Page 41 of 2 Books in One Bundle

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

STANDINGTHEREINthe centre of Mia’s small but cosy sitting room, Zander froze. Outside a car honked and someone shouted. Through the window he could see that the sun was shining and the sky was blue. In here, however, the silence thundered and the thick, heavy air crackled with the electrical charge of an approaching storm.

‘That’s absurd,’ he said, denial slamming into every inch of him.

Mia gasped and recoiled as if winded, but nevertheless pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin, which was inevitable because she’d never backed down from anything. ‘Which bit of it?’

‘All of it.’ It had to be. How could it be anything else? ‘You’re doing what you said you wouldn’t and reading something into this that simply isn’t there. Apart from the baby, rampant lust with a side order of conversation is all we have.’

‘You’re being reductive.’

‘I’m being honest.’

‘No, you’re not,’ she said, her gaze fixing him to the spot. ‘You introduced me to your family. You sought my opinion and advice and trusted me enough to share with me your deepest fears. You let me in. Youwelcomedme in. You took me to Lapland.’

Zander’s jaw clenched. When she put it like that, he could see why she’d got the wrong idea. Her ridiculous assertion that they were in love with each other was a wholly unintended consequence of his desire to overcome the past in order to look forward to the future. Yes, they’d talked and developed a certain connection, but he’d been building a relationship, a practical arrangement that would lead to a smoother future, and that was it. Nothing more.

‘As a thank you for helping me overcome my past.’

‘You could have just taken me out to dinner.’

‘I’d already done that.’

She folded her arms across her chest and arched one elegant red-gold eyebrow. ‘So how do you explain the way you kissed me in the car on the way to the cabin?’

‘That was merely sympathy.’

‘We both know it was more than that,’ she said with a sharp shake of her head. ‘I felt you trembling.’

‘With relief. Because I thought I’d got it wrong. I thought I’d failed. Again.’

‘On the husky safari you held me in that sled as if you couldn’t bear to let me go.’

‘To stop you falling out and our baby coming to harm.’

‘I was securely strapped in.’

Zander’s words dried up. His head emptied. He had no counter-argument to that. What she said was true. They’d both been strapped in. And as it hit him that her other points were also true, his blood rushed to his feet and the ground surged up to reach him and he had to plant a hand on the bookcase to stop himself from passing out.

He could have taken her out to dinner. What he’d felt when he’d kissed her in the car hadn’t just been sympathy and relief. He’d also ached with the need to draw out her pain and absorb it himself.

Which meant what? That he’d been lying to himself? No. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Because that would indicate that she was right and they had something more than he’d assumed, which could not be the case.

He couldn’t be in love with her, he thought, a cold sweat breaking out all over his skin. He was incapable of it. He’d got so good at burying his emotions, which had been abhorred by his father and ignored by his mother, and which he’d always considered so very dangerous, that he’d felt nothing deeply at all for years.

Except that ever since he’d met Mia he had.

Hurt, panic, confusion, relief, exhilaration, pride, terror—he’d felt them all, on occasion so profoundly, so volatilely that he’d staggered beneath their weight.

How many times had he tried to suppress them? Many. How often had he succeeded? Rarely.

She did mean something to him, he realised, his chest tight, his lungs constricting, the knuckles of the hand that was clutching the shelf whitening. She meant everything. And because of it, she had the power to destroy him. To trample all over his feelings, these new terrifying feelings that he hadn’t even realised he had, and leave him there to bleed out, broken and hurting, a wreck.

But he couldn’t have that. Such vulnerability was unacceptable. He would not put himself in a position where he could wind up weak and indecisive and doubting himself. He had to remain strong and steady and not slice himself open and offer her everything. He couldn’t go there again and there’d been more than enough opening up already.

But it wasn’t too late to retreat and pull up the drawbridge while he figured out how to fix what he’d done. All he had to do was take a deep breath and calm down and find a way through the chaos.

So, deploying the strategies that had worked so well for him so many times before, he shut down the cacophony in his head and switched himself off. A blessed numbness swept through him. Ice now flowed through his veins. And at last he could think clearly.

---