He rose, not without difficulty, from the softness of the upholstery, and walked over to the window. He had to move away or he’d pull her into his arms and do something he should have done many years ago.
He clung grimly to a topic that could divert him. ‘As to “since when”, a letter arrived from him yesterday. My son, Michael…’ he shook his head as if still unable to believe he was a father ‘…apparently was adopted by his maternal grandparents not long after his birth, when his mother was killed in an accident. Until they died, and he came across his birth certificate, he didn’t even know he had other parents. He only mentioned that he’d discovered his real mother was long dead and the letter was to let me know my ex-wife had died. “In case I wondered”, he added, and he might come to visit me in a month or two. He doesn’t seem very keen to meet me.’
Scott turned back to Bella and the sympathy he saw in her face made him fiercely regret telling her. ‘Considering I’ve done nothing for him, I’m not surprised, of course.’
Bella shook her head. ‘If you didn’t know about Michael then someone made it hard for both of you. Why didn’t his mother tell you?’
‘That’s not something I’m ever likely to find out. We were totally different and never really understood each other. She probably thought I’d be as useless as a father as I was as a husband.’ He saw her flinch at the bitterness in his voice. What did she expect? All those extra years he had on her were filled with mistakes.
Bella’s voice was reasonable. ‘As you’re not useless at anything else you attempt, I find that hard to believe.’
‘That’s a compliment, considering I’ve been less than pleasant to you since you came back.’
Bella patted the chair and encouraged him to sit down again. ‘We’ll talk about that another time.’ When he walked past her to his chair she touched his arm fleetingly and this time there was healing in her sympathy. To his relief she didn’t pursue the subject.
Bella outlined a few changes she was looking at for the ward and the time passed swiftly. Before he knew it, she’d glanced at her watch and stood up. ‘Let’s go drive a bus.’
This time, as they circumnavigated the town, surprisingly there was little strain—on Bella’s side anyway. More young people got on and off than the last trip and they all knew Bella.
Scott tried to concentrate on where they were driving and not the driver. He’d been aware of the bus campaign but was amazed at how much the service was used. No wonder the number of teen car accidents was down if this many kids weren’t driving the streets.
When they returned to Bella’s house the lights were out in Sophie’s rooms. They were the only ones awake in a sleeping house and there was one more run to go. He felt his inner tension increase another knot and his steps slowed.
‘Do you want to go back into the study and have some coffee?’ Bella didn’t appear to notice as she stifled a yawn.
Scott pictured another episode of trying to extricate himself from the carnivorous chair and, despite its diversional properties, he couldn’t face it. ‘Can we sit in the kitchen?’
Bella stared at him for a moment and the laughter in her eyes told him she’d guessed about the chair.
‘Certainly.’ She led the way into the old-fashioned kitchen and indicated a huge boiled fruit cake under a glass cover in the middle of the scrubbed oak table. ‘I’ll make coffee and you can cut us some of Vivie’s cake. Then you can tell me about your marriage.’
She looked so innocent as she assumed he’d just do as he was told and bare his soul. For some reason her assumption chipped a little more at his composure and he couldn’t help his need to try and regain some control.
Bella wondered if she would get away with it. Hopefully Scott wouldn’t take offence at her question. It would be nice to know more about the man she’d once thought she loved. Someone, she realised now, who’d always treated her like a child.
Without warning, he caught her arm as she moved towards the sink to halt her progress away from him. Apparently, Scott wasn’t ready to discuss his marriage any further. It was the first time he’d touched her in twelve years and he wasn’t touching her as if she were a child. Bella’s pulse jumped with the unexpectedness of it.
‘Who says I want to talk about my marriage?’ His voice was deeper than usual with a touch of danger that accelerated her heart rate even more. ‘You’re being very bossy all of a sudden. When did this shift in power happen?’ he asked with gentle sarcasm.
This was a startling side of Scott she’d never seen. Bella looked down at her own pale wrist captured by his much larger hand and then up at his face.
Her mouth was dry and she moistened her lips with her tongue, lost for words. Suddenly he was staring down at her like a dying man in a desert without water. The air crackled with tension and she could almost taste the scent of the storm to come.
She said quietly, ‘Maybe I’ve changed and you’ve never noticed.’ This time when she ran her tongue over her lips she did it to deliberately provoke him, but his response exceeded her expectations.
Bella felt his fingers tighten on her wrist even more and her eyes widened as he pulled her all the way towards him until she was hard against the rock of his chest with her head tilted up at him.
His voice lowered and the conversational tone he used belied the hungry look in his storm-green eyes. ‘It drives me insane when you lick your lips. If you do it again I won’t be responsible for the consequences.’ Scott’s fingers loosened and he dropped her wrist to sit down.
Bella blinked and pressed her lips together, rubbed her wrist and turned away. Her mouth was dry, and a heaving, almost sickening excitement she didn’t want to feel coursed through her stomach as she filled the kettle. At least she’d found out the tiger’s tail could be pulled, she thought shakily.
When she returned to the table with the mugs of steaming coffee, Scott had cut two pieces of cake.
A tiny green flame simmered in his eyes and Bella threw up her chin at the challenge—something the Bella of a year ago would never have done—and she gloried in it. ‘So, does this mean you don’t want to talk about your first wife?’
Scott’s hand froze as he reached for his cup.
Ha. Good, she’d surprised him, she thought with sudden satisfaction, and for once she could read his mind. ‘You really haven’t seen how much I’ve changed since the court case, have you?’
Scott paled and clenched his teeth as he fought back the impotent fury that invaded his mind whenever he thought of Bella at the drugged mercy of her attacker. He took a deep breath. ‘We seem to have successfully avoided each other for most of the last year since you’ve been home. I didn’t get the impression it helped you when I was around.’
She shrugged delicately and her fragility belied the strength in her voice. ‘They say good comes out of even the worst scenarios. That experience taught me to rely on myself and not other people. And not to expect my big sister to always save me. I’ve worked on that over the last year.’
Scott frowned. ‘To say good came out of a brutal attack seems a tad forgiving of a creep who drugged and abused you.’
Bella winced with distaste and her voice shook a little. ‘He can rot in gaol, but surviving his attack has forced me to grow and learn. You weren’t here straight after the attack, but for a while I was ready to crawl away and die.’
Scott had shut off a lot of the memories of Bella’s attack because he’d felt so useless in her hour of need. He’d been away and had come back to find a shattered shell of the woman he’d known. She’d refused to see him when he’d come to offer comfort so he’d gone away again and gained what reassurance he could from information gleaned from Rohan. Scott felt he’d already hurt her enough all those years ago to feel he had the right to push his presence on