He must still love her deeply or he wouldn’t have felt like he was free-falling into an abyss these past two days. The problem was, when she’d said those sweet words he wanted more than anything, he hadn’t been certain they were true. How could she know how she felt when she didn’t even remember their whole past? When she wasn’t 100 percent certain if she’d walked out on him or if she’d truly been forcefully taken from their home?
She’d turned to her father when she was pregnant with his child. Hadn’t she felt any of that love for Damon then? He stalked back toward the table where Gabe sat with his son Jason squirming on his lap. The kid was already a handful, crawling all over the place, climbing anything and everything, with a willful disposition tempered by the cutest grin imaginable.
“Honestly?” Damon tried and failed to remember a single thing his brother had been saying to him as he gladly plucked baby Jason off Gabe’s lap so the guy could finish his eggs in peace. “I’m more than a little distracted today.”
He set his wiggly nephew down on the rug in the middle of the patio deck so the kid had some room to scoot. Would Lucas look like this in another seven months? He didn’t want to miss another day of his son’s life, yet if he didn’t fix things with Caroline…
He couldn’t even fathom the future.
“Yeah. No kidding. And I’m trying to adjust to the time change when I’ve barely slept for days after the latest nanny quit, but I’m still making an effort to converse like a normal human being.” Draining the last swig of orange juice in his glass, Gabe scraped his chair back from the wrought iron table. “I’ve been trying to tell you that you’re an idiot to delay talking to her.”
“And tell her what?” Damon sidestepped Jason’s path as he crawled like his diaper was on fire toward some red blocks that Gabe had brought out of the nursery with him. “The truth? That I didn’t trust her enough to believe she loved me?” He shook his head. “That’s only going to make her pack her bags faster.”
He’d tried to speak to Caroline’s therapist back in Vancouver, to solicit the woman’s advice for talking to her, but the doctor had held firm that she wouldn’t discuss any issues that could compromise Caroline’s privacy.
“No.” Gabe rose from his chair, his white button-down and tan cargo shorts about as formal as the guy ever dressed outside of a meeting like the one they’d have to attend today. His work at the Birdsong Hotel definitely ran to the informal. But there was nothing casual or relaxed about his expression now as he stalked toward Damon. “First thing you do is let her know you love her. Fix that screw-up before anything else, because I guarantee you, that’s killing her.”
Gabe stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, watching over Jason as the baby tried to eat one of the fat red blocks. Damon was grateful for the distraction from the topic since the accusation his brother had just leveled had found its mark.
“I think she’s angry more than anything.” He knew because she’d hardly spoken to him. But she was harder to read now than before her disappearance. His wife was quieter. In the past, if she was upset with him, she would have told him why in no uncertain terms.
And since that night in New York, he’d buried himself in work, preparing for his appointment with the Transparent investors. With a wince of guilt, he realized how quickly he’d fallen into that old pattern. Back when she’d gone to London to make amends with her father, he’d been upset and had retreated to his office on the West Coast. He had regretted not talking to her more rationally then, yet now he followed the same path. Avoidance.
“Is that how you’d feel if someone you loved left you hanging when you put your heart on the line? Angry?” Gabe shook his head. “I’m not saying I have the best instincts where women are concerned, though. Maybe I was never lucky enough to find a really good one.” He scooped Jason off the floor, lifting the baby high over his head long enough to make the kid smile. Then he swooped him down low, while the boy squealed happily. “All I know is you don’t just sit back and watch while a woman like Caroline walks away.”
His brother started to leave, shaking Damon out of his thoughts.
“Gabe.” He appreciated his younger sibling’s insights, especially now when Jager was so happy with his own wife that Damon would never ask him about this. “What if she eventually remembers what happened that day she disappeared? What if she wakes up one day and recalls that she left me because she wanted it to be over?” He had played the scenarios over and over in his head, grappling with those fears that he wasn’t a good husband. But how would he ever be a better one if he didn’t change? “Maybe she didn’t run into trouble with the guys who abducted her until she had set up a life apart from me.”