For several long moments they simply watched each other. Liam wasn’t even sure if he stopped breathing. And then, at last, she broke the silence, her voice perhaps a little too unnaturally breezy.
‘What did you think of Lucy Wells? I heard you finally had chance to meet her in person.’
He cast her a thoughtful glance.
‘She’s clearly a bright kid. And mature for fifteen. But then, given her medical condition, that’s understandable.’
‘True,’ Talia nodded. ‘And Violet?’
He knew what she was doing, trying to get the conversation onto a professional footing. But it wasn’t territory in which he was comfortable. He wasn’t the only surgeon who liked to meet his patients and get some understanding of who they were yet didn’t generally like to consider their personal circumstances too deeply.
If surgeries didn’t quite go to plan, it could sometimes make it hard to make the difficult decisions.
‘Violet is clearly a mother who fiercely loves her daughter, but I was surprised at how pragmatic she is, too.’
Talia nodded.
‘Not the overbearing Hollywood type you were expecting? Throwing her money or power around?’
‘I try not to pre-judge,’ he grimaced. ‘But I suppose that’s true enough.’
He was grateful when Talia didn’t press the matter. Another gentle silence swirled around them, until she spoke again.
‘So, the island really is a place of two halves. Approximately eight hundred square kilometres from the wild yet quiet mini-jungle at one end, and the noisy, bustling city of the historic centre nearer the other.’
‘Impressive,’ he acknowledged. ‘Anything else?’
They both knew
he wasn’t referring to the sightseeing tour, though he didn’t know why he was trying to make things more personal. Shouldn’t he be relieved that Talia had been working so hard to keep things on a neutral footing?
‘No more facts about the flora?’ He heard his quiet challenge. ‘The fauna?’
What was wrong with him?
Talia’s eyes locked with his, a flicker of uncertainty under all that smoky heat. She licked her lips even as her eyebrow arched up.
‘I could tell you that around three hundred plant species have been identified on the Beics, ten of them rare, as well as some thirty-odd bird species.’
He didn’t miss the slight hitch in her voice, however, and he suppressed a smile. At least he wasn’t the only one finding the entire day awkward.
Like a date that they’d never actually had.
Don’t even go there, he warned himself hastily.
‘So you’re happy back here?’ he asked abruptly.
Hardly an improvement. He wasn’t surprised when Talia snapped her head around to him.
‘Sorry?’
He didn’t repeat the question, there seemed little point.
‘I like it back here,’ she hazarded after a moment. ‘It...isn’t as bad as I once thought.’
He assumed she was referring to all the times she’d told him that she hadn’t been able to stand living on St Victoria. That moving to the States, to somewhere like North Carolina, had been like a dream to her.
‘You once said that you would never come back here. That it was too small, too insular.’