Reunited with His Long-Lost Nurse

‘I told you that,’ he faltered, not wanting to examine why he had told her that, ‘by way of explanation. Not as ammunition for you to now use against me.’

‘You would think that opening up to a person automatically means they’re using it as ammunition.’

He blew out scornfully, but she forged on.

‘I don’t know what your father did to make your grandmother leave, but I have to believe that she left to protect you somehow. It’s clear that she loved you a great deal because even through your fuzzy memories I see the kind, patient man you are today and I know that had to have come from someone. From her.’

‘You see what you want to see, Talia.’

‘And if I did, is that such a great flaw? That I should want to see that goodness and kindness and love in you?’

‘It isn’t love,’

he gritted out, but it was becoming harder and harder to sound convincing.

And the more he tried to distance himself, the more she seemed to level observations at him that he wished, oh, so fervently were true. If only he was a man as promising as the one she was describing.

If only he was worthy of her. But he wasn’t.

And maybe she was right about him letting his old man win, but what choice was there? Even if everything he’d been learning about himself this past week were true, even if he was finally beginning to have his eyes opened, it didn’t change the man he’d been for most of his life.

Maybe he hadn’t set out as the bleak, corrupted kid that his father had told him he was, but he’d certainly become that person over the years. Not least when first his grandmother and then Talia had proved that to be true.

Pain rained down on him, like tiny shards of ice. He grasped at them as if they were somehow going to save him, even though a part of him recognised, on some level, that it was only because it was easier to be angry than it was to face his greatest fears.

He’d opened up to her in their last conversation, and look where that had got him. He sure as hell wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

Instead, he focussed on telling himself that it was almost incomprehensible that this woman, of all people, would dare to talk of love to him.

* * *

Talia had waited, her breath caught in her throat, unable to inhale or exhale. Silently, she’d willed him to trust her. To come back to her. And for one long, heart-stopping moment she’d thought he was going to.

But then he took another step back and folded his arms across his chest, distancing himself—the way he had always done in the past—his cargo shorts riding so low on his hips that she could see that perfect V where his obliques met his abdomen.

And it struck her that it somehow seemed so intimate a view in the face of such a hostile conversation. As though his mind might be trying to shut her out but his body certainly wasn’t.

That begged the question—was he more furious at her for telling him she loved him or himself for wanting to believe it?

Maybe she was reading too much into things and giving herself false hope, but she was inclined to believe it was the latter.

‘I love you and I think you love me too.’

‘You’ve got the wrong man, Talia. That isn’t me.’

His face hardened and something cracked in her chest and broke.

‘I wish you could see yourself as others do,’ she murmured sadly. ‘As I do. And look at the stories you’ve started to tell me about your grandmother. They aren’t the memories of a kid who never believed in love, which is all the more reason for you to realise how powerful that emotion can be. How the love of just that one person carried you through those years in spite of everything else.’

‘I told you that in confidence,’ he bit back. ‘Not for you to analyse me. Certainly not for you to use it against me.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘You were,’ he cut in harshly. ‘You thought you could level a few so-called home truths at me and I’d fall at your feet in gratitude. I can tell you that isn’t going to happen, Talia. But allow me to do the same for you.’

And she didn’t like that clipped voice or those cold eyes. Not one bit.

‘Liam—’