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And so he reverted to type.
Arrogant, aloof, closed-off type.
‘Something’s come up.’
She blinked and looked up at the sound of his voice. Ethan stood with the sun behind him, his face unreadable. Rather than fretting over her performance at the audition Merida had been sitting daydreaming—or rather last-night-dreaming—when his deep voice had hauled her back to Ethan in real time.
He was back to being the man she’d first met—detached and a touch dismissive andverykeen to be gone.
‘Something?’ Merida checked.
‘Yes. I need to head off.’
‘Now?’ Merida tried to keep the shake from her voice.
‘Yes, now.’
And then she actually had to close her lips together to resist asking,When will I see you? When will you call?
‘Be good,’ he said.
When she stood up he went to leave, but then instead he turned back and did the oddest thing. He did up the buttons of her trench coat. The inside ones and the outer. And then he did up her belt.
‘It’s cold,’ Ethan said.
Then, without looking back, he walked away.
And left her standing there.
* * *
‘Does he know?’
Abe was the one asking the questions.
Ethan stood with his back to where the two other men them sat and stared out at the view.
He recognised the picture on the wall.
This was the same room they’d been taken to when they’d waited to see their mother all those years ago. Oh, no doubt the furnishings had changed, but that picture remained.
A night shot of Brooklyn Bridge, from Brooklyn, looking over to Manhattan.
To Ethan, it was the best view in the world—but he could not stand to look at it now. Instead he listened as the professor explained that Jobe had known for some time.
‘So this wasn’t exploratory surgery?’ Abe checked.
‘It was. I wanted to view the tumour myself and take some biopsies.’
‘He’s had scans?’ Ethan asked, without looking round.
‘Many of them,’ the professor answered.
He loathed it that his father gone through all that alone, but Ethan knew why—his father would hate showing weakness or fear.
Now Ethan turned around. ‘How long does he have?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ Professor Jacobs answered. ‘I’ll know more when I get back the pathology.’
