But it was also where Zeke was.
And that absolutely, positively, was not acceptable.
‘I disagree,’ she lied, aware that folding her arms across her chest was a defensive, negative gesture, yet wholly unable to stop herself.
‘No, you don’t. You might be here, but you desperately wanted to come all the way to Westlake. You just couldn’t bring yourself. It’s obvious. You were never very good at lying to me, Tia.’
God, she’d made a monumental mistake coming back here.
It was too soon. She wasn’t ready.
‘I’m not lying,’ she lied, desperation reverberating through every syllable.
Zeke’s mouth curled up at one corner, making it seem as if that were actually a bad thing. But she had to concede that he had a point. Which only made it all the more ironic that he’d never realised she’d told him the biggest lie of all.
Before she could answer, he moved into the room—or maybe prowled was more accurate—and she couldn’t drag her gaze away for even a second. Every bit the most virile, red-blooded, lethally powerful man she’d ever known. Something fluttered low in her belly, like a thousand butterflies all taking flight at once.
She couldn’t still want him, still ache for him, after all this time. Surely? It was ridiculous. Unconscionable. She couldn’t allow it.
&n
bsp; She wouldn’t.
‘Then why Delburn Bay, Tia?’
Was she really ready to answer that?
Anyway, Tia was the naïve fifteen-year-old girl who had fallen for the handsome, charismatic seventeen-year-old boy the moment they’d volunteered together at Westlake lifeboat station a lifetime ago. Tia was the twenty-eight-year-old whose life had changed in a single instant and everything had been turned on its head.
She hadn’t been Tia for five years.
‘It’s Antonia now.’
Whether she’d intended it as a distraction or a feeble attempt to take control of the situation, she couldn’t be sure. Either way, it fell about as heavily as an anchor on a freight ship.
‘The truth, Tia,’ he pressed her, with deliberate emphasis.
The truth was something she wasn’t ready for. But, just like that, just because Zeke had spoken, she was Tia again. As though the last five years had never happened.
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘The lifeboat community is tight-knit. People talk. You should know that.’
She ignored the voice in the back of her head whispering that was precisely why she’d come to Delburn Bay. She’d banked on that same tight-knit community to relay the news to Zeke that she had returned.
Just...not so unbelievably quickly.
‘Did my father tell you I was here?’
The bark of laughter—if that was what it could be called—was less amused and more incredulous.
‘Your father?’
‘I’m staying with him. At least, until I find a place of my own.’
‘And here I was thinking you were as much persona non grata as I am. The man who warned you that I couldn’t love you, that I didn’t even know what love was, and that we’d never last. Did you tell him you were only too happy to leave, or does he think it was all me?’
She had no idea whether he intended to wound her with the offhand remarks, or not. Probably the former. Then again, she deserved it, even if not for the reason Zeke could have known about. Another surge of guilt coursed through her.