last.” Then she wouldn’t have to deal with this.
Instead she would have to deal with knowing he was forever beyond her reach. She wasn’t sure which was the worse torment.
“Well, I did come back,” he said, startling her. “I tried moving on and it didn’t work. You can’t give to one person something you’ve already given to another, and Lucy sensed it. I decided to come back and find out if you felt the same way about me. Was I wrong?”
Say yes and end this now, she urged herself. Instead, what came out was a lame, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you still care about me?”
He sounded so bitter that she wanted to weep. She kept her head high. When their baby died she had shed all the tears in the world for their child, for him and for herself. She had thought she had no tears left. Now, feeling her eyes grow heavy, she knew she did, but shedding them in front of him would be far too revealing. To herself or to him? The question caught her off guard, silencing her until she realized he was waiting for an answer.
“We can’t pick up where we left off,” she said with an honesty he couldn’t possibly understand. There were too many layers under what he thought he heard.
His generous mouth tightened into a hard line. “Can we pick up at all?”
“No.”
She hadn’t intended to be so forthright, but survival demanded it. If she said so much as another word, she would break down and admit that there was more than a chance. After what she had experienced in his arms tonight there was a bedrock certainty. And it was a luxury she couldn’t afford. One night with him would undo all the months of silence.
How could she tell him she had conceived and lost their baby? How would he react to being excluded from something he had every right to expect to share? Even now, she had trouble justifying it to herself. No matter how difficult he had made it, or how ill she had been at the beginning, she should have found a way to tell him. Now it was too late. Would he even believe the child had been his? He had been ready enough to blame her refusal to come with him on another man. She wasn’t sure he believed her denials even now.
There was only one thing she could do. It cost her almost more courage than she possessed to retrieve her bag and touch a hand to the side of his face in silent homage to what might have been. “Goodbye, Zeke,” she said, and made herself walk through the door.
Chapter 3
Three days later, Tara knew she had done the right thing in walking away from Zeke, but couldn’t make herself feel good about it. She was babysitting for her sister-in-law, Carol, when the sound of the front door opening and closing told her that her sister-in-law had returned. Carol came into the room and dropped her briefcase on a side table. “Children asleep?”
“Finally.” Tara’s tone suggested it was an achievement.
Carol gave a wry smile. “I hope they didn’t give you too hard a time.”
“Of course not,” Tara assured her. “Cole might be at the Terrible Two stage, but he always makes me laugh. And Katie’s so sweet, calling me Tawa through the gap in her teeth. How can you refuse them anything?”
“I remind myself it’s for their own good.” Carol paused at the kitchen door. “Join me for lunch?”
Tara nodded. “I’m seeing a publisher this afternoon and having dinner with a potential benefactor for the foundation, but I’m free till then.”
“Another schmoozy dinner. How do you stand spending so much time with people whose only attractive feature is their bank balance?”
“It isn’t always the case. Some of them are sweet, and when it’s for the kids, it’s worth it,” Tara said.
“We’ve never really discussed it, but it can’t be easy for you, dealing with children every day. Even minding mine must be a strain.”
Tara let out a long sigh. “When I’m bathing them or playing with them, I sometimes feel such a longing for what might have been. Then I think how lucky I am to be an aunt to your two. They help in the healing process.”
“Children are like that,” Carol conceded, adding realistically, “especially when they’re asleep.”
“Then they’re positive angels,” Tara agreed, laughing.
“I don’t know why dramas always have to coincide with the nanny’s day off,” Carol went on. “Although if Mrs. McCarthy changes her will one more time, I swear I’ll hasten her end myself.”
Tara laughed. Her sister-in-law was a lawyer who had set up a practice at home while her children were young. The client in question was bedridden, but still feisty enough to enjoy the power her fortune gave her over her family. According to Carol, the woman changed her will at regular intervals to keep her clan under her thumb.
Tara perched on a stool and watched Carol prepare sandwiches with practiced ease. Her sister-in-law was one of six children, all younger than herself, so she was incredibly domesticated. She was also a good friend. Tara’s brother, Ben, reminded her frequently, that marrying Carol was an example of his dedication to pleasing his little sister.
Pleasing himself had nothing to do with it, she thought with humor. Ben was a doctor and had met Carol professionally when she defended a colleague in a malpractice lawsuit. Love at first sight, Ben had called it, when he wasn’t claiming he chose Carol so he’d have his own private lawyer on tap. Tara knew which reason she believed.
“This is the first chance I’ve had to ask you how Monday’s talk went?” her sister-in-law said, levering the top off a mustard jar.
Tara traced a pattern on the granite counter. “The usual.”
Carol’s hands stilled. “No matter how many times you do this, you never describe it as usual. In fact you assure me every presentation is different. So out with it, what’s the problem this time?”
“Zeke Blaxland is investigating the work of the foundation.”
Carol caught her breath. She knew about Zeke and had been incredibly supportive during Tara’s pregnancy and the shattering aftermath. Other than Tara’s doctor, her brother and sister-in-law had been the only two people Tara had confided in.
Tara knew that Carol still felt badly about being out of Australia when the baby was born, but the family had been in England, settling Carol’s elderly mother into a retirement place. They had flown back as soon as they could, but it was too late. Tara had assured Carol she understood. Their presence wouldn’t have changed the outcome. And they had supported her through everything else, including the baby’s memorial service. Carol had shed almost as many tears as Tara herself, and had held Tara’s hand through the days that followed.
Now she frowned in sympathy. “Oh, honey, how awful. Did you hate him on sight?”
Tara laced and unlaced her fingers until she regained her voice. “Worse than that, I didn’t hate him.”
Carol covered Tara’s hand with her own. “You didn’t do anything foolish?”
Tara knew her laugh sounded hollow. “You mean like go home with him and let him make love to me? Does one out of two count?”
Reading between the lines, Carol shook her head. “Sounds like your sense of self-preservation kicked in just in time.”
What self-preservation? Tara asked herself. Zeke had been in her audience for only a few hours before she’d thrown caution to the wind and driven him home. She hadn’t been reckless enough to go to bed with him, although it was close. But he still managed to dominate her waking thoughts. Her dreaming ones, too, she had discovered, only in her dream they had been a family of three. This morning she awoke with tears drying on her cheeks.
“I didn’t have him figured as the charitable type,” Carol said.
“He