most of all that futile festering rage.
Except this time the rage wasn’t directed at Xanthe but at himself. Why hadn’t he fought harder to see her? Why hadn’t he made more of an effort to get past her father and his goons and find out what had really happened?
She kept her head down, but a lone tear trickled down the side of her face. Pain stabbed into his gut—a dull echo of the pain when Carmichael’s goons had dragged him off the estate and beaten him until he’d been unable to fight back.
‘Look at me, Xan.’
She gave a loud sniff and shook her head.
Cradling her cheek, he brushed the tear away with his thumb and raised her face to his. Her eyes widened, shadowed with hopelessness and grief, glittering with unshed tears.
And suddenly he knew. The truth he should have figured out ten years ago. The truth that would have been obvious to him then if he’d been less of a screwed-up, insecure kid and more of a man.
He swore softly and folded his arms around her, trying to absorb the pain.
‘You didn’t have an abortion, did you?’
He said the words against her hair, breathing in the clean scent of lemon verbena, anchoring her fragile frame against his much stronger one.
His emotions tangled into a gut-wrenching mix of anger and pain and guilt. How could he have got things so wrong? And what did he do with the information now?
She stood rigid in his arms, refusing to soften, refusing to take the comfort he offered. The comfort her old man had denied them both.
He swallowed down the ache in his throat. ‘That sucks, Red.’
She drew in a deep, fortifying breath, her whole body starting to shake like a leaf in a hurricane. He tightened his arms, feeling helpless and inadequate but knowing, this once, that he was not going to take the easy road. She wasn’t that girl any more—sweet and sunny and stupidly in love with a guy who had never existed—and up until two seconds ago he would have thought he was glad of it. But now he wasn’t so sure.
His throat burned as she trembled in his arms and he mourned the loss of that bright, optimistic girl who had always believed the best of him when he had been unable to believe it himself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I’M SO SORRY, Mrs Redmond. There’s no heartbeat and we need to operate to stop the bleeding.’
The storm of emotion raged inside her, the sobs she’d repressed for so long choking her as her mind dragged her back to that darkest of dark days. Lying on the hospital gurney, the white-suited doctor looking down at her with pity in his warm brown eyes...
Dane’s hand stroked her hair. His heartbeat felt strong and steady through worn cotton, his chest solid, immovable, offering her the strength she’d needed then and been so cruelly denied. Tearing pain racked her body as she remembered how alone, how useless, how helpless she’d felt that day. And the horror that had followed.
She gulped for air, her arms yearning to cling to his strength as tears she couldn’t afford to shed made her throat close.
Be strong. Don’t cry. Don’t you dare break.
He kissed her hair, murmuring reassurances, apologies that she’d needed so badly then but refused to need now. Then his hips butted hers and she felt the potent outline of him, semihard against her belly.
Arousal surged in her shattered body, thick and sure and so simple. Reaction shuddered down to her core.
Flattening her hands against the tense muscles of his belly, she pushed out of his arms and looked up to find him watching her, his expression grim with regret and yet tight with arousal. Reaching up, she ran her palms over his hair, the way she’d wanted to do as soon as she’d walked into his office.
Absorbing the delicious tingle of the short bristles against her skin, she framed his face and dragged his mouth down to hers. ‘You’re ten years too late, Dane. There’s only one thing I want now.’
Or only one thing she could still allow herself to take.
His eyes flared and her body rejoiced. This was the one thing they had always been good at. She didn’t want his pity, his regret, his sympathy—all she wanted was to feel that glorious heat pounding into her and making her forget about the pain.
His mouth captured hers, his tongue plunging deep, demanding entry. She opened for him, the heady thrill obliterating the treacherous memories.
Large hands ran up her sides under the robe, rough calluses against soft skin bringing her body to shimmering life. He crushed her against him, banding strong arms around her back, forcing her soft curves to yield to his strength. She draped her arms over his shoulders as he picked her up, carried her to the king-sized bed and dropped her into the centre. Parting the thin satin with impatient hands, he swept his burning gaze over her naked skin, the dark rapture in his eyes making her feel like a sacrifice already burning at the stake.
She reached for his belt, desperate to wrap her fingers round his thick length and make him melt, too. But he gripped her wrists and pinned her hands to the mattress above her head, leaving her naked and exposed while he was still fully clothed.
