He half expected her to have left when he emerged. Told himself it was irritation he felt, not exhilaration, when he saw her still there in his living room. He was glad he’d thought to slip on black jeans to cover the limb. He’d never taken pains to hide it in front of anyone else.
Only Tia could make him feel so irrationally conscious of it. As though he was worried it might make her see him as anything less than fully competent to step up to the role as father to his own son. It was disability he’d spent years proving to the world it didn’t have to be. At least tonight had proved him as capable as any other volunteer on that lifeboat. More so.
Though it was galling that he should need to prove anything to her.
‘Had your fun?’ she asked pointedly, jerking her head up as he approached.
Did he imagine that flicker of weariness in her voice? Perhaps he did. Perhaps not. Either way, he knew he was done with them taking potshots at each other.
‘I’m sure we could go on for what’s left of this night firing questions at each other, until that hint of light on the horizon out there stretches into fully fledged morning, but I’m not really sure it’s getting us anywhere. Are you?’
‘I don’t know, Zeke—do you think that could be because you counter all of my questions with one of your own?’
‘You don’t find that a touch hypocritical?’ he pointed out before finally relenting. ‘Fine. Yes, I considered the danger, but those men would have been dead without us. Anyone else would have done the same.’
Flames of fury licked at her expression.
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Meaning what?’
Lovely as ever, she arched her eyebrows at him.
‘Meaning you’ve always been a risk-taker, Zeke. I think you live for that danger. I think you can’t live without it.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he ground out, but something shifted uncomfortably within him. A tiny part of him that suspected she was right.
The silence shrouded them and then, abruptly, the fight went out of her.
‘This was a mistake.’
It was the quiet sadness in her tone that really scraped at him.
‘What was a mistake?’
‘Coming back here. Trying to tell you about Seth.’
It was like a punch to the gut and ray of hope all at once.
‘I’m his father. Now I know that he exists I won’t let you shut me out of his life ever again. I’ll be there for him.’
‘You’re a liability,’ she snapped.
‘Say again?’ He had never been a violent man—he’d had enough of that growing up with a father like his—but right now he could have punched a hole through his very walls.
‘Tonight was a miracle, Zeke. You got those men to safety and kept your own crew safe. But what would have happened if you’d been just a metre out? Just once? Would everyone have made it back alive then? Would you have made it back alive?’
‘But we did.’
‘Lord knows how.’ Her breath hitched in her throat but she forced it out. ‘And what of Seth, your son, then?’
‘That didn’t happen, Tia.’ His voice was low, lethal. It was all he could do to keep his cool.
‘This time,’ she emphasised. ‘But what is your plan, Zeke? To build a relationship with Seth? To get close to him? To get me to agree to tell him who you really are so that he can love you as the father he’s always dreamed of?’
‘You have a real problem with that, don’t you? Why?’ he roared.
‘Why do you think, Zeke? Because what happens to him, then, next time you go off to pull a stunt like tonight? When, that time, it doesn’t work out quite so spectacularly?’