deep into feelings she’d rather were kept buried made Zoe feel uncomfortable. She found it impossible to meet Mitch’s gaze. To gain herself a moment before she had to reply, she put her glass down onto the table and tugged her dress down over her thighs.
‘We were just kids,’ she said.
Though Lara’s spite had been only too grown up. And the pain she’d felt when Mitch had ignored her hadn’t been the pain of a child.
Truth was, the episode was a reminder of a particularly unhappy time in her life. She’d rather not be reminded of how she’d felt back then. That was why she had tried to avoid Mitch earlier on, when she’d first recognised him.
‘I was old enough to know better,’ he said.
Now she turned to face him. ‘Seriously, if you hadn’t always been popping up in the media I would have forgotten all about what happened. I’m cool with it.’
He persisted. ‘I’m not cool with it. I want to make amends.’
She wished he would drop it. ‘If it makes you feel any better, my experiences at Northside made me stronger—determined to change. No way was I going to be that miserable at my new school. I decided to do whatever it took to fit in.’
‘Your piercings? Which, by the way, I used to think were kinda cute.’
‘Gone. I wore the uniform straight up—exactly as prescribed. Put the “anything goes” lifestyle I’d enjoyed with my parents behind me. Played the private school game by their rules. I watched, learned and conformed.’
And it had worked. At the new academically elite school she hadn’t climbed up the pecking order to roost with the ‘popular’ girls, but neither had she been one of the shunned.
‘Was it the right move?’
Again she was conscious of his intent focus on her. As if he were really interested in her reply.
‘Yes. I was happy there—did well, made some good friends.’
One in particular had taken the new girl under her wing and helped transform the caterpillar. Not into a gaudy butterfly, more an elegantly patterned moth who fitted perfectly into her surroundings.
‘I’m glad to hear that. But I want you to know I feel bad about what happened. I want to right the wrong.’
Zoe shrugged, pretended indifference, but secretly she was chuffed. Mitch Bailey apologising? Mitch Bailey maybe even grovelling a tad? It was good. It was healing. It was—she couldn’t deny it—satisfying.
‘Consider it righted,’ she said firmly. ‘Apology accepted. You were young and disappointed and you took it out on the first person who crossed your path.’
‘I tried to find you,’ he said.
‘You did?’ she said, startled. That he’d remembered the incident at all in such detail was mind-boggling.
‘After the soccer training camp I went away on vacation with my family. When I got back to school you weren’t there. I went around to your house. Your grandmother told me you didn’t live there any more. I thought she was going to slam the door in my face.’
‘Sounds like my grandmother.’
‘Remember how she always made you leave the door open and patrolled outside it? I felt like a criminal. Did she think I was going to steal the silver?’
‘She was terrified you’d get me pregnant.’
Mitch nearly choked on his beer. He stared at her for a long, astounded moment. ‘What?’
Zoe waited for him to stop spluttering, resisting the temptation to pat him on that broad, muscular back. She probably shouldn’t have shared that particular detail of her dysfunctional relationship with her grandmother.
She felt her cheeks flush pink as she explained. ‘I told her we were just friends. I told her you had a girlfriend. That the only thing going on in that room was studying.’
Not to mention that Mitch Bailey wouldn’t have looked at her as girlfriend material in a million years.
‘Why the hell did she think—?’
‘She wasn’t going to let me—’ Zoe made quote marks in the air with her fingers ‘—“get pregnant and ruin the future of some fine young man” the way my mother had ruined my father’s. You counted as one of those fine young men. She knew of your family.’
How many times had her grandmother harangued her about that, over and over again, until she’d had to put her fingers in her ears to block out the hateful words?
Mitch frowned. ‘What? I don’t get it.’
Thank heaven back then her grandmother hadn’t said anything to Mitch about the pregnancy thing. She would have been mortified beyond redemption.
‘It sounds warped, doesn’t it? I didn’t get it either when I was seventeen. I thought she was insane. I’d adored my parents. They’d adored each other. But Mum was only nineteen when I was born. Because my father dropped out of his law degree my grandmother blamed my mother for seducing him, getting pregnant on purpose and ruining his life.’
‘Whoa. You said your life story was mundane.’ He paused, narrowed his eyes. ‘And she transferred the blame to you, right?’
‘Yep. If I hadn’t come along her son would have got to be a lawyer.’
‘And he wouldn’t have died?’
‘Correct.’
‘That’s irrational.’
‘You could say that.’
‘Yet she gave you a home?’
‘Reluctantly. She couldn’t even bear to look at me. I look like my dad, you see. A constant reminder of what she had lost. But she felt she had to do the right thing by her granddaughter.’ In spite of herself a note of bitterness crept into her voice. ‘After all, what would her golfing friends have thought?’
‘Did you have any other family you could have gone to?’
‘My mother’s brother, whom I love to pieces. But as he has a propensity to dress in frocks sometimes the courts didn’t approve of him as guardian to a minor.’
Mitch laughed. ‘The lawyers must have had fun with that one.’ He sobered. ‘No wonder you were so miserable back then.’
The rejection by her grandmother had hurt. There had been no shared grief. No comfort. Just blame and bitterness. ‘I did something about it, though,’ she said.
‘What could a kid of seventeen have done?’
‘My new best friend at school—who incidentally is still my best friend—had a mother who was a top lawyer. She helped me get legal emancipation from my grandmother. There was compensation and insurance money from the accident that got signed over to me. I was able to support myself.’
