‘Stop.’ His hand flew up, halting both her advice and her words. And his own voice was harsh, razor-sharp even to his own ears. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
Not least because she wasn’t the one who should be doing any apologising. She shouldn’t be sorry for what had happened on that makeshift operating table; she’d carried out the only option left to her. And in doing so, she had saved his life.
The fact that he’d accused her of ruining it meant that any apologies were his to make. He was the one who had pushed her away. She hadn’t simply walked out on him, or cast him off faster than a Special Forces wannabe dropped his fifty-pound rucksack after his first fifteen-mile tab. He’d pushed her away. Hard. And without any show of mercy.
His only consolation had been the fact that it was the only way he could save her from feeling guilty or responsible every time she looked at him. The only way he could release her from being burdened with him.
But that had been five years ago, and a lot had changed since then. He had changed. How many times had he imagined finding her? Explaining himself to her? But not here, not like this. He needed to do it properly. To show her how he’d turned his life around.
This was the chance he’d been waiting for to get her back. And he wasn’t about to blow it.
If only he could work his tongue loose to say a damned word.
‘I heard you’ve been awarded a medal for bravery,’ Tia blurted out, clearly unable to stand the silence any longer. ‘For saving three crewmen from a sinking ship in heavy seas.’
‘I was doing my job.’ He could feel himself scowling even as he tried to stop it.
‘The newspapers don’t seem to think so,’ she babbled on but, irrationally, he was more fascinated by the way her pulse was leaping erratically at her throat. ‘They’re calling you a hero.’
He’d hated the publicity for that. The hero nonsense. The public had lauded him for that lifeboat rescue, yet all he could think was that they didn’t even know the names of the buddies he’d served with, who had died that night five years ago trying to protect their freedom.
‘I think they’re right,’ she concluded almost shyly, giving him an unexpected flashback to the day his chip-on-the-shoulder seventeen-year-old self had first met the blushing fifteen-year-old he’d had no idea would change his life so dramatically.
He clenched his fists behind his back and fought the unnerving impulse to stride across the room and close that gap between them.
And then what...kiss her? It made no sense. A confusion of questions crowded his brain, screaming for his attention. He fought against the ear-splitting ringing in his head. Strident. Throbbing.
What had he been thinking, coming here? Leaping on his motorbike and hurtling up the stretch of coast from Westlake to Delburn Bay the moment he’d heard she was here?
Like a lovesick teenager, worshipping at her altar. All these...emotions, jostling and tumbling inside him. And he had no idea what to do with them all. But then, he always had lost his head when it came to Tia, ever since he’d given into
temptation and kissed her on her sixteenth birthday.
Even now he could still remember every detail as they’d stood on the beach, the moonlight glistening off the inky water whilst her party had been in full flow in the beach house a few hundred metres away. A party that he hadn’t been invited to because, let’s face it, no one nice ever invited his family anywhere, and who could blame them for not wanting any one of four boys dragged up by an alcoholic, aggressive, abusive father?
But Tia had been different.
She’d looked at him, rather than down on him. She’d told him he was nothing like them, that he was one of the best lifeguards she’d ever seen. And he’d basked in the novelty of her admiration.
The night of her birthday she’d seen him on the beach, pretending not to stare in at everyone else having fun, and she’d come to demand her birthday gift from him. When he’d told her he didn’t have one, she’d simply shrugged her shoulders and told him, Of course you do.
And then she’d stepped forward, pressing the entire length of her body against his, and she’d lifted her head and kissed him. In that instant she’d found a way past all his armour. Past every single one of the barriers that he’d been erecting for as long as he could remember.
He’d vowed, right there and then, to never let her go. And he wouldn’t have...if it hadn’t been for that night.
And now she was back. But was she here because she knew he was in Westlake, or had she just moved to be closer to her father?
Or someone else?
The unwanted thought slid through him. What if Tia had moved on? It made him answer more curtly than he had intended.
‘I don’t give a damn what the newspapers say.’
She licked her lips.
‘No... I...don’t suppose you do. You never did care what anyone thought.’
He had cared what she thought. His Tia. He cared that she was here. And he wanted her back in his life.