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And maybe it was the morphine speaking, or perhaps it was after decades of hurt as he moved to the end of his life, but for once Jobe did not keep everything in.
‘Marriage to Elizabeth was the most hellish time of my life,’ Jobe said.
Merida was stunned. ‘But you’ve got pictures of her everywhere...you speak so nicely of her...’
‘Well, you don’t speak ill of the dead, do you?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s easier for the boys—to let them think that she loved them...’
‘Shedidn’tlove them?’
‘The only person Elizabeth ever loved,’ Jobe said, ‘was herself.’
And then he told her something else. A truth. One so vital that Ethan and Abe must surely be told.
But Jobe refused. ‘I’m taking that to the grave.’
‘Jobe, no.’
It was a revelation. And Merida truly didn’t know what it meant, or what to do with it. Or even if she should do anything.
Ethan was so closed off on the rare times that he called. And to keep up the façade Merida was terminally brittle.
Yet she ached for him, for more information, and as she let herself into the house after her visit she lay drained on the bed and admitted the truth.
The Devereux family was the family she had never had.
Oh, they were messed up, but they’d all been there at her wedding. Jobe checked in on the welfare of their baby all the time, and Ethan, the husband who didn’t love her, still had the ability to melt her heart.
Even on a computer screen.
Tonight he was wearing, of all things, a robe andkeffiyeh.
‘Don’t ask,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘I’ve been calling you.’
Merida stared at her screen and magnified his impossibly beautiful face. ‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Too busy to pick up your phone?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
It was true—she had been too busy crying, and the very last thing she wanted to give him was a glimpse of her tears.
Playing the part of a cold-hearted gold-digger was far easier than showing him her heart.
‘How’s Dubai?’
‘Hot,’ he said.
Hell,he thought.
His playboy days were over. And as he stared at his bride he thought, Who would ever imagine they slept in separate rooms?
‘I’m about to head out for dinner with Khalid, but I wanted to speak to you first.’
‘Regarding...?’
She sounded like his PA, Ethan thought.
‘I wanted to know if you’d had any luck finding a nanny.’
