Thankfully the thickness of her jacket muffled the sensation of his fingers on her arm, and his touch, although firm, wasn’t constraining.
It was easier to go with him than to argue, she decided weakly as he opened the passenger door and waited politely until she was safely inside before closing it on her.
‘You really needn’t have done this.’
‘I know,’ he agreed as he set the car in motion.
He was a good driver, careful, controlled.
‘Odd,’ he mused, as the gates to the house appeared, ‘you’re the last person I’d envisage chairing a committee for environmental protection.’
‘I’m not,’ Sage told him stiffly. ‘I’m simply standing in for my mother.’
‘Really? The Sage I knew would have taken that as a heaven-sent opportunity for sabotage rather than a sacred bit of family flag-waving.’
Sage felt herself stiffening. This was what she had been dreading from the moment she had set eyes on him. Being reminded of the past, of its pain, of its shadows…and most of all being reminded of the person she had been…
Was it reading her mother’s diaries which had thrown so sharply into focus the differences between them, made her so sharply aware of her own shortcomings, of her own faults, not just of omission but of commission as well?
‘No comment?’ Daniel asked her softly as he brought the car to a halt.
‘Did you ask me a question?’ Sage challenged him acidly as she reached to open her door. ‘I thought you were simply making a statement. How I live my life has nothing to do with you, Daniel…it’s my own affair.’
‘Or affairs,’ he murmured cynically, making her forget that she was still wearing her seatbelt, so that she pushed open the heavy door and tried to get out, only to discover infuriatingly that she was still trapped in her seat.
‘Still the same old Sage. Impatient, illogical. So damn used to getting her own way that she doesn’t even have the sense to avoid any obstacles.’
He opened his own door, and was round her side of the car almost before she had finished unfastening her seatbelt.
She discovered that she was trembling as she got out of the car, not with dread any longer, but with anger…anger, and something else, something that fuelled her adrenalin and banished the pain from her temples.
‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘You’re welcome.’
His face was in the shadows, but as he turned away from her to walk back to the driver’s door his expression was briefly illuminated by the moon, and for an instant he might have been the old Daniel she had once known so well, only to discover she had not really known him at all.
Daniel Cavanagh… Why had he come back into her life, and now of all times, reopening doors—wounds—she had thought long since sealed?
Daniel Cavanagh… She discovered she was shivering again as she walked towards the house, fighting against the threatening avalanche of memories she was only just managing to keep at bay.
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