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Anna was so distracted by the tactile quality of the authoritative delivery that she didn’t even register they were not words, just sounds, not until her grandfather, a smile now lighting his face, repeated them.
‘Hun ein vinur...?’
The way her grandfather repeated the gibberish carefully, his eyes seeking reassurance from the tall stranger who stood with his back to her, broke her heart all over again. Instead of acknowledging the hurt, she embraced her anger, fanning the flame into hot life as she stepped forward and grabbed the mocking stranger’s arm, registering as she did so the hard tensile strength of the muscles.
She was ashamed of the flip low in her belly, her self-disgust lending her extra strength as she grabbed the fabric and yanked hard, making him react.
As he turned to face her she angled her furious glare upwards—along wayupwards. The shock of contact with the sheer cold, calculating fury living in the blue depths of his deep-set eyes made her mind blank.
Then it was gone, like a mirage or a trick of the light.
‘Don’t make fun of him!’ she managed to snap out before her breath snagged hard on the emotional rock in her chest, making further comment impossible. She just hated it when she got so mad she wanted to cry.
‘I was notmaking fun.’ It was no less a ludicrous interpretation, as anyone who knew him would have told her, thanI was being kind.
She felt the thread of anger inside her unravelling. The eyes looking back at her were the bluest thing she had ever seen in her life, the piercing quality emphasised by dark iris rings and the framing of ebony eyelashes that were impossibly long and sooty black against the equally startling backdrop of a face that was all strong, perfect angles.
A face dissected by a strong nose, high razor-edged cheekbones, a square chin with the suggestion of a cleft and a mouth that was both sensual and cruel.
It was her reaction to his mouth that made her rush into speech, almost falling over her words in her haste to not think about the shameful pulse of heat between her legs.
‘I want you to leave, now!’
‘Stein!’
Everything inside Soren froze for the second time as he spun around in time to see the warm charming smile he remembered from his youth.
Before he could react the smile was gone and there were tears rolling down Tor’s lined cheeks.
In the periphery of his vision Soren was conscious of the small stricken figure who stood there clenched with misery as she witnessed a performance that was clearly directed at him. But then Tor never had cared about inflicting collateral damage.
Even had he fallen for it, Tor’s effort was wasted. There was zero chance of pity working its way through Soren’s defences. Even if he could rid himself of the conviction that behind the fragility of the shaking hands and the milky pale incomprehension in the pale blue eyes the old man was secretly laughing at him, Soren wouldneverhave been able to feel pity. That would have been the ultimate betrayal of his father.
‘It’s me, Grandpa...it’s Anna.’
Pitched to a soothing low murmur, the suppressed pain in each shaky syllable held stark, raw grief.
Looking at her, Soren felt some nameless thing break loose in his chest. She looked bone-achingly tired, numb with exhaustion. He could see the quiver of fine muscles under the smooth pallor of her impossibly clear skin—like a road map of her emotions close enough to the surface for him to feel.
He wanted to unhear the pain; it awoke memories of his mother’s hurt. Hurt that he had soothed as best his seventeen-year-old self could and she, oblivious to the fact he didn’t have a clue how he was going to fulfil his promise of making things right, or what taking responsibility for another person actually entailed, had seemed to take comfort from his words—she’d believed him.
He had never articulated it, not even to himself, but the knowledge that he would never voluntarily take responsibility for another human being again had become part of him during the following months. It had become his emotional fingerprint.
He wasn’t going to offer to make this woman feel better, and, if he had, he was pretty sure she would have thrown any offer of comfort back in his face, along with any blunt object that came to hand, he decided, studying her face, not an unpleasurable pastime. This was not a scared woman seeking reassurance.
This was a woman regaining ground she had lost and setting boundaries.
Boundaries that placed him the other side of a very high wall. It was a novel sensation for Soren, who was accustomed to people placating and ingratiating themselves with him.
Her eyes were cool green ice now on his face, which was good because he needed to cool down.
‘You’ve done your duty, and for that thank you, but talking gibberish back to my grandfather is not helpful it...is...demeaning...’ Her voice shook with anger that still held her rigid. ‘He’s not a...my grandpa Henry is still in there somewhere!’
I could tell you some things about your grandpa Henry, he thought, watching as she moved as if to body-block her grandfather from him.
So why aren’t you telling her, Soren?
She was going to know soon. The world was about to know it all, he had made sure of that.
