Her words fell like stones into the black pool of his emotions, and he felt the ripples reaching out into the depths of his lonely, aching soul, lapping against the wounds that just wouldn’t heal.
‘No. Apparently not.’ He threw the cloth into the sink and braced his hands on the edge of the worktop, his head lowered. ‘But then nor could you. It wasn’t just me. It needs give and take.’
‘And all you did was take.’
He turned then and met her eyes, and she saw raw pain and something that could have been regret in his face. ‘I would have given you the world—’
‘I didn’t want the world! I wanted you, and you were never there. You were too busy looking over the horizon to even see what was right under your nose.’
‘So you left me. Did it make you happy?’
She closed her eyes. ‘No! Of course it didn’t, not then, but gradually it stopped hurting quite so much, and then I moved to Cambridge and met David. I was looking for somewhere to live and I went into his office, and we got talking and he asked me out for a drink. He was kind and funny, and he thought that what I was doing was worthwhile, and we got on well, and it just grew from there. And he really cared about me, Sebastian. He made me feel that I mattered, that my opinion was valid.’
‘That was all it took? Kind and funny?’
She gave him a steely glare. ‘It was more than I got from you by the end.’
A muscle in his jaw flickered, but otherwise his face didn’t move and he ignored her comment and moved on. ‘So what happened to your PhD?’
‘I found out I was pregnant, but he’d been moved to the Huntingdon office by then and I was commuting, which wasn’t really satisfactory, and then the housing market collapsed. So I contacted my professor and he offered me this job, which kept us going, and then just after I had Josh, David died.’
‘And do you miss him?’ he asked. His voice was casual, but there was something strange going on in his eyes. Something curiously intense and disturbing. Jealousy? Of a dead man? ‘Yes, of course I miss him,’ she said softly. ‘It’s lonely in the house by myself, but life goes on, and I’ve got Josh, and I’m OK. He was a nice man, and I did love him, and he deserved more from me than I was ever able to give him, but I never felt the way I did with you, as if I couldn’t breathe if he wasn’t there. As if there was no colour, no music, no poetry. No sense to my life.’
His eyes burned into hers. ‘And yet you walked away from me. From us.’
‘Because it was killing me, Sebastian. You were killing me, the person you’d become. You never had any time for me, we never went anywhere or did anything that didn’t serve another purpose. It was all about business, about making contacts that would make more money. I felt like an ornament, or a mistress, someone who should just be grateful for the crumbs that fell from your table. But I didn’t want crumbs, I wanted you, I wanted what we’d had, but you shut me out, and you broke my heart, and I never want to let anyone that close to me ever again.
‘So, no, I didn’t feel for David the way I did for you. I didn’t want to. He didn’t give me what I’d thought I wanted when I was little more than a kid and everything was starry-eyed and rose-tinted, but he loved me, and he took care of me, and he made me happy.’
‘And he cancelled the life insurance.’
Damn him! ‘He had no choice! We were really struggling—’
‘Did he tell you he was doing it? Did you discuss it? Or did he just do it and hope for the best? Because I would never have done that to you, Georgia,’ he said passionately. ‘I would never have left you so unprovided for. Would never have compromised your safety or security like that.’
‘You have no idea what you would have done in those circumstances—’
‘I know I’d starve before I did that—’
‘You have no right to criticise him!’
‘You were mine!’ he said harshly. ‘And you gave him all the things you’d promised me. Marriage. A child. Hearth and home and all of that—hell, George, we had so many dreams! How could you walk away? I loved you. You knew I loved you—’
His voice cracked on the last word, and her eyes flooded with tears; she closed them, unable to look at him any longer, unable to watch his face as he bared his soul to her. Because she had left him, and he had loved her, but she hadn’t been mature enough or brave enough to cope with what he’d asked of her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her heart aching with so many hurts and wrongs and losses she’d lost count. ‘If it helps, I loved you, too, and it broke my heart to leave you.’
She heard him swear softly, then heard the sound of his footsteps as he walked up to her, his voice a soft sigh.
‘Ahh, George, don’t cry. No more tears. I’m sorry.’
She felt his hands on her shoulders, felt him ease her close against his chest, and with a ragged sigh she rested her cheek against his shirt and listened to the steady thudding of his heart. His arms closed around her, cradling her against his warmth and solidity, the mingled scent of his skin and the cologne he’d always used wrapping her in delicious, heart-wrenching familiarity.
She slid her arms around his waist, flattening her palms against the broad columns of muscle that bracketed his spine, and he held her without speaking, while their breathing steadied and their hearts slowed, until the tension left them.
But then another tension crept in, coiling tighter, pushing out everything else until it was the only thought, the only reason for breathing.
The only reason for being.
She felt his head shift, felt the warmth of his lips press tentatively against her forehead, and she tilted her head and met his blazing eyes.
THE KISS WAS INEVITABLE.
Slow, tender, fleeting, their lips brushing lightly, then gradually settling. Clinging. Melding into one, until she didn’t know where she ended and he began.
She curled her fingers into his shirt, felt his fingers tunnel into her hair and steady her head as he plundered her mouth, taking, giving, duelling with her until abruptly, long before she was ready, he wrenched his head back and stepped away.
She pressed trembling fingers to her aching, tingling lips. They felt as if his had been ripped away from them, tearing them somehow, leaving them incomplete. Leaving her incomplete.
She looked up, and his eyes were black as night, his chest rising and falling unsteadily. She could hear the air sawing in and out of his lungs, see the muscle jumping in his jaw as he took another step away.
‘I think you’d better go to bed,’ he said gruffly, and handed her the baby monitor from the table.
She nodded, her heart thrashing, emotions tumbling one over the other as she turned and all but ran back to her room.
What had she been thinking of, to let him kiss her? After all that had happened, all the water under the bridge of their relationship, everything that had happened since—she must have been mad!
She’d finally found peace, after years of striving, of what had felt like settling for second best—which was so unfair on David, so unfair, but how could he compete with Sebastian? He couldn’t. And, to be fair to him, she’d never asked him to. But still, it had felt like that, and it was only with Josh’s birth and the bond that had formed between them after David’s death that peace had finally come to her.
And now Sebastian had snatched it away, torn off the thin veneer of serenity and exposed the raw anguish in her heart.