Tally bit down hard on her lip to stop her own tears from joining his. The sight of Cash crying made her even sadder. The knowledge that someone so strong and proud had shared such a private, tragic event made her heart ache. And even though she still didn’t have a clue who Gracie was, or why he seemed convinced he hadn’t cheated, the need to comfort him overtook everything else.

She shuffled closer and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into her body. Tremors ran through him as he returned her embrace, his arms holding her tightly.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he mumbled against her neck. When she didn’t push him away, he eased back, his hands cupping her face. Gently, he pressed his lips to hers, and she repressed a soft moan. Being in Cash’s arms again almost erased the constant agony she’d lived with the past few weeks, but at the back of her mind was the gnawing doubt that he still hadn’t fully explained himself. She gripped his wrists and pulled his hands away from her face.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. He began to repetitively tug his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger. It made her wish they were still kissing.

“No, I’m sorry. I started it.”

“I knew it was a risk telling you,” he said, refusing to look her in the eye. “How can you ever see me the same way now you know I’m capable of murder?”

Tally’s mouth fell open, and she ducked her head until he was forced to meet her gaze. “You don’t really believe you’re a murderer? Cash, you were a child trying to protect your mother, and for all you knew, he could have turned on you next.”

He gave a weak shrug. “I know. Doesn’t stop the guilt, though.”

“Jesus.” She brushed a stray lock of hair off her face. “What happened next? What about your mum?”

His shoulders dropped. “After I hit him and he fell, I called for an ambulance. I was terrified they’d put me in prison. When the ambulance crew arrived, they took one look at the scene and phoned the police. Mum was barely alive, and I guessed Dad was dead when they covered his face with a sheet and loaded him onto a stretcher, although no one told me he’d died.”

“Dear God,” Tally muttered, astounded at the sheer callousness of such a thoughtless act and the impact it must have had on a terrified child.

“The police arrested me and took me to the station. They wouldn’t let me go to the hospital with Mum. I didn’t know who to call, so I phoned Rupe. His dad sorted out a solicitor and stayed with me during questioning.”

“That was good of him.”

“Yeah.” He stroked his scruff with his fingertips. “I was a fucking mess, barely able to string a sentence together. I kept asking the police how Mum was doing, but they wouldn’t tell me. They made me go over what had happened so many times I began to doubt myself. Eventually, they bailed me without charge until they’d carried out a full investigation. As soon as they let me out, Rupe’s dad took me straight to the hospital.”

“Your mum?” she asked again, almost afraid to hear the answer.

He lifted his head. His eyes were watery, his face pained. “She was alive. Barely. She had massive head injuries and internal bleeding. By the time I got there, they’d already operated and placed her in intensive care.”

“I can’t even imagine what you must have gone through. You were fifteen.” Outrage swept through her on behalf of a teenage boy she hadn’t known then but still felt an overwhelming urge to protect.

“It was grim,” he said. “It took the police two weeks to decide I wouldn’t be charged.”

“But they’d have known it was self-defence, surely?”

“It could have gone either way, but I guess I got lucky.” Cash gave a bitter laugh. “If you can call it that.”

“Where’s your mum now?” she dared to ask.

His gaze was steady on hers, and he clutched her hand. “This is where Gracie comes in.”

Tally almost stopped breathing. Now they were getting to the crux of it, the cause of all their issues. Gracie—the woman he’d been kissing in the pictures she’d been sent, though the sender was still a mystery.

“I wondered if you were going to mention her.”

“Gracie is my mother’s carer. Well, one of them.”

Perplexed, Tally stared at him. His mother’s carer. “Your mum made it?”

“Yes, but she’s been in a coma since it happened. Gracie and three other wonderful women live with Mum and provide round-the-clock care for her, but Gracie is the one I deal with mainly. The house in those photographs you were sent is one I had built for Mum. It has everything she needs, all the latest medical equipment.”

“Oh, Cash, what a woman your mother is—to still be hanging on after all these years.”

Cash nodded. “There have been plenty of times when her doctors recommended withdrawing her feeding tube. They were certain she would never regain consciousness and all I achieved by insisting they keep her alive was to drag out her inevitable death. But I couldn’t do it. I always had hope.” He smiled then. “Remember the photograph of me and Gracie kissing?”

Tally dropped her gaze as a sharp pain shot through her heart. “How could I forget?” she mumbled.

“That was the day my mother regained consciousness.”

Tally’s head snapped up. “She’s awake? Alert?”

“Yeah.” His smile lit up his eyes for the first time since he’d arrived earlier in the day. “Her doctors are saying it’s a miracle. Not quite, based on the research I’ve done, but extremely rare all the same. On the day those photographs were taken, Gracie had called to tell me Mum had woken up. I raced around to the house. It’s not far from mine. You can imagine how ecstatic I was. When Gracie came running out to greet me, I wasn’t thinking of anything other than my mother and how, after all these years, she may finally recover. I gave a brief peck to someone I consider a friend and a confidant.”

Tally tilted her head to one side. “And the photographer just happened to snap at the right time?”

The smile drained from his eyes. “I don’t think it was a random paparazzi. I think someone was following me, waiting for a chance to make something out of nothing. To break us up.”

She frowned. “Who would do such a thing?”

He shrugged. “No idea. An ex-girlfriend, a journalist with a grudge. Could be anyone.”

“Kinga?” she asked, tensing at the thought of Cash’s old agent, who’d hated her on sight. Kinga had wanted Cash for herself, and then Tally came along and ruined her plans to be Mrs Gallagher someday. The two women had an argument that ended with Kinga punching Tally in the face. Cash had immediately sacked her.

He nodded. “It crossed my mind too, so I did some digging. She was telling the truth about getting help when she turned up at the house. Remember on the Saturday we went riding? She’d already had a couple of one-on-one counselling sessions, and after our altercation, she signed herself into a residential facility in London the same day.”

The enormity of what Cash had told her suddenly hit, and Tally covered her face with her hands. She’d been an idiot. A jealous, stupid, crazy idiot who’d caused all this angst. And for nothing. “You kept telling me to trust you,” she whispered through her fingers.

Cash eased her hands away from her face. “Yes, I did.” He grimaced. “I should have told you as soon as you showed me the photographs, but I panicked. I couldn’t tell you who Gracie was without spilling the whole sordid truth—a truth I’ve avoided talking about for so long… I’m sorry, baby.”

“You telling me what happened is the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.” She shook her head in astonishment.

“If it means you’ll give me another chance, I’d do it again. Ten times. A hundred times.” He rubbed her upper arms, his hands tender but firm as they caressed her bare skin. “I have to know, Natalia. Can you forgive me? Do we have a future together?”

She gave him a playful bump with her shoulder. “You don’t start with the easy questions, do you?”

His smile in response to her teasing was full of hope mixed with a tinge of fear, which flattened the corners of his mouth rather than lifting them. “Baby, it’s the only question that matters.”

Tally studied his face. She knew it as well as her own, and the man behind it was the only one she would ever want. But her heart had too many cuts to simply paper over the cracks, and healing would take time. “I can’t go straight back to where we were, Cash. I feel battered and bruised.”

He offered her a faint smile. “However long it takes, I’ll wait.”

She dropped her head. “I thought I’d lost you.”

He tilted her chin up, encouraging her to meet his gaze. When she did, he was wearing that look—the one that made her knees shake and her body scream with hunger.

“I would have never given up on you. We belong together. I didn’t think I was capable of loving anyone until I met you. It took me far too long to admit it to myself, let alone to you. And when I did finally manage to blurt it out…” His lips twitched at the corners. “Well, my timing was shit.”

Tally laughed, the stress of the last few weeks diminishing. “It could have been better, ace.”

His eyes brightened. “Have I ever told you I love it when you call me that?”

A sudden longing to be close to him led to her pecking him on the lips, but as he moved to deepen the kiss, she pulled back. Her body was urging her to do one thing, but her mind was yanking her in the opposite direction and was winning the battle. Disappointment flickered across his face, but he didn’t push.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she said, rising from the sofa. “And if you’re good, I’ll let you buy me lunch a bit later.”

Cash grinned at her ribbing, but as she led the way out of the living room, he stopped her. “I need you to keep this between us. If what happened to my father gets out, it could ruin my career. I trust you implicitly, but—I’m sorry—I don’t feel the same way about Emmalee and Pete.”

Tally shook her head. “They won’t hear it from me.”

“They’ll want to know why you’re letting me within ten feet of you, though.”

“I can handle them,” she said firmly.

The tension in his face receded, and when he clasped her hand, a deep-seated longing sprang up inside her. But her heart had been broken, and she needed to learn to protect it much better. Another break, and she doubted it would ever heal.