if it means running him off the property with the shotgun—’
‘No, Dad, I’ll see him.’ Though the last person she wanted to see was her ex, she knew her father wasn’t joking about the gun. ‘I’ll go outside. There’s no need for him to come in.’
He seemed to accept her suggestion as a sign of her disapproval of her ex-husband and conceded.
‘All right, but you be careful.’
Tara wasn’t sure what her father meant.
At the time of their separation her thoughts had been clouded by the devastation of losing so much—the use of her legs, her career, the baby they’d so desperately wanted to make their family complete.
Ryan had had his whole life to live. She hadn’t wanted to take that away from him. He’d just started his specialist training in orthopaedics—his dream career. If he’d become her full-time carer, as he’d said he would, the future they’d planned before the accident would have been shattered. She’d felt she had little choice, especially in the early days when the pain had been so acute, and in retrospect she’d probably been depressed, not capable of making rational decisions. Back then there’d been no way she could have deprived Ryan of his dreams of a career, a happy marriage to a healthy wife and the children he had wanted so much.
The best thing had been to divorce. It had been easier that way. She hadn’t wanted to find out if Ryan was capable of coping with living with a woman who was disabled. He’d always described her as perfect in every way.
But she wasn’t perfect any more, not since the crash, and her scars were more than just physical. Yes, the sadness and pain, both physical and emotional, had lessened as the years passed, but memories still lingered of the man she’d loved with every part of her heart and soul.
Why was he here? The thought tumbled into her mind again.
She felt light-headed as she opened the door and the familiar clawing of panic descended like thick smog. Her heart began to pound and she gagged on the taste of bile at the back of her throat. A shard of irrepressible fear mixed with long-suppressed hurt stabbed at her heart and threatened to take control of her mind.
She stopped in the doorway and began taking slow, deep breaths.
‘What’s the matter, Tara? Are you all right? You look pale.’
For a long moment she’d been so preoccupied with losing control in front of Ryan she’d forgotten where she was. By now it was too late. A man she hardly recognised crouched in front of her. This was a successful man in his mid-thirties, with thick brown hair clipped short, clean-shaven and dressed in a conservative charcoal-grey suit, white shirt and silver tie. He looked nothing like the relaxed young man she remembered.
She was beginning to feel normal again, but couldn’t bring herself to smile. Her emotions were too raw. She felt the slowing of her heartbeat and the fuzziness clearing from her head.
He still had the same deep blue eyes, though, and right now they were full of concern.
‘I’m fine,’ Tara replied. She hated the fact she’d let down her guard and revealed how vulnerable she could be before they’d even said hello. ‘I just get a bit light-headed sometimes. It never lasts for more than a few minutes.’ The tension in Ryan’s face relaxed. ‘Dad said you wanted to talk to me.’
Ryan stood up with an expression that was almost but not quite a smile.
Damn his charisma and amazing good looks. She was determined not to expose her emotions, though. He mustn’t know she still had feelings for him, but already she knew the spark was still there.
At least he wasn’t focused on her humiliating physical response to him. But that was the thing with panic attacks. She’d thought she had them beat but they could be triggered by the most unexpected and sometimes insignificant things.
‘There’s something I thought you needed to know.’
Her confidence was coming back.
‘I’d better sit down.’ Tara had become used to making jokes about her condition, to break the ice for people who weren’t comfortable with her disability, but this time it didn’t work. The frown on Ryan’s face was set in stone.
‘You’d better sit down, then.’ She pointed towards an old swing seat suspended from the rafters. She now felt calm and in charge of the emotions which had threatened to be her undoing a few moments ago.
‘Do you need any help?’
‘No.’
She set the chair in motion and forced him to move out of the way. Finally he sat down on the swing opposite her chair.
‘So, what is it you want to talk to me about that’s so important you were prepared to brave Dad and his threat to run you off the property?’
Ryan smiled.
But it didn’t last long.
‘He said that?’
‘Mmm, he did.’ She paused a moment, wondering how much of the past she could raise without ramping up the tension that already buzzed in the air between them. On reflection, she realised she had nothing to lose. It wasn’t as if she was trying to impress Ryan, and he was well aware of her parents’ dislike for him.
Ryan gazed into her eyes and she jolted at the unexpected connection. The feeling was from the past—something that had been exclusive to them alone—an understanding that she and Ryan had used to consider a sign of their closeness.
But it served no purpose now. She wasn’t going to reveal how she really felt.
He finally spoke.
‘I’m going to be working down here. I start in two weeks in the new specialist rooms attached to your clinic.’
He stared, as if trying to gauge her reaction. And she produced the goods in the form of a violent blush. Her heart began to race again, but she was determined to keep her cool despite the overwhelming shock of his revelation.
‘I thought it was better for you to know in advance, rather than just bumping into me at work one day.’
She swallowed and concentrated on the calm evenness of her breathing.
‘You could’ve easily phoned.’ She wondered at his motives. She’d not heard from this man for nearly six years—
since he’d finally got the message she didn’t want to be reminded of the past by his e-mails and calls. All she knew of him was through the medical grapevine—he was a successful orthopaedic surgeon, three years after they broken up he had remarried, and the last she’d heard he was overseas.
‘I wanted to see you …’
Tara found that hard to believe.
‘Why?’ That gnawing pain in her heart that visited her every day was demanding an answer. Anger surfaced unexpectedly. ‘Were you frightened of what you might see?’
Ryan looked genuinely hurt—a totally unanticipated reaction.
