sombre expression flattened his mood like a burst balloon.
‘What’s the matter?’
She was looking at the roses as if he’d given her a bunch of stinging nettles.
‘I have something I want to tell you.’
‘That’s great.’ His gentle smile did nothing to thaw the icy expression on Tara’s face. ‘I have something to tell you too.’
Some of his previous joy at finally tying up all the loose ends of his plan that would give them the chance of a rosy future returned. His love for Tara had never waned. They had survived a horrific accident and were both miraculously alive; he’d been there every step of the way through the lengthy and arduous rehabilitation programme; he’d supported her through bouts of debilitating depression and he’d found a way for them to live out the happily-ever-after of their dreams. If she’d just let him explain …
‘I’ll go first.’ The list he had made seemed redundant now, but he knew once she’d realised they weren’t stuck in an inescapable rut …
‘No, Ryan. Let me.’
Her eyes, which were usually wide open windows to her feelings, were shuttered.
‘Okay,’ he said slowly as he reached for her hand, but she snatched it away.
‘I want a divorce.’
Ryan shook his head in disbelief. Just when there was a possibility they could get their lives back on track? Had he heard wrong?
‘No!’ The word came out more forcefully than he’d planned. ‘Sorry,’ he added, and this time Tara let him hold her hand. She was shaking.
‘Why?’
She took a deep breath and looked him straight in the eye.
‘Because I’m disabled, Ryan. I’m a different person to the perfect woman you married. I think and feel differently and I could never be a mother to your children—’
‘But …’ He squeezed Tara’s hand tight. ‘But none of that matters … if we love each other.’
Tara looked away and shifted restlessly in her hospital bed.
‘Tara? Love … it’s what has sustained us through the bad times as well as the good.’
Tara’s gaze swung back to Ryan. She sighed.
‘That’s the problem, Ryan. I don’t love you any more. And I can’t live in a loveless marriage.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I want a divorce and I’m not going to change my mind.’
CHAPTER ONE
Eight years later.
RYAN DENNISON wasn’t trying to avoid the inevitable confrontation, just delaying it. He circled the car park looking for an inconspicuous space from where he’d still have full view of the entrance to the clinic.
How long had it been since he’d seen Tara? He did a quick mental calculation. It was nearly eight years. Back then, he’d told her he was prepared to be there for her all the way, no matter the sacrifices. He’d had a workable plan for their future. But she’d insisted she wanted a divorce. He thought he’d found a way to overcome all their problems but he’d had no answer to her simple statement: I don’t love you any more. And she’d been right; they couldn’t stay together in a marriage without mutual love.
After several weeks of agonising self-doubt, guilt and pleading with Tara, she’d held her ground and become more distant as time went on. He knew her grief had been as gut-wrenching as his, but she hadn’t seemed to understand the anguish he’d suffered at being pushed away, at having to endure years of remorse.
Yes, he’d agreed to end their marriage, but his heart still bore the scars of being rejected by the woman he’d loved with his whole being. His attempts to contact her by e-mails and phone calls in the first few years had been ignored, as if she’d been frightened of having any communication with him. His phone calls to her home phone had always been coldly blocked by her parents, who’d told him their daughter didn’t want to talk to him, and she must have recognised his mobile number as his texts and calls went unanswered. In the end he’d stopped trying.
No one was to blame.
Well, that was what he’d kept telling himself—until the words almost lost their meaning.
But Tara’s parents didn’t believe it and he suspected Tara nursed doubts as well.
He parked the car and then glanced at his watch—four twenty-five. He’d done his homework. She finished at four-thirty but he’d come prepared for a wait. She would be busy, popular and almost certainly run overtime. Scanning the cars in the disabled section, he came to the conclusion hers would be the people-mover—the only vehicle big enough to take an electric wheelchair and be fitted with the gadgetry for a paraplegic driver.
Paraplegic … Oh, God, if only things had been different. Despite his outward calm he still had nightmares, replaying the horrors of that terrible evening. In the past week he’d woken nearly every night in a lather of torment, grief and with a vivid image of twisted metal. It was a painful reminder of how he was feeling about seeing his ex-wife again.
He took a sip of bottled water to cool the burning dryness in his throat.
He couldn’t change the past. Now he was going to be working in the same building with her he hoped she’d at least talk to him. But unless she’d had a turnaround in her personality she’d be stubborn and cling fiercely to her independence. The fact she’d finished her training and found a job was testament to her determination. She didn’t need—or want—him any more. She’d made that clear when they parted.
The guilt stabbed painfully again.
He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them he saw her, just as beautiful as she’d been the day he’d met her. The years had been kind to her. Her strawberry-blonde hair, streaked with gold, was cut shorter, so it fell in tapered wisps to her shoulders. He could see her arms were muscular and her shoulders a little broader than he remembered, but it didn’t detract from her femininity. Grimacing with concentration, she skilfully manoeuvred to the driver’s side of the vehicle, opened the door and positioned the wheelchair so she could haul herself into the driver’s seat. Then she smiled and said something to the young woman accompanying her, who opened the rear door and put the chair on a hoist which lifted it into the luggage space. The woman waved as she returned to the building and Tara reversed and drove slowly away.
What now?
He’d seen her. That had been pleasure, not pain. But he still had to speak to her. Tell her he was soon starting sessional work in the specialist rooms attached to her practice. What a strange turn of fate that the position of visiting orthopaedic surgeon had come up in Keysdale, of all places. As the most junior partner in his practice, without any country attachments, he’d been offered the job and been expected to take it. Initially he’d had doubts, as it would mean bringing up traumas of the past he’d thought he’d laid to rest, but after thinking long and hard he’d realised it might be a way of achieving closure to confirm Tara had no feelings for him.
And now he was back, and he didn’t want to
