So why was he so tempted?
Lifting herself, Thea searched his face with red-rimmed eyes. ‘Then at least talk to me, Ben.’
Talking. The thing he was least good at.
‘What about?’ he asked, faltering.
‘Anything...’ She hiccupped. ‘Distract me.’
‘Why did Dan always call you Ethel?’ he blurted out, his mind having gone suddenly blank. ‘I never knew your real name was Thea until our date. When I found out you were Dan’s sister.’
Way to go, idiot. Talk about the very person she doesn’t want to think about.
But Thea smiled. A small, fond smile which tore at Ben’s heart.
‘When I was a kid I couldn’t pronounce Alethea, so I used to tell people my name was Ethel. Dan loved it. Even when I started to be known as Thea he still called me Ethel. It was our thing. No one else could share in it.’
‘Right...’ Ben swallowed uncomfortably. He wished he’d never asked. Somehow it had made him feel closer to Thea. He didn’t want to feel closer to Thea. He clenched his fists as the image that had haunted him for the last three weeks swam into his head in high definition.
Dan...cradled in his arms as he lay dying on that hard desert ground.
Their two-man patrol had walked straight into an ambush and the two of them had been alone and pinned down by the enemy, with only a rocky outcrop for protection. Ben had tried and tried to stem the bleeding but it had been just too severe. Time had started to run out for the guy he’d fought alongside twenty-four-seven, for three hundred and twenty days of their last year’s tour of duty. And for multiple tours over the last seven years before that.
Grief hovered in the back of his mind but he refused to let it in. There was no place in his mind for mourning—he had to stay strong for Thea. She didn’t know the half of it. And he was never going to tell her. Besides, wasn’t he the king of shutting out emotions? He’d been doing it well enough for the last decade and a half.
‘Did you ever wonder how we’d never met before?’ Thea asked suddenly. ‘I mean, you were Daniel’s best friend and I was his sister.’
‘Not really.’ Ben paused thoughtfully. ‘Dan was always careful to keep the two sides of his life separate—his personal life and you, and his Army life. I think after your parents died he didn’t have the easiest time of it in the kids’ home. He never really talked about his past to anyone.’
‘Except you?’ Thea observed. ‘Because he trusted you?’
‘Right,’ Ben answered bleakly.
‘But still...’ Thea shook her head, still confused. ‘If he trusted you that much, surely you’d have come with him round to the flat?’
‘No, I never came round.’ Ben shrugged. ‘You have to understand I’m a commissioned officer. Dan wasn’t. Being part of a team and in each other’s company twenty-four-seven is one thing, but socialising back home isn’t that easy.’
‘Because the Army don’t allow it?’
Thea frowned, confused. Ben didn’t blame her. The Forces had their rules, their protocols, and if you were a part of it then it all made sense. It could save lives. But to an outsider trying to understand it might seem strange.
‘They don’t encourage it,’ Ben admitted. ‘We have separate messes for socialising. But the Army do realise that the bonds formed in war time don’t just dissolve when you get back home. So, like some of the others, Dan and I used to go on training runs together, and we headed into the mountains once or twice a year—but always off the base.
‘Right...’ Thea hedged. ‘But when you were deployed together he never even showed you a photo of me?’
‘Having a photo of your wife, or girlfriend, or baby is one thing. But having a photo of your sister... There’s no way Dan would have risked the guys seeing a photo of a girl like you. It would have invited attention...comments that a brother wouldn’t want to hear about his sister.’
‘Oh.’
Thea flushed a deep scarlet as the meaning of his words sank in. He found it surprisingly endearing—a reminder than she had never really appreciated just how stunning she was. Even now.
‘Tell me what you thought the first time you met me,’ she said. ‘On that date we went on together.’
He stiffened. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be having.
‘Please, Ben. I need to hear something...pleasant... Everything’s gone so very wrong. I just want to hear what you told me that night.’
Ben met her wobbly, pleading gaze. She wanted distraction, a better memory to offer some flicker of consolation at one of the worst times of her life. After the way he’d treated her, surely he owed her that much?