said quietly, ‘Maybe I’ve changed and you’ve never noticed.’ This time when she ran her tongue over her lips she did it to deliberately provoke him, but his response exceeded her expectations.
Bella felt his fingers tighten on her wrist even more and her eyes widened as he pulled her all the way towards him until she was hard against the rock of his chest with her head tilted up at him.
His voice lowered and the conversational tone he used belied the hungry look in his storm-green eyes. ‘It drives me insane when you lick your lips. If you do it again I won’t be responsible for the consequences.’ Scott’s fingers loosened and he dropped her wrist to sit down.
Bella blinked and pressed her lips together, rubbed her wrist and turned away. Her mouth was dry, and a heaving, almost sickening excitement she didn’t want to feel coursed through her stomach as she filled the kettle. At least she’d found out the tiger’s tail could be pulled, she thought shakily.
When she returned to the table with the mugs of steaming coffee, Scott had cut two pieces of cake.
A tiny green flame simmered in his eyes and Bella threw up her chin at the challenge—something the Bella of a year ago would never have done—and she gloried in it. ‘So, does this mean you don’t want to talk about your first wife?’
Scott’s hand froze as he reached for his cup.
Ha. Good, she’d surprised him, she thought with sudden satisfaction, and for once she could read his mind. ‘You really haven’t seen how much I’ve changed since the court case, have you?’
Scott paled and clenched his teeth as he fought back the impotent fury that invaded his mind whenever he thought of Bella at the drugged mercy of her attacker. He took a deep breath. ‘We seem to have successfully avoided each other for most of the last year since you’ve been home. I didn’t get the impression it helped you when I was around.’
She shrugged delicately and her fragility belied the strength in her voice. ‘They say good comes out of even the worst scenarios. That experience taught me to rely on myself and not other people. And not to expect my big sister to always save me. I’ve worked on that over the last year.’
Scott frowned. ‘To say good came out of a brutal attack seems a tad forgiving of a creep who drugged and abused you.’
Bella winced with distaste and her voice shook a little. ‘He can rot in gaol, but surviving his attack has forced me to grow and learn. You weren’t here straight after the attack, but for a while I was ready to crawl away and die.’
Scott had shut off a lot of the memories of Bella’s attack because he’d felt so useless in her hour of need. He’d been away and had come back to find a shattered shell of the woman he’d known. She’d refused to see him when he’d come to offer comfort so he’d gone away again and gained what reassurance he could from information gleaned from Rohan. Scott felt he’d already hurt her enough all those years ago to feel he had the right to push his presence on her when she was vulnerable.
‘But I don’t want to talk about me, I want to hear about you…’ She trailed off and managed a small smile of encouragement.
He smiled grimly. ‘So it’s my turn, is it?’ He could see that she’d sat far enough along the table away from him to be out of reach. At least he’d made her wary but it hadn’t stopped her impudence.
‘How old were you when you were married?’ The question drifted towards him and he would have liked to know why it was so damned important for her to hear this. He considered refusing to answer but he never had been able to deny Bella anything if she wanted it badly enough.
His voice was expressionless. ‘Married at twenty, but she left less than a year later. Pretty well most of med school was spent trying to forget my marriage. We fell in and out of love very quickly. Or at least she did.’
Scott could see the brevity of his answer irritated Bella and it gave him a little satisfaction that she could be frustrated for once.
‘Then why get married?’
‘I was young and stupid and she was older and no wiser. It blew incredibly hot and then, before I knew why, our relationship was as cold as ice. She left me for another man, a man her senior who could support her, and filed for divorce.’ A distant echo of a crushing hurt was in his voice and Bella felt more mature than Scott for the first time in her life. It was an interesting concept.
Luckily he wasn’t looking at her. His voice was flat when he went on, ‘Apparently my wife was pregnant when she left me. I just wish I’d known I had a child and could have been involved in some part of his life. The last two days I’ve agonised over why she shut me out so completely. I rang and checked. I am Michael’s true father.’
He shrugged. The image of the pain in Scott’s face in the birthing suite that morning came back to her. ‘And you’ve learnt nothing else about your son?’
‘What’s there to learn? He’s a man now. I imagine from his side I’m the father who’s done nothing to help him. It must be more of a shock to him than it was to me.’
Bella drained her coffee and set the cup down. She glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. ‘It’s almost time for the bus run again.’
Scott gave her a wry smile and stood to pull out her chair. ‘Well, that will end our session of truth and dare for the night. Thank goodness.’
‘It’s not healthy to keep all this stuff bottled up, Scott.’ Bella was stern in her new role. ‘When the shock wears off, you’ll be glad you told me.’
‘Right,’ Scott said cynically, and waited for her to precede him out of the room.
When they’d settled in the bus and Scott saw Bella stifle another yawn his original misgivings came back to him. ‘This is ridiculous. You shouldn’t be driving this bus. Can’t you find someone else to do it?’
Bella shook her head. ‘The government has promised funding for next year. That includes the employment of a salaried driver. I can survive until then.’
‘But why is it your problem?’
Bella shrugged. ‘Because if I didn’t do it, no one else would. I agree with my sister in the basic goodness of the younger generation. The advantages of the service are worth the effort.’
The conversation came to a halt because the bus had reached the first stop. A large group of young men and women clambered on and the noise level in the bus made conversation between Bella and Scott impossible, which was OK because he had enough to think about. Not the least was how soft Bella had felt in his arms and how hard it had been to let her go. Her support for his dilemma with his son was also surprisingly comforting.
At each stop the bus became more crowded until finally people started to get off and head home. By the time Bella had arrived back at Chisholm Road there were only Melissa and a young man left.
Bella had glanced in the rear-view mirror a few times. Blake—Bella assumed it was the Blake Melissa had befriended—had a sweet smile and laughter-filled eyes. In fact, Bella had liked him on sight.
When they moved to the front of the bus to alight, Melissa’s pleading eyes left Bella in no doubt of the young man’s identity.
‘This is Blake, Bella.’
