Marcus didn’t say anything, but the fierce compassion in his eyes was enough to make her throat clog. When she’d first met Marcus she’d thought he was uptight and superior, but it wasn’t that at all. He wasn’t mean; he just was fiercely protective of those he cared about. And, dammit, if that didn’t make him more appealing. She’d always been a sucker for loyalty.
The penny dropped, and she suddenly understood why those glowering looks of his got to her so. She’d always yearned for someone to look out for her that way, instead of feeling she was on her own, always having to look out for herself. One of her fathers had vanished before she’d even been born, and the other had left before she’d become a teenager. She couldn’t imagine Marcus vanishing on anybody. Oh, how she could have used a man like him in her life when she was younger.
She looked at her feet, dangling off the edge of the table. ‘They didn’t tell me until I was eighteen, but I’d always suspected something was wrong.’
‘He carried on being a father to you after he left the family home?’
She nodded. ‘He’s a good man, but very practical and structured—not really a good match for my mom. All three of us girls used to go and stay with him at weekends, but I could tell even then. There was something about the way he looked at me—’
She broke off, unable to continue for a moment.
‘There was always this…pain in his eyes.’ A giant breath deflated her ribcage. ‘He didn’t look at the other girls that way,’ she added as she looked up at him and tried to smile. ‘It was a relief to find out in some ways.’
Moisture fell hot and fast from her lashes. This was stupid. She never cried. And how selfish to cry for herself, when she really should be crying for him and all he’d had to face.
She sniffed and dragged the back of her hand across one cheek and then the other. ‘I finally understood why I’d always felt the odd one out, but it didn’t stop me feeling that way. If anything I felt even more of a fraud.’ She shook her head and looked up at him. ‘I’m glad you’ve still got your grandfather after all that’s happened to you, to give you that sense of balance and belonging. It’s a horrible thing to not know who you are and where you fit in.’
He reached for her hand. She saw his brain working behind his eyes, and his gaze sharpened and became more penetrating as his fingers covered hers. ‘You said the first time we met that your father was English?’
She nodded. ‘He ran a bookshop in Beckett’s Run for a few years. I don’t even remember what he looks like, apart from the fact he has dark hair like mine and that he always smiled at me when we visited the store. He gave me a book once. Fairytales, with a picture of Rapunzel on the cover. Inside it was full of castles, princesses and noble knights.’ She paused and gave a self-conscious shrug. ‘Kind of like this one.’
Marcus’s eyes warmed. ‘Castle, yes. The princesses and noble knights are long gone.’
Faith lowered her lids for a moment. She wasn’t so sure about the noble knights. She reckoned there was one sitting right next to her, his strong hand over hers as he patiently listened to her whine on about her family. Most men she knew would run a mile at the sight of female tears.
‘It was my favourite book,’ she whispered softly, ‘even before I knew who he was.’
‘He must be very proud of you,’ Marcus said, and another unexpected stab of pain got her in the gut.
‘He doesn’t know me.’
Marcus looked shocked. ‘He’s never tried to find you? Or you him?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure he even knows about me. And it was almost thirty years ago… He’s probably got a wife and other kids now. He doesn’t need me blasting in from the past and upturning everything.’
And she didn’t need to invade a family she had no place in. She’d tried that once—tried so hard—and it had all fallen apart around her. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
‘He’s your father. Of course he’ll want to see you. How could he not?’
The look in his eyes—as if he totally believed what he was saying, that it wouldn’t be just one more round of rejection—made something tiny and wavering flicker to life inside her.
And he saw it. Right deep inside her, he saw it.
Marcus was looking down at her, his jaw set, but there was a new and disarming softness in those clear blue eyes. Faith’s pulse began to thunder inside her veins. Everything was still. Even the ever-vocal geese outside were quiet.
Slowly Marcus lifted his hand to her face, brushed the tips of his fingers along her cheekbone. Her eyes slid closed and she breathed in a delicious little shiver as her head tipped back.
She knew what was coming. Had known it was coming ever since that first meeting more than a week ago, when she’d slid her hand into his on that misty morning. She just hadn’t realised how much she’d been waiting for it, or how badly she’d wanted it.
His lips touched hers, so gently, so softly, it made her want to cry all over again. She’d expected fierceness, but if anything this tenderness was more devastating. She met him, moved her lips against his, but she didn’t want to rush, didn’t want to hurry. This was too sweet, too perfect. She wanted to suspend this moment in time and make it last for ever.
His breath was warm against her mouth, and she couldn’t resist touching her tongue softly to his bottom lip, tasting him, drawing in that warmth. He shuddered in response, and something swelled within her even as she sensed him resist the urge to use his superior strength to pull her to him and lose himself in her.
Faith had never wanted to be thought of as fragile. She was tough. She could cope. She could batten down the hatches and make it through. But the way he held her, touched her, as if she was made of delicate glass, unravelled something inside her—something she hadn’t even been aware had been wound up tight.
He paused for a moment, pulled his lips gently from hers with exquisite softness. Just as he was about to kiss her again, just as sensitive skin was about to meet sensitive skin, there was an almighty crash on the other side of the room.
He jumped up, and Faith was left there sitting on the table, eyes closed, mouth more than ready. At first she thought one of the haphazard piles of stuff had finally given in to gravity, but when she opened her eyes and followed Marcus’s trail through the dust she realised what was going on.
It was the door. Someone was trying to ram it open from the other side. They were saved.
Faith slid off the table, hugged her arms around herself and watched. Marcus yelled instructions from their side, and more crashes against the sturdy old wooden door followed. She could see it moving, millimetre by millimetre.
Using the table to gain extra height, she retrieved Marcus’s phone from the window frame. The text had sent itself more than fifteen minutes ago.
Marcus stood back from the door as one final shove from the other side unjammed the slab of oak and a burly man stumbled into the room under the force of his own momentum. Marcus moved forward to check he was all right.
Faith didn’t move.
She couldn’t. A whole squadron of butterflies were doing aerial acrobatics in her stomach. She couldn’t do anything but watch Marcus, wait for his gaze to connect with hers again, to see if the look in his eyes confirmed that what had just happened between them had really happened, that it hadn’t all just been a dream.
Marcus thanked the man, shook his hand then picked the doorstop up with a flourish and wedged it under the open door. Only when that was done did he lift his head and look at her. The butterflies started dive-bombing.
It was real. It had been real.