totally devoted to one another; they had lived for one another and died with one another when they’d been killed after the site they had been excavating had collapsed on them.
She had been seventeen at the time. Not a child any more, but not an adult either. Her parents, both only children, had had no other family, and their deaths had not only orphaned her but left her both with an aching need for someone to love her, someone to complete her, and with a deep-rooted fear of those feelings and the vulnerability they created within her.
Because of that she had buried them very deep inside herself, too immature and too frightened to cope with them. Instead she had concentrated on her studies, cautiously allowing herself to make friends, but not allowing anyone to get too close.
At twenty-four she had considered herself to be reasonably well adjusted and emotionally mature, but now…It was most definitely neither well adjusted nor emotionally mature to feel the way she did about a stranger.
Let’s analyse this, she told herself determinedly.
You are in a different country with different customs; a country, moreover, that has always fascinated you, which is why you were so keen to come here, why you learned Zuranese in the first place. Additionally you were on an adrenalin high brought on by an automatic fight or flight response to an unfamiliar situation. Of course such a highly charged situation was bound to affect you.
To the extent that she responded physically to a man she didn’t know? A man she obviously should have been on her guard against?
Everyone was entitled to one little mistake, she tried to comfort herself. And, after all, it was extremely unlikely that she would ever see him again. She didn’t want to accept how much that knowledge depressed her.
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