He didn’t say die. He didn’t think that was what had happened. He seemed to recall arguments on the phone with his father when he’d used her name. It had always made him believe that she was his maternal grandmother rather than his paternal one. And it was what had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth that she, too, had ultimately abandoned him.
If she had once loved him, it hadn’t been enough.
Not that it deterred Talia. He knew why. She’d had such a happy childhood, despite the lack of money, that she hadn’t been able to understand the relationship between himself and his father. She wanted him to have what she’d had.
‘Is it possible you suppressed the memory?’ she mused, oblivious to his internal ramblings. ‘Maybe it hurt too much. Do you remember what happened to her?’
He opened his mouth to tell her that not everybody’s families could be like hers, then closed it again. Why destroy her moment of hope? Hadn’t he already damaged her enough?
‘Not for certain.’ He probed his brain to remember whatever tiny fragments were there.
And it was odd, but now he knew something was there those tiny shards were coming back to him, the tiniest sliver at a time.
‘I think we might have gone to her funeral.’
Although not when she’d initially disappeared from his life. But perhaps a few years later. Was that the image he always remembered? He’d always assumed that snapshot he had of his mother’s funeral had been something he’d created in his mind based on his father’s description of his mother’s funeral. Perhaps a photograph?
But perhaps it was actually a real memory, his own memory. Not of his mother’s funeral, of course, but from his grandmother’s funeral that he had actually attended?
Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d always thought he could hear a voice. A woman’s voice, telling him how much his mother had loved being pregnant. How much she’d wanted to be a mom. He’d always wondered if that had been her—his grandmother.
But
he couldn’t be sure. And what was the point in guessing?
‘If she did, I can’t even remember it. I certainly don’t feel it,’ he ground out at last, shoving aside the uninvited feelings that were currently, suddenly, threatening everything he’d ever believed to be true.
All because of Talia. He thought it was that, perhaps, that angered him the most. This was why he should never have let things get so far—so intimate—between them.
The taxi pulled up outside The Island Clinic’s luxury hotel, though he’d barely even registered the journey. He should put Talia back in the cab and send her home. But then she slid her hand into his and he forgot to do anything but walk with her.
‘Liam—’
‘The point is that you can now see why I really am not capable of loving you the way you want to be love,’ he gritted out.
They were still moving in the direction of his suite and even though his brain was roaring that this was no longer the time, his body seemed quite content to go along with it.
‘That’s what you said the other day,’ she pointed out evenly.
‘And, dammit, Talia, it’s no less true now. Why do you insist on thinking better of me than I really am?’
‘And why do you insist on thinking worse?’ she asked softly. ‘You keep saying that you aren’t capable of love but I think you’re more than capable.’
‘Then you’re a fool,’ he told her, but it lacked any real heat.
And Talia just smiled at him, gentle and encouraging.
How the hell had they got to his hotel suite?
‘I think you repressed that memory, though I don’t pretend to know why. It has always been there, buried, just waiting for the moment when you would start to dig it out.’
‘You’re wrong.’
He had been wrong to let her get so close.
‘I’m not.’ She smiled at him, a too-bright smile that seemed to pierce through every defence he tried to erect between them. ‘But enough of that now. I didn’t bring you this way to make you walk down paths you aren’t ready for. I just wanted a quick way to the hotel room.’
‘Talia...’