CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ÉLISE BURIED HERSELF in work in the hope that it would stop her thinking about Sean.
She knew he’d taken Walter to the hospital. The fact that he hadn’t stopped by to see her bothered her more than it should have.
And now he was back in Boston, getting on with his life and she was getting on with hers.
Which was exactly the way it should be.
She cooked every night in the Inn serving award-winning food in elegant surroundings and spent the rest of the time supervising and working in the new Boathouse Café. She experimented with menus, removed dishes that didn’t seem popular, and added a few others. It pleased her to see the newly completed deck crowded with families, old and young alike.
And in the few spare hours she had, she designed a menu for the team-building event Kayla had arranged. The food had to be light to carry and easy to cook.
Tyler had given her the little outdoor stove they’d be using and she reproduced all the dishes using only the equipment she’d have on the trail.
On the morning of the trek, she met him at the Outdoor Center.
“For goodness’ sake take bug repellent.” Tyler handed her a bag. “And wear long sleeves and long pants the whole time. It’s the middle of summer so there are a whole load of biting bugs out there. Luckily you’ve mostly missed blackfly season. That’s a real joy.”
“You can walk ahead of me.” Élise pushed the food into her backpack. “That way they can take a mouthful of you and maybe they won’t be so hungry.”
“I’m not going.” He helped her with the backpack. “Family of six want to explore the mountain bike trails and I’m their guide. We can’t turn down that sort of money.”
“No, of course you can’t. So is Jackson going to—?”
“Sean.” Tyler pulled the backpack closed and fastened it. “Shocking though it may sound, my lightweight, city-loving brother is going to do it.”
Her mouth dried. “Sean?”
Tyler gave her a sympathetic look. “Scary, I know, but believe it or not he used to know this trail really well. And look at it this way—if he can’t save you from being attacked by a bear because he’s worried about protecting his shoes and his suit, he can at least put you back together afterward. Don’t look so terrified.” He misinterpreted the look on her face. “You’re not likely to see a bear. They’re pretty nervous of humans, although once they get a whiff of your cooking that might change. Just kidding.”
Sean was coming with her?
She hadn’t seen him since that night when she’d fallen asleep on the sofa and woken to find he’d carried her upstairs.
“I thought he was in Boston.”
“According to Jackson he’s suddenly been filled with a brotherly urge to help out.” Tyler shrugged. “We’re pretty busy around here so none of us are about to argue. You two are going to check the route, cook that food, camp overnight and then let me know if we need to make any changes to the plan before these soft city folk arrive here.”
“I gather two of them are women.”
“That’s right.” Tyler grinned. “I’m planning to arrange a bear encounter so they decide to snuggle in my tent.”
Despite the feelings churning around inside her, Élise laughed. “Is Brenna going with you?”
“She is.” Tyler reached out and adjusted the straps on her backpack. “It’s important that the weight is in the right place or you’ll be uncomfortable. And if it gets too heavy give it to my big brother to carry, it will do him good.”
“So you’ll be sleeping with the women, which means that Brenna will be sleeping with the men? And one of them owns the company, no? So he is probably very rich.” The humor in Tyler’s face faded.
“Brenna will be in her own tent.”
“Aren’t you worried she’ll be afraid of the bears?”
“Brenna isn’t afraid of anything. You should have seen her as a kid. She climbed everything we climbed, skied everything we skied. Wherever we were, she was right there, too.”
And still is, Élise thought. But you don’t notice her.
She wondered if the camping trip would change that.
But she didn’t have time to dwell on that idea because she saw a flash of red and heard the throaty roar of the engine, announcing Sean’s arrival.
Tyler put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Are you all right with this plan?”
She was touched that he’d asked.
Touched that he cared.
It was yet another reason to love this place and the people in it.
“I’m fine with it. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because my brother has his eyes on your sexy ass. If he tries anything, just punch him. He’s a soft city boy. No muscle or backbone.”
She knew that wasn’t true. She’d seen those muscles.
It wasn’t nerves that fluttered in her stomach, it was something else altogether.
But what was she afraid of?
Just because he’d carried her to bed, tucked her in and left her didn’t change the way she felt about him. She was attracted, that was true, but it didn’t go deeper than that.
She didn’t want that and neither did he.
“I need to go. I’m already late for a meeting with a rep from a ski company. Good luck. If you need anything, call me.”
He lifted a hand to Sean and strode off toward the outdoor store attached to the Center.
Sean parked the car and strode over to her carrying a large backpack.
“Hey, Dr. O’Neil—” Sam Stephens was circling on his new bike and Sean paused to talk to him, a smile on his face.
“Hey, yourself. Is that the birthday bike?”
“Sure is. I got the red one.” He beamed with pride and rode it closer to Sean, who duly admired it.
“How’s your vacation?”
“Awesome. Except we only have two days left. Today my dad and I are cycling on the forest trail. Mom is staying here with my baby sister.”
“Sounds good. You be careful. Keep that helmet on. If you come off that bike you don’t want to bang your head.”
“I saw your car. Did you just come from Boston? Did you save any lives today, Dr. O’Neil?” The boy’s eyes were big, round and full of admiration.
“Not yet.” Smiling, Sean fastened the backpack. “But the day is young. Who knows what will happen.”
Élise felt her throat close
He was so good with the child.
Sam pushed his bike closer to his hero. “Did you know he saved a man’s life, Élise?”
“No.” She was relieved her voice sounded normal. “No, I didn’t know that, Sam. But he’s a doctor, so I suppose that’s his job.”
“This wasn’t his job. It didn’t happen at the hospital. It happened on the mountains up there—” Sam waved an arm and the bike wobbled. “A man fell skiing. Broke every bone in his body.” The boy described it with a ghoulish delight that made Élise wince.
“It wasn’t quite every bone,” Sean said mildly, but there was no deflecting Sam who was determined to tell Élise the whole story with as much embellishment as possible.
“There was blood all over the snow and people were screaming. The man was screaming. My dad was nearby and he saw it all. He said Dr. O’Neil skied over, cool as a Popsicle and he just took over. And he fixed him.” Drunk on hero worship, Sam let his concentration lapse and his bike wobbled again. With lightning reflexes, Sean shot out a hand and steadied him before the boy could crash into the dirt.
“I didn’t exactly ‘fix’ him. I stabilized him enough to get him down the mountain to hospital so the doctors there could fix him.”
“But if you hadn’t done that, he would have died. Right there on the mountain.”
“Maybe. Now put your feet down before you fall over.” Sean was patient. “That’s it. And be careful on that trail. It’s rough in places.”
“I’m fine.” But the boy put his feet down. “What’s the French word for blood, Élise?”
“Sang,” she said. “But I hope you don’t ever need that word.”
“I might. When I grow up I’m going to be a surgeon like Dr. O’Neil. I’m going to save people. That would be really cool.”
Checking that the boy was steady, Sean let go of the bike. “You’ll be a great doctor, but that’s enough talk of blood for one day. You’re making my stomach turn.”
Sam hovered, unwilling to let his hero go. “You see blood all the time.”
“Just one more reason why I don’t want to see it on my day off. You have a good day, Sam. Say hi to your mom and dad for me.”
Sam cycled off, wobbling a little while Sean watched.
“I hope they’re careful on that trail. He isn’t that stable.”
“He’s adorable. And he adores you.”
“He’s been coming here for years and he’s easily impressed. Are you okay with your backpack or is it too heavy?” He swung his own backpack onto his broad shoulders and secured the straps. Élise watched those muscles flex and ripple under his shirt.
For a moment she felt a little of Sam’s admiration and then pushed it away. Physically Sean O’Neil was as close to masculine perfection as it was possible to get. That was a fact. It wasn’t something to get emotional about.
And then she met his gaze and saw the heat in his eyes.
Raw chemistry slammed into her and she steadied herself, telling herself it was the backpack that was making her legs unstable.
“I’m fine. Let’s walk.”
“Tyler gave me the route he’s planning to take. We’ll follow it exactly and break where they are going to break.”
“Bien. It sounds good to me.”
“So did you ever do this in France? Hiking?”
“Oui, of course. In the mountains, with my mother.” The memory squeezed her heart. “She used to cook in the winter for skiers. Occasionally we would go to Chamonix in the summer and she would cook for hikers and climbers. Chamonix has some of the best climbing and skiing in the Alps.”
Sean led the way onto the trail that led from Snow Crystal up onto the Long Trail.
“We walked here all the time when we were kids. Gramps used to take us out camping and then leave us to find our own way home.”
“That didn’t worry your mother?”
“Probably. She worried about Tyler. He was the daredevil, always breaking something, so there was more reason to worry. Jackson and I looked out for each other. But Mom didn’t have much say in it. Gramps ruled. Still does.”
“He is looking much better. I hear the hospital appointment went well?”
“Yes.”
“So did you clear the air? Did you have that conversation?”
“Not yet.”
She felt a rush of frustration. “Why do you keep putting it off?”
“I was going to, but then he started going on about—”
“About what?”
“Nothing. Shit.” He swore fluently as he sank ankle-deep in mud. “How the hell did I miss that?” They were in the heart of Vermont’s backwoods, surrounded by tall trees and the scent of the forest. And they had the trail to themselves.
“City boy.” Smiling, Élise stepped past him, sprang over the mud and landed on solid ground.
“You’ve been talking to Tyler.” Still muttering, Sean scraped the worst of the mud off his boots. “Great. You’re going to love sharing a tent with me tonight.”
“We have two tents.”
“One tent. Two people. Two tents is unnecessary weight.”
“I thought there were two tents.”
“Just the one. Is that a problem?”
“I prefer my own space.”
“You can have your own space. The left-hand side of the tent is yours. Right-hand side is mine.” The corner of his mouth flickered into a smile. “Relax. We’re not moving in together. This is strictly a temporary arrangement.”
And there was nothing she could do about it, was there? To make a fuss would give the situation too much weight and importance, so she forced herself to shrug and carry on up the trail.
The forest grew dense, the light dimmed and then finally the trail opened out, revealing incredible views of the Green Mountains.
“C’est incroyable.” Élise stopped dead, drinking in the view, feeling the cooler air on her heated skin. “It’s truly beautiful.”
“Yeah, it really is.” Sean eased the pack off her shoulders and put it down next to a rock. “Let’s take a break and cook up some of that food you brought with you. What’s for lunch? Langoustines à la greque? Coquilles Saint Jacques?”
“You are in the mountains.”
“Nothing in the Green Mountain code book tells me I have to compromise my standards of eating just because I’m in the wild. Look—” he pointed as a bird soared above them “—red-tailed hawk.”
She stared up at the sky. “You know this, how?”
“Gramps. He knows everything there is to know about the birds and wildlife around here. You want to know which mushrooms are safe to eat? He’s the one to ask. And talking of eating, I’m starving.” He reached into his pocket and removed a pair of sunglasses.
With the sunglasses catching the light, she could no longer see his eyes.
“I don’t have mushrooms.” Élise opened her backpack and removed the first pack from the cool bag. “Lunch is a picnic. Local Green Mountain ham served with my sourdough bread and fresh olives.”
“If I found you mushrooms you could make some of those delicious pastries we ate the night of the party.”
“And how would I cook it? You think I am carrying around an oven? A simple life calls for simple food. But ‘simple’ does not mean poor quality.” She handed him a neatly wrapped pack and he picked out a spot on a rock and sat down.
“When we did these trips as kids, Gramps didn’t let us carry food. We had to eat what the forest provided.” He tucked ham inside thick chunks of fresh bread. “We knew which berries were safe to pick and which ones would poison us. We knew how to catch fish from the river and how to light a fire to cook it that didn’t burn the forest down. Jackson and Tyler used to do the foraging for food while I found the wood for the fire. In reality I found a quiet spot in the forest and sat down to read the book I’d sneaked into my backpack. The ham is good. Is there any more?”
She wondered if he realized how much he talked about his grandfather.
“Did your father go, too?” Élise handed him another slab of bread and slice of ham.
“He was usually working.”
“You were very close to your father.”
“Yes.” He tore off a chunk of the bread. “I was.”
She wondered if that had something to do with the row he’d had with his grandfather, but she didn’t pursue it. If he wanted to talk about it, he’d talk and if he didn’t—well, she understood more than most the need to keep some things close.
When they’d both finished eating they carried on up the trail, walking along the ridge with views of Lake Champlain.
“It is the prettiest view I’ve ever seen. Why haven’t I been up here before?”
“Because my brother works you to the bone.” He shielded his eyes. “We’re lucky it’s a clear day. Often the visibility is poor up here. See the lake? That was discovered by your countryman, Samuel de Champlain. He was a French explorer and he sailed inland from the Atlantic Ocean and found this large freshwater lake.”
“It is the most beautiful place. Where are we supposed to camp?”
“Walter’s Ridge. We camped there all the time as kids. If you drop down the other side you can follow the river back home. It’s the reason we never got lost.”
They walked a little farther and then reached an open area with boulders and a spectacular view.
Sean eased the pack off his back and glanced around him. “This is good.”
“So camping is allowed?”
“In some places. Part of the Long Trail crosses our land but we allow public access and camping in designated areas. No campfires. Campfires have the worst ecological impact of all camping practices. And we stay off the trails during mud season in late fall and early spring when the ground is saturated.”
“So you own this land?”
“Yeah, it’s part of Snow Crystal.” He grinned. “I’m trying to impress you.”
He did impress her. Not because they owned the land, but because he knew so much about it. Despite complaining when he stepped in something soft and smacking insects with his hand every few minutes, he’d proved himself to be tough and competent in the outdoors. He was skilled and efficient and in no time they had food cooking on the camping stove and the tent erected.
Élise sprinkled freshly grated Parmesan over a bowl of pasta and handed it to him, trying not to think about the two sleeping bags laid side by side inside the two-man tent.
“Tomorrow you are catching fresh fish for our lunch.”
“No way.” He shuddered dramatically. “I am not wading in a stream and catching my own food. That’s too primal. When I choose fish I prefer it to already be dead and on a restaurant menu, not swimming around my feet.”
“Fresh is best.”
“There is fresh and then there is still alive.” He forked up the pasta and tasted it. “Mmm. This is spectacular, and not just because I didn’t have to gut it before I ate it.”
Laughing, she ate, too. “Bien. I think even the most inept corporate person will be able to manage this. It is good, no?”
“Far too good for them. I thought the idea was that we made them suffer a little so that they bonded together in the face of adversity.”
“Is that what you and your brothers did when your grandfather left you out here to find your way home?”
Sean finished his food and helped himself to more. “It didn’t feel like adversity to Tyler and Jackson. And not to me, either, I guess, although I would rather have been left in peace to read.”
“You always liked books?”
“It was a way of escaping.”
“Escaping from what?”
For a moment she thought he was going to make his usual glib, dismissive comment but he didn’t.
Instead, he put his bowl down and stared off into space. “The pressure.”
The atmosphere shifted. There was a serious note to his voice she hadn’t heard before.
“What pressure?”
“For my grandfather the world begins and ends at Snow Crystal. He’s never been able to figure out why not everyone feels the same way. It was the reason he put so much pressure on my father. The atmosphere was pretty tense when we were growing up.”
“But your father loved it here?”
“He loved the place. He was an excellent skier. There are people around here who think he was almost as good as Tyler when he was in his teens. What he didn’t love was the work. He wasn’t built to be trapped behind a desk being nice to tourists. He just wanted to ski.”
Exactly like Tyler, she thought. “Then why did he stay? Why not do a different job?”
“Love. Isn’t that why most people end up compromising their dreams?”
“Do they?”
“Sure. It’s logic if you think about it. How can two people possibly have the same goals? They can’t, so it’s obvious that at some point one of them is going to have to give up on their own ambitions to satisfy someone else. In my father’s case, he was torn between his own wishes and the responsibility of running the family business. I guess the fact that my mother loved this place tipped the scales for him. A career in competitive skiing would have meant leaving her alone much of the time, traveling, living a life that was insecure and nomadic. It’s not great for a marriage.”
Élise thought about Tyler’s reputation. “No.”
“And it would have meant Snow Crystal being run by someone outside the family. He couldn’t do that to Gramps, so he stayed and did a job he didn’t want to do. And the resentment ate him up.”
“He talked to you about it?”
“All the damn time.” Sean leaned forward and turned off the stove. “He used to call me, mostly late at night, when Mom had gone to bed and he was on his own drinking in the kitchen, staring at a mountain of debts and paperwork he had no idea how to handle. He’d call me and he’d say the same thing every time, ‘Stay away from this place. Never give up on your dream.’”
“Does Jackson know he used to call you?”
“There was no reason to tell him.” He reached into his bag and pulled out water. “His business was going well in Europe, he was having a blast, making money, living the dream. It was all blue skies for him and I didn’t see any reason to put a cloud in that sky.”
He’d been protecting his brother. Carrying the weight by himself. “You didn’t tell anyone?”
“No. And then Dad was killed and I wished I had. If I’d said something sooner maybe we could have done something.”
“His car spun on the ice. How could you have prevented that?”
He turned the water bottle in his hands. “Dad was traveling because he couldn’t stand to be at home. He wanted to be where the snow was so he went to New Zealand. Gramps wouldn’t leave him alone. He pressured him to spend more time here, and the more he put the pressure on, the less Dad wanted to be here. He was already giving it everything he could.” His voice was raw. “At the funeral, I lost it.”
“This was the row you had? It was because of your father?”
“I blamed Gramps.” He rubbed his fingers over his forehead and pulled a face. “I accused him of putting too much pressure on Dad. I said it was his fault. He lost it, too, and told me I should have been at home helping. He said if I’d been here, there wouldn’t have been so much pressure. He told me I didn’t have a clue what was really going on. Neither of us has mentioned it since.”
Two men, both too stubborn to say they were sorry.
But it explained a lot. It explained the tension between the two men. It explained why Walter was so defensive with Sean and why Sean still hadn’t dealt with it.
“You still blame him. You’re still angry.”
“Yeah, I guess part of me is and I hate that. That isn’t the way I want to feel.” He stared at his hands. “I need to apologize because obviously Gramps wasn’t responsible for Dad’s death and I should never have said that, not even in the black misery of grief, but that doesn’t change the fact I’m still angry at the pressure he puts on everyone.”
She swallowed. “And your brothers don’t know why you stopped coming home?”
“They didn’t notice much of a difference. Work has pretty much kept me away for the past few years and when we were together it was usually around the holidays and there were so many of us the rift wasn’t so obvious. When Jackson called to tell me about Gramps I knew I had to come home, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to see me. And I was right. The moment I showed my face at the hospital he told me to go back to Boston.”
“But not because he didn’t want you there.” Her heart ached for him. For both of them. “It’s been two years. You must talk to him.”
“Maybe.” He stood up, his mouth a grim line. “But he isn’t easy to talk to and I don’t trust myself not to say the wrong thing and make it worse. Being home just brings it all back. The pressure. The anger. The guilt. It’s all there in a great churning mess.”
She stood up, too. “It’s grief,” she said quietly. “Grief is a messy, horrible thing. Guilt and anger are all part of it. You think the emotions should be clean and straightforward, but they’re not. Believe me, I know. I felt it all when my mother died. You should talk to him. I don’t think it matters if you say the ‘wrong’ thing. What matters is that you’re talking.”
“What do I say? The truth is he did put pressure on my father. There’s no getting around that. But I shouldn’t have lost my temper and I definitely shouldn’t have blamed him. And yeah, I regret it. There isn’t a day when I don’t wish I could pull those words back.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw and gave her a lopsided smile. “I’ve never told anyone that before. Here I am, baring my soul. I guess that’s what happens when you’re out in the wilderness.”
The air was still, the sun dropping down behind the mountaintops sending a rosy glow over the peaks and the forest.
“We all have things we regret in life. Things we wish we hadn’t done. Things we wish we hadn’t said. Your grandfather loves you, Sean. He really loves you. You have to try and fix it.”
“So do you have things you regret?”
Her heart thudded a little faster. A little harder. “Of course.”
“Name one.”
She pulled the pan away from the camping stove, thinking of Pascal and wishing she wasn’t. She’d erased him from her life. It was just a shame she couldn’t erase him from her thoughts.
“My mother taught me to think of mistakes as a lesson. She used to say ‘If there is a lesson to be learned learn it and move on. Everything else is just experience.’”
“So what was your biggest lesson?”
Élise stared into the stove for a long moment, feeling vulnerable and exposed. “We should probably go inside the tent before the insects start biting.”
“They’ve already bitten. Hey—” He closed his fingers over her arm, his hand strong and comforting. “You know all my innermost secrets. At least give me one of yours. What was your biggest lesson, sweetheart? I want to know.”
The endearment, so unexpected, knocked the breath from her lungs.
“My biggest lesson?” She felt his touch through layers of clothing and the softness of his tone penetrated the layers of defenses she’d wrapped around herself. “There are two. The first is never to delay saying sorry to someone you love because you may lose the chance, and the second is that for me, love is not possible. And now we need to get some sleep.”
* * *
SEAN PACKED AWAY the evidence of their meal, wondering what was wrong with him.
He wasn’t the type to talk about his feelings. Hell, most of the time he didn’t even think about his feelings. He was too busy to dwell on should have, would have and what if. But tonight, sitting outside with Élise, it had all spilled out. He’d said far more than he’d intended to and she’d listened quietly, allowing him to talk.
But still she’d said nothing about herself.
Just enough to tell him she’d been hurt. Badly hurt.
For me, love isn’t possible.
She hadn’t said “I don’t believe in love” or even “I don’t want love.”
He stood, staring at the mountains, analyzing the facts at his disposal.
He’d assumed her lack of interest in a relationship had been linked to her career goals and ambition. He worked with plenty of women who were unwilling to compromise their careers for a family so it hadn’t occurred to him to question it.
What was it Jackson had said?
You have no idea what you’re dealing with.
Swearing softly, Sean dropped to his haunches and finished removing all evidence of their presence.
Leave no trace. Wasn’t that what his grandfather had taught them?
You’re a guest in the forest, Sean, and guests don’t leave a mess behind when they leave.
Life, unfortunately, wasn’t so clean and tidy. It left plenty of traces. Plenty of mess. And clearly life hadn’t just left a trace on Élise. It had left deep scars.
He glanced across at the tent, but there was no movement. No words encouraging him to join her.
Once he’d cleared the site to his satisfaction he strode to the tent, pulled off his boots and ducked inside.
Élise was already in her sleeping bag, curled up in a ball. Her body language sent a clear message that the conversation was over.
“Is this the penthouse? Room service? Air-conditioning, infinity pool and 360-degree views?” He tried to remove his jacket, a task hampered by the width of his shoulders and the small tent. “There is no way this is a two-man tent. Tyler always did have a sick sense of humor. Still, at least we won’t be cold.”
Something about the way she lay, huddled down and hiding, tugged at his heart. He wanted to comfort her and he didn’t understand it because comforting women definitely wasn’t on his list of skills. Comfort was Jackson’s domain.
Aware that he was stepping over a line he didn’t usually cross, Sean stripped off his shirt and trousers and stretched out next to her. “I’m feeling naked here.”
“Then keep your clothes on.” Her voice was muffled and she didn’t lift her head.
“Not that sort of naked. The sort of naked where I just spilled my soul and you gave me nothing in return.” He shifted closer to her. “Why isn’t love possible for you?”
“Good night, Sean.”
“I hate it when you do that. You did it to me the night of the party. You just shut down a conversation when you don’t want to talk. It’s the verbal equivalent of slamming a door in someone’s face.”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re not tired. You just don’t want to talk about your feelings. But I wish you would. You listened to me. I’d like to listen to you.” He saw her shoulders tense and took a gamble. “At least give me his name and address. Then I can send Tyler to punch him. I’d go myself, but I don’t want to ruin another shirt. And if I use my fists, it messes up my operating schedule, I’m sure you understand. Lives to save and all that.”
“Are you ever going to go to sleep?” But this time there was laughter in her voice and he felt a rush of relief.
“First we have to have the whole wilderness-bonding thing. Am I doing it the wrong way? I’ve never done this before so I’m bound to make some mistakes.”
She rolled over to face him. “Let me get this straight. You, Sean O’Neil, master of the superficial, want me to spill my innermost feelings?”
He knew a brief moment of panic and then reminded himself he dealt with blood and guts on a daily basis. He could handle emotions if he had to. He just had to tread carefully, and not do or say the wrong thing. “Yes. I want to know why you don’t want a relationship. You told me you learned a lesson.” He softened his voice. “What lesson did you learn, Élise? Why is love not possible for you?”
He thought she wasn’t going to respond but then she sat up, the sleeping bag still snuggled around her middle. She was wearing a loose T-shirt and it drifted down over her arm, exposing her shoulder. There was something about the curve between her neck and that bare, slender shoulder that made her seem even more vulnerable.
“I am not a good judge of character. I am very emotional. It blinds me.” She hauled the T-shirt up and it immediately slid down again. “Sometimes I make very, very big mistakes. I have too much passion.”
After their encounter in the forest he was ready to disagree with that.
But it was obvious to him now that she’d loved someone and he’d let her down.
It explained the contrast between heat and cool. “Is there any such thing as too much passion?”
“The problem with passion,” she said softly, “is that it is all too easy to mistake it for love. It blinds you to lies. You believe what you want to believe and you give your all. And the risk of giving your all, is that you lose everything.”
“It was him, wasn’t it? Pascal Laroche.” He wondered why it had taken him so long to work it out. “He was the one.”
“I was eighteen. He was thirty-two. Older. Very attractive. I’d been working for him for four months when he kissed me for the first time. At first I didn’t think he could possibly be interested in me. I was so naive. So unlike the women he usually dated. I said no, without realizing that for him ‘no’ was the incentive he needed to start the chase. Pascal was the most competitive person I have ever met. In the kitchen he was a genius, admired by everyone. That admiration was his fuel. It drove him. He pursued me relentlessly and I fell in love. You are wondering why, but he could be so charming and I suppose I was flattered. I loved him with every part of myself and I truly believed he loved me back. That was when I learned that wanting something doesn’t make it happen. My mother was worried, but I wouldn’t listen. She was always overprotective and usually I tolerated that, but this time I reacted in a bad way. Rebelled.”
“Every teenager rebels. You should talk to my mother about some of the stuff Tyler did. He got a girl pregnant. That was a pretty rough time, I can tell you. The Carpenter family wanted to kill Tyler. Gramps still can’t drive past their apple farm without growling. He never liked Janet.”
“But your family stuck together. When my mother became pregnant, her parents refused to have anything more to do with her. My grandparents never even wanted to see me. As a result my mother and I were very close. I was her only family and she mine.” She paused for a moment and then carried on. “When I got the job at Chez Laroche she was very proud of me. And then when she met Pascal and saw how things were, how he was, she was frightened. She could see instantly what sort of man he was. She tried to warn me but I wouldn’t listen.”
“That sounds like a fairly typical teenage response to me.”
“It was the first time in our lives that we argued. She would yell at me and threaten me and I would yell back. I can see now she was at her wits’ end, not knowing how to control me but to me it made me want to go home even less.”
It was all too easy to see parallels with his own situation and Sean shifted uncomfortably.
Hadn’t he felt exactly the same way after the row with his grandfather?
“You were being pulled in two directions.”
“I stayed out at night and wouldn’t tell her where I was because I knew she would try and stop me going. All I cared about was Pascal. I was blinded. Dizzy with it. I was in love and I was dismissive of all her warnings. What could she possibly know about love? She got pregnant with me when she was eighteen and she admitted she was crazy in love with the man who was my father. She told me that loving like that blinds you to how a person really is. You see what you want to see, and believe what you want to believe. She told me I had to end the relationship and get another job.”
“You didn’t.”
“No. I was in love with him. I didn’t want it to end and I certainly wasn’t about to listen to my mother. We had a horrible, screaming row and I told her I was moving in with Pascal.” Her hand gripped the edge of the sleeping bag, her knuckles white. “She was on her way to the restaurant to reason with me when she was hit by a cab. I had a call from the hospital. She was—how do you call it?—dead on arrival.”
Sean closed his eyes and then shifted across the tent and pulled her into his arms.
Suddenly it all made sense to him. The reason she was so desperate for him to fix things with his grandfather. The emphasis she placed on family. Her reluctance to ever allow herself to fall in love again.
“That wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault.”
“If I hadn’t moved in with Pascal she wouldn’t have been crossing the Boulevard Saint Germain at that moment.” Her voice was muffled against his chest and she sat rigid in his arms. Inflexible. “I never had a chance to say goodbye. I never had a chance to say I was sorry. Nothing. The last words we both spoke were angry ones and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
“But she loved you and she knew you loved her.”
“Perhaps. I do not know. Back then I was such a mess maybe she didn’t love me. And I didn’t say that I loved her, so perhaps she didn’t know that, either. I will never know. And afterward, I fell apart. I didn’t know what to do. I had no one. No one except Pascal. He took care of everything, including me. I leaned on him. I took his kindness as evidence that my mother had been wrong about him, but of course, she wasn’t.” She pulled away a little and pushed her hair away from her face. “This story has a horrible inevitability to it, doesn’t it? Are you sure you want me to carry on?”
Part of him didn’t. He sensed what might be coming and it sickened him. “Yes.”
“The first time I caught him with another woman was the day after our wedding.”
“You married him?” That he hadn’t expected and he struggled to hide his shock. Listening was like watching a runaway train, knowing that disaster was imminent but having no way of stopping it.
“I was in love with him, so for me that was the obvious conclusion. I dreamed of building a family with him, of having children together and maybe buying a place in the countryside outside Paris. It is funny, no? You are thinking I watched too much Disney growing up.”
“Sweetheart—”
“The signs were there, but I ignored them. I saw only the parts of him I wanted to see. His genius. His charm. I told myself his temper was natural because he was so brilliant it was understandable he would be frustrated with those less brilliant. And he was very attentive after my mother died. Coping with that loss was terrifying. Without him I think I might have died, too. I was so heartbroken, so lonely, that when he proposed to me I didn’t think twice. It was like being swept down a raging river and suddenly being offered a stick to hold on to. It was grab it or drown. Looking back, I can see my neediness fed his ego. I made him feel important and feeling important was essential to him. It was another type of adulation and he fed on that. He was not interested in a relationship of equals. Always, he had to be the superior one.”
His gut clenched.
A lonely, grieving girl at the mercy of a narcissistic bastard. “You don’t have to talk about this. I’m sorry I pushed you to tell me.”
“On the day after the wedding, when I caught him with the other woman he told me it was a mistake. A mistake! As if two people could slip on a wet floor and land like that.” She rolled her eyes and even managed a laugh but Sean wasn’t close to laughing.
“You forgave him?”
“Yes, because the alternative was too brutal to confront.” She shook her head. “It shames me to admit that I gave him another chance, but I was very vulnerable and admitting that my mother might have been right was just too painful at that time. Of course, it didn’t end there. It never does, does it? He was famous. There were always women. The fact that he was married to me made no difference. He had a continuous string of affairs, sometimes more than one at the same time. And always the endless lies. Everything he said was a lie. One night in the middle of a terrible row I told him I wanted a divorce. That was the first time he hit me.”
“Christ, no.” Sickness mingled with the anger. “Oh, baby—”
Why the hell hadn’t he guessed?
He didn’t know what to say. What was he supposed to say to that?
“Afterward he was sorry. He said he was so desperate at the thought of losing me, he’d flipped a little bit. Just as his affairs were all accidents, so this was an accident, too. It was my fault for provoking him. Pascal never took responsibility for anything he did. Everything was always someone else’s fault.” Her voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. “He told me it would never happen again. He was just stressed. It had been a very bad night in the restaurant, three members of staff off sick and lots of pressure. I was shocked, of course. No one had ever hit me before. My mother never hit me. You read about these things, but when it happens to you it’s scarily easy to listen to the excuses. And I told myself everyone makes mistakes. I’d made plenty myself so I was very tolerant of mistakes in others. And I knew that if I’d left him, I would have lost not just my home but my job. And I actually did love my job. Some of the customers were regulars. Pascal worked long hours, I was lonely and they were the closest thing I had to family.”
Diners in her restaurant, family?
He thought of his own family. Tight-knit. Infuriating. Always there. Always.
“It wasn’t just that one time. He hit you again?” He forced the question through clenched teeth. Thinking about her coping with it alone made him ache.
“Yes. And that time I did walk out.”
He wanted to cheer but he could tell from the look on her face that the story wasn’t finished. “Where did you go?”
“I got a job in a tiny little place on the Left Bank. It was low-profile. Under the radar. I thought Pascal would be relieved I had gone and wouldn’t bother following. I was wrong. Turned out that me leaving him was the ultimate humiliation. As punishment for taking me on, he put the owner of the restaurant out of business. And when he came to break the good news, he told me that I would never get a job in Paris again and I would be forced to come back to him. And then he hit me again. And I’m forever grateful that he did because Jackson was in the restaurant that night.”
“Jackson?”
She gave a soft smile. “He’d come in three times that week because he liked my cooking. He’d been telling me about his business, about the hotels and the skiing. He was the one who found me in the street outside, bleeding and in a state. He took me to the hospital, reported Pascal to the police and then took me back to his hotel. I slept in his bed and he slept in the chair.”
“Was Pascal arrested?”
“Yes. But he hired a lawyer and his PR people hushed it up. Told some story that the media believed. The next morning Jackson offered me a job, cooking for him. To begin with I said no, because I didn’t want to risk bringing trouble to him after all he had done, but he refused to leave Paris without me.”
“Good.” Not for the first time in his life, Sean had reason to admire his twin brother. “So you went to Switzerland.”
“Yes. Jackson gave me that opportunity. He saved me. I owe him everything. And I have not been back to Paris since, even though the apartment I shared with my mother is still there. And sometimes it makes me sad because once I loved the city so much, but after my mother and Pascal—” She shrugged. “For me the place is poisoned. I can never go back. It would be too painful. I can only think how much I let my mother down.”
Finally everything made sense. All of it. Her devotion to his brother. Her loyalty. Her unwavering love for his family.
And her reason for not wanting a relationship.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want love. She was desperate for a relationship and a family of her own, but she was too scared of getting it wrong to trust her judgment again.
She was too scared of losing everything.
She’d made his family her own because that way she could have all that without risking her heart.
And he understood why Jackson had wanted him to stay clear of her.
His brother was right. He was entirely the wrong sort of man for a woman like her.
“Pascal Laroche might be a brilliant chef but he’s obviously a pathetic excuse for a human being. I want to operate on him without an anesthetic.” With a supreme effort of will, he let her go. “Have you had any relationships since him?”
“You know I have.”
“I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about intimacy.”
There was just enough light left for him to see the color streak across her cheeks. “I don’t want that.”
“What about just having some fun? Dinner in a restaurant? A night at the opera?”
“People do that when they’re dating and want to get to know someone. I don’t want that. I can’t have that. Love blinded me. I saw what I wanted to see. I gave all of myself, everything. I won’t do it again.”
But she’d done it with his family. She’d taken that love that she was too afraid to give to a man, and she’d given it unreservedly to the O’Neils. She’d found somewhere she felt safe and she’d hidden herself there, wrapped in the warmth of his family.
He ached for her. “It’s the reason you walked away after the party.”
“I don’t usually spend two nights with a man. It shook me.”
It had shaken him, too.
The desire to haul her back into his arms was overwhelming but he knew that would be the wrong thing to do. Exercising willpower he didn’t know he possessed, he slid down inside his sleeping bag. She did the same and the wriggling treated him to a glimpse of shoulder, a hint of breast and a smile, complete with dimple.
“It is a good job it was you on this trip and not Tyler. If I’d said all that to him I would have killed him dead. He would rather wrestle a bear than listen to a woman unload her emotions.”
But they both knew she never would have said any of that to Tyler. She’d never said it to anyone before.
For some reason, knowing that warmed him. “Get some sleep. You need to rest. If a bear comes in the night I expect you to protect me so you need energy.”
“You’re still trying to persuade me you don’t know how to survive in the wilderness? It’s too late for that. I know the truth.”
“Maybe you don’t. Aren’t you scared the tent will collapse on you in the night?”
“You already know what scares me. I just told you.” She lay facing him, snuggled inside the sleeping bag. “What about you? What scares you, Dr. O’Neil?”
The thought of hurting her.
She was lying there, her gaze fixed on his face, waiting for his answer.
“What scares me? The thought of ruining my favorite suit. Get some rest.” He closed his eyes even though he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Not now. His head was full of what she’d told him and he lay there in silence, thinking about how her life must have been and wondering how she’d managed to come through it so strong and whole.