watched her contemplate the fabric of her pants, as if they provided an answer only she could decipher.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
She shot him a brief glance from under her lashes then focused on her hands, linking her fingers together. Here is the church, here is the steeple …
“Oh, just …” She gestured with a shrug. “It’s nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
When her expression tightened, Luke sensed the remnants of something more, something worrying enough to make her shift uncomfortably and straighten her shoulders.
Then she took a deep breath and began to speak.
“I was seventeen and just out of high school while my mom worked two jobs. Then one day, in the middle of fourth term, she booked us on a flight to Perth with money I knew we didn’t have.”
She stopped abruptly, letting the silence swallow her confession. Luke remained still, allowing her time to reveal the pieces of her past.
“I had no money, no life and barely a functioning parent,” she eventually continued. “For once I wanted to be normal, to travel, to experience new things.” He could almost hear her wistfulness as she recalled long-forgotten dreams. “I should’ve said no but she was so excited. She never got excited about anything, not since my dad left. I couldn’t—” she hesitated, then finished lamely “—bring myself to rain on her parade.”
I was just a naive teenager, Beth reminded herself. Wanting an adventure. An escape from the endless boredom of my life.
Her mouth tilted at the memory. She’d locked her past tightly away and she could try to convince herself that Luke’s appearance had forced the memories to surface. But the truth was, her very existence had already begun to turn the key. Now the door gaped wide-open.
Yet her slowly blossoming trust continued to war with a lifetime of secrets. She could feel the warm burn of his eyes and braced herself for the breathlessness and panic to set in. It was there, buzzing faintly in the background, but way less urgent, less dark than before.
That meant something. It had to.
“I was in an accident and people died, my mother included. So about a year later, I met a guy. He seemed nice and I liked him. I was eighteen and of course, you fall in love with every guy you date, right? So one night, after we … uh, were in bed—” she swallowed, embarrassed “—he told me he was a reporter, that he’d been trying to track me down for weeks and could I give him an exclusive.”
From the corner of her eye she could see Luke’s still profile. The dim light and deep shadows cast his features into sharp angles, doing nothing to hide the flint in his eyes or the tightening of his jaw.
She didn’t want to take that step backward, to delve into that pool of loss, betrayal and the inevitable vulnerability that failure had brought her. The past was dead and gone but still had the power to humiliate. Just as she felt a mild panic attack well up in her chest, she recalled the tiny bits of memory she’d shoved away—the irritation on Jack’s face when she’d slammed out the door, the hurtful revelation that cut like tiny shards of glass. And the sickening realization she would never truly be able to leave the past behind. She had to get out before it completely destroyed her.
She straightened her back against the hard couch leg. The panic attack faded as she went on. “So, there you go.” She drew a stray curl behind her ears with a firm hand. “That’s why I don’t trust anyone.”
When he reached for her, she pulled back. “Don’t.”
He ignored her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “Don’t what?” he murmured. “Don’t touch you? Or don’t care that you’ve been hurt?”
She buried her face in his chest, her answer muffled. “Both.”
“Too late.”
As they sat there on the floor cradling each other, she felt the tight constraints of her past begin to crumble.
“You’re into touching a lot, aren’t you?” she muttered against his shoulder.
“Yep.” She closed her eyes as his fingers went into her hair. God, that felt good. “Get used to it.”
After an eternity of her against the world, Beth nearly convinced herself he meant that. He’d slowly attacked her defenses, questioned her reasons for being alone. She knew she couldn’t hold out forever under this tender barrage. Openness was a luxury she did without, and yet she could feel herself warming to it, welcoming it.
Regretfully, she drew back and felt a surge of terrible loss. But that was dumb. How could she lose what wasn’t hers?
“Why do you blame yourself for Gino’s death?” she asked after a while.
His eyes watching her over the rim of his wineglass suddenly sharpened. “You really want to go down that road?”
She tilted her chin up. “Yes,” then, more softly, “I want to help you.”
“I was suspended, I confronted Gino, we argued and he had a heart attack,” he stated flatly.
He paused, almost as if he expected her to run screaming from the room. She stayed right where she was.
“Don’t look at me like that!” he muttered.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re doing right now. I don’t deserve it. I don’t need it.”
Beth sighed. “You don’t think you deserve my understanding and support?”
“No. Weren’t you listening? I killed my uncle.”
“So you said.”
Her composure was beginning to irritate him. “So I don’t need—”
“Don’t tell me what to feel, Luke.” She poked a finger in his chest. “You loved Gino. You miss him. How he died doesn’t erase a lifetime of good memories. Do you even know what I would’ve given for a family like yours?”
Luke’s scowl matched hers. “They’re not saints.”
“So whose are? At least they love you.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Whatever taints them taints you, right?” From the look on his face she knew she’d hit a nerve. “And you think bottling up your misplaced guilt is a good way of handling it? If Gino were alive, you’d still have to go through the inquiry. You’d still be on suspension. Nothing would’ve changed. Would Gino have wanted you beating yourself up about it?” She went on more gently. “With all this craziness around you, you don’t need to take the blame for Gino, too. You can’t do your job if you don’t respect your own decisions. Believe me, I know.”
Luke was staring at her, his dark eyes narrowed to speculative slits.
“How do you do that?” he muttered.
“What?”
