Pride After Her Fall

Her acceptance of him.

Come be with me. Let me show you how to love me, how to love yourself.

He closed his eyes, took a deep, sustaining breath, and knew his life had just taken a sudden irrevocable turn. For the better.

* * *

He was in his civvies and to his surprise Lorelei was just sitting on the bonnet of her car. Not kicking, not scratching, not a thrown shoe in sight. She was chatting casually with three security guys, who stood around looking more interested in making an impression than doing their job.

The guys evaporated with polite nods as Nash approached. Lorelei leaned back, angling her body at him. The old playful pose dragged him back to the first time he’d met her, when she’d put on that little show and he’d lost his head over her.

‘I thought I dreamed you up,’ he said, his voice suddenly rather hoarse.

‘Are you in the habit of doing that?’

‘Lately? Yeah. All the time.’

She slid off the bonnet of the car and stood before him, suddenly not so sure of herself, her face solemn.

‘I’m not Jack,’ she said.

He went still.

‘And I’m grateful for the time with the villa, but I’m not your rescue package, Nash Blue.’

He bowed his head.

‘I know that, Lorelei,’ he said in a thickened voice. ‘I saw you at the equestrian centre. The day we got back I followed you.’

‘You followed me? I didn’t see you.’

‘You were training a young girl with a prosthesis. I had no idea.’ He stepped towards her, aching to take her in his arms. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Lorelei hesitated. ‘I don’t know. I could say it was because it didn’t come up, but the truth is...’ Her voice died away. She shook her head. ‘I’m not proud of it, but I wanted to hold something back from you because I sensed you were holding so much back from me.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Fair enough. But you have to know when I got the big picture everything I’d told myself about my feelings for you came crashing down. I didn’t want to love you, Lorelei, and so I told myself you could never be anything but another person I’d have to bail out.’

‘In the end you did,’ she said in a strangled voice.

‘No.’ He shook his head with a soft smile. ‘I gave myself time.’

‘You gave me time,’ she corrected.

His smile grew. ‘Oh, sweetheart, you’re no rescue package. I did it for both of us.’

Lorelei stood there for a timeless moment.

‘Then why couldn’t you love me?’

It was a plea from her heart.

‘God, Lorelei.’ It was wrenched from him. ‘I was afraid I’d love you too much.’

Time stood still.

‘I was a clingy kid,’ he said, almost tonelessly. ‘Dad had a stream of women in the early days, and whichever woman picked me up she’d be mum. But they’d always leave. Dad would drive them away with his drinking.’

Lorelei didn’t shift an inch, afraid if she did he would stop. She so desperately wanted to hear it all, even as her mind turned in horror from the picture he was painting.

‘The old man used to say they left because of me.’ He shook his head at her expression. ‘It’s bull, I know. But when you’re a kid you believe your dad.’

‘Nash—’ She reached up and stroked his face, unable not to touch him.

‘When I went back to Sydney and saw the shape Jack was in his ex-wife said the same thing. He’s this way because of you. And in a way she was right. I succeeded. I got the career, the money, the accolades. Jack couldn’t cope.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘I looked at you, Lorelei, and all I saw was a fragile girl who’d run up debts and was living like there was no tomorrow.’

‘C’est vrai,’ she said softly. It was true. She had been.

‘I knew you’d been through the wringer with that trial and all the nasty publicity, and I thought if I put you in the public eye it would be as if I’d turned a hunter’s spotlight on you. All the stuff about your father would come out. For all those reasons I couldn’t do it to you. I thought I’d break you. Just like I broke Jack.’

Lorelei shook her head.