He’d listened to her interactions with Jack every time her team had gone out, had admired her professionalism, her composure, her confidence. She commanded her team with respect and she knew how to get just that little bit more out of them—and her colleagues returned double that respect. Thea had seriously downplayed her talent when she’d told him she was good at her job. He’d be happy to have her work alongside him any time. No, scratch that, he’d be happy to work alongside her any time.
He felt a swell of pride which he had no right to feel. It was as though he’d had something to do with her success, and he knew that wasn’t the case. She’d achieved this all on her own.
Still, this grown-up Thea was a far cry from the twenty-one-year-old Thea who had captivated him with her flightiness and her lust for life, combined with the gentle, almost shy side she’d kept hidden. This Thea was confident, ballsy and sexy, but utterly dedicated and focused on what really mattered. And, from the various admiring glances he’d seen cast her way, he wasn’t the only one to think so.
He briefly wondered what had happened between Thea and Nic, before pushing the question aside. Who she dated wasn’t his business. But the fact that she wanted to was. She was right about the Army not letting her stay in the house if they knew they weren’t really married. But at some point she was bound to find someone else she would want in her life. And she and Ben needed an exit strategy.
He clenched his fists. The very thought simultaneously sickened and angered him. Jealousy? What was he playing at? This had to stop. Now.
Because he was beginning to think that he’d never be able to let her go. Not really. He didn’t think he could stay in that house with her for longer than was absolutely necessary. The sooner he finished his recovery and got back to Army life, away from Thea, the better.
And not just Thea. He was feeling inexplicably drawn to the life she led here. Once, back-to-back tours had made him feel proud—as if he was achieving something. But more and more over the years he’d begun to feel disillusioned. As though he was fighting the same war over and over again but never getting anywhere. As though he’d be more effective elsewhere. Somewhere like here.
But he couldn’t come here. This wasn’t his life—it was hers. A life which she’d carved out for herself despite him. And he had no business being in it.
As much as he suddenly found himself wanting to.
CHAPTER FIVE
THEA RETREATED TO her bedroom the moment they returned to the cottage. It was the only sanctuary she had left now Ben had catapulted back into her life. She flopped onto her bed, expecting exhaustion to claim her, as it always did after a twenty-hour shift. But today it proved elusive and instead she twisted and turned in agitation.
Ben! she thought resentfully. She could hear him moving about in his own room, and even that riled her. She should have known when Ben had agreed to be discharged into her care that he would fight any real attempt to help him through his recovery. She’d been nothing more than a means to an end—a way for him to get away from the hospital and away from people. Because heaven forbid anyone should ever get close to him.
The only person Ben had ever appeared close to had been her brother Dan. Best mates and Army buddies, they would have laid down their lives for each other. Dan had done so. No wonder she could never compete with that in Ben’s eyes.
She harrumphed and jettisoned herself off her bed to go and stare, unseeing, out of the window, lost in her thoughts.
What on earth had possessed her to invite Ben to work, to meet her colleagues, when she’d known it was bound to come out that she’d never told them she was married? Had she subconsciously wanted to create a confrontation? Neither of them had been prepared to be the first one to bring up their past, but now it was out there and she and Ben could no longer pretend to tiptoe around each other.
If it had been her unwitting intention, then it hadn’t worked anyway. Ben didn’t seem to care—not even about Nic. She didn’t like to admit how much that hurt, but it had underlined things for her. She didn’t want to keep avoiding their past—not when she still needed answers that only Ben could provide. They needed to have a conversation, at least once, which included the reason why he had really married her? The last time she’d asked him that he’d told her it had been the only way he could honour his promise to take care of her. But if that had been all there was to it then he wouldn’t have slept with her.
She needed to understand. How could he have walked out on her that night?
And she wasn’t the only one who was owed the truth. At some point she was going to have to tell him that she’d fallen pregnant that night and that she’d lost their baby. But what if he didn’t care?
Thea turned around from the window. She was suffocating, trapped within the four walls of her room. She needed to get out of there.
She lunged across the room to the high chest of drawers and scrabbled for her running kit, but even now, as if taunting her, her eyes slid down to the bottom drawer. In there, tucked in a small brown envelope and slid out of sight under the maternity clothes she had bought in such excitement but which she’d never had opportunity to wear, was the scan image she had of the baby she’d lost.
She froze momentarily before wrenching her eyes away, focussing instead on the drawer crammed with sports gear. She needed to occupy herself, push herself to her limits, exhaust her body so that she might finally find the blissful oblivion of sleep.
Thea dressed within minutes and then ducked down the stairs and outside. She would stretch in the garden—it was a pleasant enough afternoon. A wave of relief flooded over her at her sense of freedom. But it was short-lived.
‘Ben? You can’t seriously be going out for a run?’
Instantly his expression of cautious greeting evaporated, closing down as he shut her out.
He sighed, as if humouring a small child. ‘Look, I’ve jogged before—at the hospital.’
‘Of course you have.’ She snorted. Why couldn’t he just cut himself some slack?
‘Short distances, slow pace. I’ll probably just jog down to the end of the road and back. How about you? How far are you going?
She bit her lip angrily. He was being foolish, but there was no way she was going to be able to talk him out of it. He was so stubborn.
‘I was thinking five or six miles.’ Thea stalled for a moment, contemplating cutting her stretches short. Ben couldn’t afford to do anything to interfere with his body’s healing process, but maybe she should jog away—stretch somewhere else.
Instead she stayed where she was, bending one leg up behind her, tucking her heel against her bottom to stretch her thigh. Refusing to be chased away.