time. She had steeled herself for this day and she’d thought she was ready. Right up until she’d seen that desperate sadness in the depths of Connor Matthews’ already dark eyes. Until she’d felt the touch of emotions so painful they were impossible to block completely.
But if she stepped back from the edge, where would she go?
She would be trapped in a prison of her own making. Lewis was right. She had to have challenge. Something that gave real meaning to her life. Kate could almost feel the frustration now. See herself circling some vast laboratory, hemmed in by test tubes and specimen jars and thin glass slides. Ranks and ranks of them that looked like prison bars all of a sudden.
‘I’ll do it,’ she whispered.
‘Want me to stay?’
Kate raised her gaze to meet the concern in Lewis’s eyes directly. He was offering her a lifeline. A rope so that she could abseil down the precipice instead of stepping into the void alone.
‘Thanks, but I think it’s best if I do it by myself.’
She did do it.
By herself.
Hours later, Kate was driving herself home and she had never been so exhausted. Physically and emotionally. Her head was still full of it.
The procrastination before she’d entered the morgue. Reading the clinical notes on Peyton, the week-old baby girl who was waiting for her.
The cerebral scan demonstrates no apparent blood flow, indicative of brain death. While there could have been some residual brain-stem function and life could have been prolonged with mechanical ventilation, there would have been no recovery …
The wobble in her voice when she’d started her dictation.
… a full-term infant with no apparent external abnormalities …
The microscopic appearance of the slides made from tiny slivers of brain tissue.
The ends of the axons show shortening consistent with having been sheared off by violent shaking or rotational injury.
Clinical notes or dictation that had the undercurrent of such draining emotional involvement. Peyton’s mother was only seventeen and she’d hidden the pregnancy for as long as she could. Long enough to take termination out of the equation as a possibility. She lived with a large, dysfunctional extended family and nobody was talking now. Who had shaken this tiny baby and caused the fatal injuries? What kind of unbearable stress had been going on? It was so easy to judge in cases like this but Kate knew, more than most people, the damage that stress could cause.
She didn’t want to think about it. Not on a personal level. Because if she did, she would remember the pain of losing a tiny person that she could have loved so much. That could have loved her.
She didn’t have to think about it. She was heading towards her sanctuary. Her beautiful home where she could play the music she loved and cook the food that she was so good at creating, and she could even have a glass of wine tonight because she’d certainly earned it. She could soak in the peace and comfort of the world she’d created and it would heal her soul because she would be able to tap into the strength she knew she had.
Kate turned down the long driveway, overhung by the huge oak trees that made a leafy tunnel in summer. Her lovely old house nestled at the end of the driveway with its antique lion’s head knocker on the heavy wooden front door. There were brick steps leading from the crushed shell pathway and …
And on the top of the steps something large and human that launched itself towards Kate as she rounded the corner of the house from the garage.
‘Kate! Oh … thank God … I’ve been waiting for you for ever.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘BELLA. What on earth are you doing here?’ Kate’s initial shock gave way to a mix of joy and dread. She knew her niece so well and she had just spotted the suitcase near her door. What was Bella running away from?
‘I tried to ring but you didn’t pick up and then I thought, Why don’t I just surprise you?’ Sheer happiness bubbled from Bella in the form of a giggle. ‘Are you surprised?’
‘Oh … yeah …’ The tight hug Kate had been locked in was loosened enough for her to step back a little. Good grief … Bella had become even more gorgeous in the months since she’d last seen her. Her hair was much longer. A tumble of shiny blonde waves. Legs that looked like they went on for ever, thanks to the super-short mini-skirt and the high, high heels. It was impossible not to smile back. ‘It’s been way too long, Bells. We’ve got some catching up to do.’
‘Well, we’ve got all the time in the world.’ Bella laughed and lunged for her suitcase. ‘Let’s go inside. Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing here?’
‘I already did.’ Kate fished for her key, shaking her head. It was spinning now. The plan to banish any lingering aftermath of her day’s work in peaceful solitude was blown away.
The world was a different place when Annabelle Graham was around.
Kate’s front door opened into an elegant, panelled hallway with a Persian runner adding warm crimson tones to all the dark woodwork. Like the rest of her home, the hallway was furnished with carefully chosen, beautiful antique furniture and ornaments, everything in exactly the right place and without a speck of dust to mar gleaming surfaces.
Bella’s case was missing a wheel. It bumped and swayed along the runner, bunching up the worn areas on the priceless carpet. Bella was just as out of synch with her surroundings but it didn’t bother her in the slightest.
‘Oh … look … you’ve still got that collection of old keys! Aren’t they gorgeous? D’you remember when you found the first one? In that junk shop you were hiding in when you ran away?’
‘I didn’t run away. I’d just gone for a walk.’
Bella gave her the same smile she had when she’d discovered Kate in that junk shop all those years ago. The one that said she understood and it was OK. Kate had never forgotten it. How could she? The bond between these two women had been forged right then, even though Bella had only been six years old at the time.
And maybe that smile was exactly what Kate needed right now. How could solitude and tapping into an inner strength, even in perfect surroundings, compete with that kind of acceptance and unconditional love? Even if Bella had never known, and hopefully never would know, the whole story, this feeling of not being so alone in the world was a precious thing.
So Kate simply smiled back. ‘I’ve missed you, Bells.’
‘Oh … me, too.’ Bella abandoned her overstuffed bag in favour of giving her aunt another tight hug. ‘And I’ve got so much to tell you.’ She swung away again, as light on her feet as a dancer. ‘Am I in this room again?’
The light was flicked on in a butter-yellow room that had a bay window and an antique brass bedstead with a patchwork quilt.
‘Of course. It’s the only guest room with an en suite. How long are you staying?’
But
