Then another in front of Brett. Her Brett. Sitting right across from her again. As he had for several precious years.
And it was all too much for her. The romantic restaurant. The wine. The town and new job and new life. A woman sitting in a shelter because the man she loved had beaten her...
Feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes, Ella clasped her hands in her lap, stared out at a ship on the ocean and told herself to breathe.
RATHER THAN HELPING, the glass of wine only made things worse. So Brett helped himself to a little more. Two was his limit whether he was driving or not, so the second was going to have to do the trick.
Deaden the parts of him that had once been in love with this woman. At least long enough to get rid of her.
Before she settled in.
She was going to have to move back to wherever she’d come from. Or somewhere else. He’d pay whatever it took.
There was no way the two of them could live in the same town without her getting hurt. He cared about her. She’d feel that. Start to expect things. Or, at the very least, want them. And he wouldn’t give them to her. Their pattern was clear.
She wanted happily-ever-after.
He wanted to be left alone.
Because alone was better than doing to others as his father had done to their family. Brett wasn’t going to make the mistake his parents had made. They’d both grown up in abusive homes. They’d promised each other they wouldn’t carry the pattern with them. That promise had destroyed lives.
He wasn’t going to pretend to himself, or to Ella, that he wasn’t damaged goods.
Thoughts sped through his mind as he watched Ella pick up a piece of white Italian bread, dab a bit of grape jelly on it and top it with a piece of cheese. She liked jelly on crackers with apples, too.
“How’s your mother?” Her gaze met his directly for the first time.
And the impact nearly killed him. His heart slammed against his chest, and his mind went blank.
“Same.” The one word was all he could give her.
“She’s still handling all of your personal business? Including the house?”
“Yes.”
“And you still haven’t seen her?”
“No.” He had a phantom personal assistant. She handled his mail, his charity work and the various individuals who helped take care of his home. Landscaper, cleaning service, pool service. She even had access to his personal calendar via Google. She left curt messages or sent two-and three-word emails.
“Do you at least talk? Actually converse, I mean.”
“No.”
She glanced away.
“She left a key to her place on my desk a couple years ago. I go in once a week to take care of anything that needs to be done.” She let him get her Christmas decorations out of the small attic in her garage. And he’d changed some lightbulbs in the cathedral ceiling once. Mostly he just visited with her phantom ghost. Sat on her couch and felt her presence.
Ella’s shocked glance in his direction pierced him. “That’s great, Brett.” Her smile burned into him. “She’s softening!”
“Not really. I threatened to hire someone to take her place.”
He sipped his wine, frowning at his ex-wife. He didn’t blame Ella for scrambling for conversation. He blamed her for moving to Santa Raquel.
And filled his mouth with bread before he actually blurted out his frustration.
“I need your help, Brett.”
“Why did you move here?” His gaze was piercing. It had to be.
“I’m a pediatric nurse, and Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital is slated to be the best in the state. With all of the new positions to fill, I was offered the chance to be a charge nurse...”
In another lifetime that would have been reason enough to move.
He held her captive with a look and didn’t relent.
“I have to prove to myself that I’m completely over you. That living near you doesn’t matter to me. Personally.”
He sat back. Took another sip of wine. Thought about the hard alcohol he refused to touch. About how his father had used it to numb his pain. And then brought pain to his loved ones.
“I’m happy, Brett,” she said. “I’ve built a good life for myself, and I like where I am.”
Brett nodded, wanting to tell her how glad he was to hear those words. But he wasn’t sure he believed them.
“But Chloe, you remember her?”
As if he’d forget being the best man in her brother’s wedding. Or forget the woman who’d once been like a sister to him. Clenching his fingers around the stem of his wineglass, he acknowledged her remark with a small nod.
“Well, Chloe has been getting on me to start dating again. I keep telling her I’m happy being single, but she keeps trying to hook me up.”
Was she trying to make him jealous? Because it wasn’t working. He would have loved nothing more than to see Ella happily married.
Safely obliterating any temptation he might ever have to attempt to avail himself of her sweetness in the future.
Ella took a sip of her wine. He watched the glass touch her lips. Imagined how they’d feel to that glass if it could only have a second of humanity. Felt sorry for it that it could not...
“Then one day about a year ago she suggested to me that I wasn’t as over you as I thought I was. She claims that I’m a victim of our broken marriage and that until I face that fact, until I can see you and know for certain that I’m over you, I’ll never have a completely joyful life of my own.”
Chloe needed to mind her own damned business.
“A move’s a little drastic, don’t you think? You could have just called. I’d have stopped by so you could see for yourself that it’s done.”
Done. It had to be done. He’d known that. Acted on it. Still believed. Without even a smidgeon of doubt.
“My therapist told me that I can hide and pretend forever, but to really take charge of my life, I’d need to come out into the open, take the air into my lungs and start moving forward.”
“Your therapist told you to move to Santa Raquel?”
Ella’s smile gave him an ache in the groin. “No, I came up with the idea all on my own. And only after my supervisor suggested to me that I apply for the position in the Santa Raquel NICU.”
Her work with seriously ill babies interested him. Immensely. In terms of how she was handling it. How she felt when she got home at night.
He had questions he’d never ask. Needed answers he wouldn’t seek.
Because they’d open a box, let out topics they were never going to discuss. Not ever again.
After years of fertility treatments, of humiliating procedures, Ella had finally been able to get pregnant. And Brett had killed her dream.
He’d thought he could handle being a father. Had been sure he’d be different from his own father. Until he’d found out Ella was really