Who did he think he was anyway, putting a damper on the whole house? Her control snapped. ‘So what happened between you and your father to make you so cold towards him now?’
One thick black brow twitched. ‘You do like to dance around a subject, don’t you?’
‘I’m not in the mood to play games this morning, Angus. If I hadn’t been called into work after lunch I would have said this yesterday. Now I’ve lost sleep over how upset I was for Ned and Louisa.’
He sat back in the chair and considered her. ‘I’m sorry you lost sleep about something that’s really not your concern.’
Snooty pig, Mia thought. Well, someone had to stick up for Ned and Louisa. ‘Because it’s not my concern is the very reason I can say what I like. You can freeze me out, but the cold will bite back.’
‘It’s all a Storm in a coffee cup,’ he quipped, and she rolled her eyes.
Spare me, Mia thought. ‘Do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard jokes about my name in my lifetime?’
His face was deadpan. ‘Storm by name and storm by nature.’
She inhaled the steam and it was as good as she remembered. He’d be gone by the time she could really enjoy the stuff. ‘You won’t divert me. I want to know what happened between you and Ned.’
The expression on his face didn’t change, but she had the feeling she’d actually penetrated the thick barriers he’d surrounded himself with. So she wasn’t surprised he told her—just with the brevity of the telling, and the fact that he sounded like a bored newsreader discussing a famine he had no interest in.
‘My mother left my father when I was sixteen. She ran away with another man and I blamed my father because I didn’t want to blame my mother.’
‘Poor Ned,’ she said.
He inclined his head, but she couldn’t tell if he agreed or not. He went on. ‘Then I slept with Simon’s mother and she fell pregnant and my father warned me she wouldn’t stay with me either. After a heated discussion with my father, Simon’s mother and I left, and I haven’t spoken to him since he told me never to return.’
That explained that, but something still wasn’t right. ‘If you knew Simon’s mother was pregnant, how come you didn’t know about Simon?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Because as far as I was aware he wasn’t born alive.’
She thought about that. Someone had done the dirty on Angus.
He rolled his shoulders and rocked his head from side to side as if his neck was stiff, and she wondered if he’d slept at all last night either. Maybe she should offer to massage his neck. That thought started a slow burn she didn’t want to think about and she took another sip of her coffee.
In all fairness to Angus, though, Mia thought, it took two to fight. ‘Did Ned never contact you?’
‘He had no idea where I was. For a while there in the air force I wasn’t contactable anyway.’ He stood up, properly filled her cup, and then carried his plate to the sink where he rinsed it.
That little action, a tiny thing that Mark had never done in the whole time they’d been together, dissolved any last remnants of anger from yesterday.
That Angus topped up her coffee, regardless of the fact she wouldn’t finish it and had put a plate in the sink because it was not her job, or Louisa’s, to look after him, did a strange thing to her stomach. Made her look at Angus again in a much more favourable light. Thankfully he didn’t seem to notice her frozen stare.
He had to have other faults, she decided. ‘Tell me about when you left home with Simon’s mother.’ Something he did must have driven her away. ‘Didn’t you know she was unhappy?’
He held up his hands in surrender. ‘I must have missed it. She was pregnant! I thought she was moody from the pregnancy. But gradually I began to see I was more excited about the pregnancy than she was. I certainly hadn’t expected to have a child at twenty, but when it happened I actually got used to the idea I would be a father, planned to be a good one, and really looked forward to the birth. But we had little money after bills and she missed the comfort she was accustomed to. Her parents owned the large hotel on the lake in those days. They kept telling her I was too young to look after her properly.’
‘So why did you think she’d lost the baby back then?’
He didn’t answer immediately, and she thought he wasn’t going to, but he did. ‘I never knew how it happened. Could only imagine and, of course, you imagine the worst. It started one day when she said she was going home for a visit to her parents and two days later she rang me to say she’d had a stillbirth. A son. I’d spent the last two nights painting a cot and had bought things for the baby to surprise her and now our baby was gone. Lost. And I’d never even seen him and never would. I was devastated.’
He looked at her and despite the lack of tell-tale signs she knew those memories had shaped the man.
‘I think I know why most people heal better when they see and hold a child that has died. When I was in disaster areas I was just as anxious to retrieve those that had died for that reason. To make it possible for a parent to hold that child, hug them, for what was going to be the last time they had the chance to parent that child. I got none of that and I really wanted it. I wanted to see my son, but she said the funeral had come and gone.’
He shook his head. ‘But Simon didn’t die in utero. He was growing up with another father all the time. As far as I knew, he was gone. I’ve always wondered what he looked like. She told me she just wanted to forget so I thought the worst. And, of course, she didn’t come back.’
‘Why didn’t you return to the lake to see her later?’
‘She told me she didn’t want me to follow her home.’
Poor Angus. To be locked out of sharing his grief while being estranged from his own family as well.
He looked away and she could see he regretted his disclosures. She hoped that now he’d spoken about them he might begin to heal. And surely it would help now he could at least begin to be a second father to Simon.
‘So nineteen years later Simon just appeared?’
‘So it seems. In fact, she hadn’t miscarried, just met and decided on her future husband, and her pact included telling Simon the other man was his real father.’
He shrugged. ‘I might not have made it back to the lake if Simon hadn’t forced my hand. So here I am. Now, if you don’t mind, that subject is closed.’
Mia subsided, sniffed, and her olfactory cells celebrated. ‘So where…’ he turned and stared her down, daring her to ask another question and she resisted the temptation and grinned ‘…do you get your coffee beans?’
He froze, his cheek twitched, but no smile. But nearly, buster, she thought. I nearly had you.
‘Touché,’ he said. ‘Shades of me yesterday. You had me going then.’
She smiled into the cup. ‘Yep.’
‘You realize, of course, it’s your fault I’ll have seven days in Lyrebird Lake.’
‘Your choice.’
‘Your suggestion.’
Mia shrugged. ‘I just said you should. You don’t know me from Adam.’
‘Oh, I think I’d know the difference between you and Adam.’ He looked her up and down and suddenly she remembered her thoughts of him that first day he’d arrived. The bathroom, she could feel the steam on her skin, and hear the sound from the door that he’d kick shut with both of them inside. She could feel the heat steal up her cheeks and a sudden flutter in her stomach made