Page 75 of Lela's Choice

“You vowed not to love anyone else?” A knife pierced Lela’s heart.

“I didn’t plan for any of this to happen.”

“You said she died five years ago,” Lela whispered, hearing her defeat in his dead voice, seeing it in his dull eyes. Those glorious green eyes—usually alight with speculation, lawyerly surmising, humour and life.

“The time doesn’t matter. I was turning twenty-eight. We joked that our child might be born on my birthday. The killer screamed at me from the dock. ‘Seehow you like it, to have some bastard steal your wife and child from you.’”

“He wasn’t sane.” Lela suspected she was repeating an argument he’d heard and rejected multiple times.

“What’s sane? Am I sane?” He started to pace. “I was responsible. If I hadn’t been involved in messy custody disputes, Olivia and our child wouldn’t have died.”

“You can’t believe you’re responsible.”

“Olivia believed I was responsible.” His pain hit with the force of a sucker punch.

Sorrow flooded Lela, urging her to reach out and hold on, to absorb some of the incredible hurt pouring from him, but he’d withdrawn into a dark pit where she was unwelcome. Hard on the heels of sorrow came renewed anger. He was prepared to shoulder the guilt his dead wife had been so keen to plant in his mind.What about Olivia’s responsibility?

“When did she say that?” Lela was a bitch to challenge his wife, but what hold did a woman dead for five years have on him?

“When the police issued a warning, Olivia asked me to drop my domestic violence caseload, said she felt threatened.”

“What did you do?”

“I accepted police protection. I upped security for Olivia, asked her to change her routines.” His hands fisted at his sides. “That day, she went out alone. I received her text when I came out of a meeting with my client. ‘Why should she be the one to change her routine?’”

Illalu. Olivia hadn’t followed the police advice. To frighten Hamish?To use the threat to convince him to give up his work? “Doing this work is who you are,” Lela repeated a simple truth.

“I need to be in touch with women, with their children, to know what they need. Violence against women and children is unforgivable. That’s where I’ve been heading since I was twelve years old. If I’d stopped, it would have been a betrayal of them. A violent man killed Olivia. If he hadn’t been stopped, he’d have killed again.” Hamish was revisiting old recriminations, and the result was torment and despair. “I’ve made peace with myself. After Olivia, I vowed not to put another woman at risk. I can’t do that again.”

Lela scrambled to find words to cut through old grief and new guilt.

“I thought you understood.” He hunched in on himself. “That I’d made it clear at the ferry dock, when I told you Olivia wanted me to change. That you’d understand my vow.”

Lela recalled the moment. He’d said all those things, but she hadn’t joined the dots. She might have, but her father had called, and the moment had passed.

“Haven’t you made your own deal with the devil?” He refused to back down, demanding she confront her choices. “You decided bargaining with your father every step of the way was better than not having him in your life.”

“Damn you. Yes.” For many years she’d been tormented by the idea she’d make a mistake, do something, which her father would regard as an unforgivable sin, which would prompt him to sever all contact between her, her brothers, and Sophie. “Promising Mari I’d look after Sophie meant giving her a family, a heritage.”

“He can’t keep you from Sophie. If nothing else, your trip here should have banished that bogeyman. Sophie’s an adult now, like you. You can control how much you see each other, and Giovanni Vella can’t do a damn thing about it.” He’d changed direction, shed the mood of the moment before and stood staring at her with a half smile in his eyes.

He took a step towards her, ran his hands up and down her arms, seeking to rub warmth back into her, into what they’d shared. His bare chest was inches from her. Lela could lay her fingers against his heart and feel if it raced as fast as her own. “You can be free.”

“Sophie’s decision will change my life, but there’s more than Sophie tying me to my family.”

“Your family isn’t going anywhere, but they’ve trapped you with obligations.”

“I’m not a victim.” She refused to be a victim.

“You’re a prisoner.”

“Now who’s projecting?” A storm raged inside her. “You’re both.”

“Stay with me here for a few more days.” His hands massaged her shoulders, slipped down to take her hands before raising them to his lips.

Lela trembled, and he read it as surrender, dropping her hands to sweep her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. He trailed kisses from behind her ear to the hammering pulse at the base of her throat. Matching heat rose in her, weakening her limbs, until force of will was her last defence, making her fight the urge to sag against him.

“Take what we have here—now.”

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