Christy McKellen - Mills & Boon Showcase

Until now.

He fisted his hands so tightly it hurt the harsh edges of the scars. Scars that were constant reminders of the agony of his loss.

How in hell could he answer her question?

CHAPTER FOUR

HE SAID SHE showed her emotions on her face? She didn’t need a PhD in psychology to read his, either. It was only too apparent he was just buying time before spilling the words he knew she wouldn’t want to hear.

For an interminable moment he said nothing. Shifted his weight from foot to foot. Then he uttered just one drawn-out word. ‘Well...’

He didn’t need to say anything else.

Sandy swallowed hard against the sudden, unexpected shaft of hurt. Forced her voice to sound casual, light-hearted. ‘Hey, I was joking, but...but you’re serious. You really don’t want me around, do you?’

She pushed the rain-damp hair away from her face with fingers that weren’t quite steady. Gripped the edge of the countertop hard, willing the trembling to stop.

When he finally spoke his face was impassive, his voice schooled, his eyes shuttered. ‘You’re right. I don’t think it’s a great idea.’

She couldn’t have felt worse if he’d slapped her. She fought the flush of humiliation that burned her cheeks. Forced herself to meet his gaze without flinching. ‘Why? Because we dated when we were kids?’

‘As soon as people make the connection that you’re my old girlfriend there’ll be gossip, speculation. I don’t want that.’

She swallowed hard against a suddenly dry throat, forced the words out. ‘Because of your...because of Jodi?’

‘That too.’

The counter was a barrier between them but he was close. Touching distance close. So close she could smell the salty, clean scent of him—suddenly heart-achingly familiar. After their youthful making out sessions all those years ago she had relished the smell of him on her, his skin on her skin, his mouth on her mouth. Hadn’t wanted ever to shower it away.

‘But...mainly because of me.’

His words were so quiet she had to strain to hear them over the noise of the rain on the metal roof above.

Bewildered, she shook her head. ‘Because of you? I don’t get it.’

‘Because things are different, Sandy. It isn’t only the town that’s changed.’

His voice was even. Too even. She sensed it was a struggle for him to keep it under control.

He turned his broad shoulders so he looked past her and through the shop window, into the distance towards the bay as he spoke. ‘Did Kate tell you everything about the fire that killed Jodi and my son, Liam?’

‘No.’ Sandy shook her head, suddenly dreading what she might hear. Not sure she could cope with it. Her knees felt suddenly shaky, and she leaned against the countertop for support.

Ben turned back to her and she gasped at the anguish he made no effort to mask.

‘He was only a baby, Sandy, not even a year old. I couldn’t save them. I was in the volunteer fire service and I was off fighting a blaze somewhere else. Everything was tinder-dry from years of drought. We thought Dolphin Bay was safe, but the wind turned. Those big gum trees near the guesthouse caught alight. And then the building. The guests got out. But...but not...’ His head dropped as his words faltered.

He’d said before that he didn’t want to talk about his tragedy—now it was obvious he couldn’t find any more words. With a sudden aching realisation she knew it would never get easier for him.

‘Don’t,’ she murmured, feeling beyond terrible that she’d forced him to relive those unbearable moments. She put her hand up to halt him, maybe to touch him, then let it drop again. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more.’

Big raindrops sat on his eyelashes like tears. She ached to wipe them away. To do something, anything, to comfort him.

But he’d just said he didn’t want her here in town.

He raised his head to face her again. ‘I lost everything that day,’ he said, his eyes bleak. ‘I have nothing to give you.’

She swallowed hard, glanced again at the scars on his hands, imagined him desperately trying to reach his wife and child in the burning guesthouse before it was too late. She realised there were scars where she couldn’t see them. Worse scars than the visible ones.

‘I’m not asking anything of you, Ben. Just maybe to be...to be friends.’

She couldn’t stop her voice from breaking—was glad the rain meant they had the bookshop all to themselves. That no one could overhear their conversation.

He turned his tortured gaze full on to her and she flinched before it.

The words were torn from him. ‘Friends? Can you really be “just friends” with someone you once loved?’

She picked up a shiny hardback from the pile to the left of her on the counter, put it back without registering the title. Then she turned back to face him. Took a deep breath. ‘Was it really love? We were just kids.’

‘It was for me,’ he said, his voice gruff and very serious, his hands clenched tightly by his sides. ‘It hurt that you never answered my letters, never got in touch.’

‘It hurt me that you never wrote like you said you would,’ she breathed, remembering as if it were yesterday the anguish of his rejection. Oh, yes, it had been love for her too.

But a small voice deep inside whispered that perhaps she had got over him faster than he had got over her. She’d never forgotten him but she’d moved on, and the memories of her first serious crush had become fainter and fainter. Sometimes it had seemed as though Ben and the times she’d had with him at Dolphin Bay had been a kind of dream.

She hadn’t fully appreciated then what was apparent now—Ben wasn’t a player, like Jason or her father. When he loved, he loved for keeps. In the intervening years she’d been attracted to men who reminded her of him and been bitterly disappointed when they fell short. She could see now there was only one man like Ben.

They both spoke at the same time.

‘Why—?’

‘Why—?’

Then answered at the same time.

‘My father—’

‘Your father—’

Sandy gave a short nervous laugh. ‘And my mother, too,’ she added, turning away from him, looking down at a display of mini-books of inspirational thoughts, shuffling them backwards and forwards. ‘She told me not to chase after you when you were so obviously not interested. Even my sister, Lizzie, got fed up with me crying over you and told me to get over it and move on.’

‘My dad said the same thing about you. That you had your own life in the city. That you wouldn’t give me a thought when you were back in the bright lights. That we were too young, anyway.’ He snorted. ‘Too young. He and my mother got married when they were only a year older than I was then.’

She looked up to face him. ‘I phoned the guesthouse, you know, but your father answered. I was too chicken to speak to him, though I suspect he knew it was me. He told me not to call again.’

‘He never said.’

Sandy could hear the beating of her own heart over the sound of the rain on the roof. ‘We were young. Maybe too young to doubt them—or defy them.’

An awkward silence—a silence choked by the echoes of words unspoken, of kisses unfulfilled—fell between them until finally she knew she had to be the one to break it.

‘I wonder what would have happened if we had—’

‘Don’t go there, Sandy,’ he said.

She took a step back from his sudden vehemence, banging her hip on the wooden fin of a carved dolphin. But she scarcely felt the pain.

‘Never torture yourself with what if? and if only,’ he continued. ‘Remember what you said? Water under the bridge.’

‘It...it was a long time ago.’

She didn’t know what else she could say. Couldn’t face thinking of the ‘what ifs?’ Ben must have struggled with after the fire.