Tuesday, July 27. 7:26 p.m. Southgate, Wellington, New Zealand.

---

“Daniel was awesome, guys. You should have seen him.”

Theo lounged on a beanbag in their living room, lapping up the attention from Nadia and the boys next door. They’d sucked up Theo’s recalled account with the same enthusiasm as a new PlayStation game while Ana watched in the background, relieved that Theo seemed unscathed by it all. His description of Daniel’s dive out the window had Adam and Jimmy goggling at Daniel with newfound respect.

“When can you teach me how to do stuff like that?” Adam leaned forward on his chair to peer at Daniel, slouched on the sofa.

“Yeah, me, too.” Theo seconded the notion with an enthusiastic air punch.

“No one is teaching you anything to do with falling or rolling tonight, Theodore Grace.” Ana decided it was time to break up the party. “Adam, Jimmy, thanks for all your help, but I think it’s time to say good night. It’s been a long day.”

“Sure, Ms. G.” Adam unfolded his gangly frame from the armchair. “C’mon, Jimmy, let’s see if the internet’s back up. Maybe someone videoed the cops arresting Theo’s psycho teacher and posted it online. Later, guys.”

With her father safely tucked up in Theo’s room, Maggie and Joel from the office having phoned briefly to say they were home, and both her children close by, Ana figured she should be feeling a lot more relaxed then she was.

Police and paramedics had taken charge of one reason for her restlessness. Harrison wasn’t critically injured but his prognosis for ever walking again was grim. She’d mixed emotions about his survival from the fall, a small part wishing he’d died but a larger part grimly satisfied that the man would face justice for what he’d done.

However, the other reason for her unease sat on her sofa, nursing a beer.

After shutting the door behind Jimmy and Adam, she took a deep breath, preparing to duke it out with Theo about having an early night. Then she’d tackle her other problem head on.

She bumped into her son in the hallway.

“I’m going to bunk in with Alyssa now,” Theo said, and hugged her awkwardly. It’d been a while since he’d initiated affectionate contact between them, so Ana closed her eyes and savored it.

“I knew you’d come for me,” he whispered. “Love you, Mum.”

He slipped into Alyssa’s room and shut the door. Her babies; thank God they were both safe.

Nadia met her at the living room doorway, said good night to Daniel over her shoulder, and then glared. “You’ve been falling over yourself to avoid talking to him since you got back,” she grumbled quietly. “You call yourself an adult. Sort it out, boss.”

Nadia stalked past her, turned, pointed to her eyes with two fingers and then back at Ana, and cocked a brow to indicate she was watching her.

Ana grinned weakly and waved her away.

Yeah, she admitted it. Brave enough to charge into a house with a man holding her son at knifepoint, but she was a yellow-bellied coward when it came to the man sitting in her living room. Ana sidled through the doorway, feeling pathetically lost for words as her gaze landed on Daniel, who had one ankle propped on his opposite knee, totally relaxed and totally gorgeous.

“Are you ready to talk to me now?” he asked.

And so totally on to her.

She nodded imperceptibly and perched on the opposite edge of the sofa, keeping a distance of one and a half sofa cushions from him. He made no move to close the gap, just looked at her with those eyes that melted her insides to mush.

Daniel didn’t waste time on small talk. “I love you, Ana. Stop running away and deal with it.”

Her pulse hiccupped and her mouth felt strangely dry. “We’ve only known each other a few days.”

“I’m not suggesting we head off to the registry office first thing tomorrow,” he said, those cute-as-a-button dimples making an appearance. “We’ve got plenty of time to get to know each other more intimately in a less intense situation.”

Droplets of sweat burst from her skin in a superheated rush. Was it only her, or was it getting warmer in here by the second? She shifted on the sofa, her gaze snagged by a tiny rip in the fabric of the cushion between them.

This was the moment when a reply was expected. Something along the lines of I love you, too, darling. Let’s run off into the sunset together. But she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t get her lips to move at all because the space between them was crammed with ghosts. Silent, almost palpable reminders of her past failures.

One she could disperse with little effort. The power of her feelings for Daniel had lessened the hold Theo’s biological father had on her. His ghost disappeared without complaint, the hurt that had remained now recognized as bruised pride.

But her dad, the man he’d been, the man she’d once told she wanted to marry as he was her Prince Charming, was not so easy to shift. If a good man like John Grace could let her down, so could a good man like Daniel. Neil also refused to budge, stubbornly reminding her with his hound-dog eyes that she was the reason he’d been in that bar that fateful night.

So she did what she did best around Daniel Calder. Switched topics.

“On the night Neil died, we had a fight.” She looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I was eight months’ pregnant and convinced he was sleeping with one of the girls he worked with. I accused him outright and he denied it. He said he loved me and would never do anything to hurt me. That he’d go out for a drink and come back in a few hours when we’d both calmed down. The next time I saw him, he was dead.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now whether he was unfaithful or not. Because of what Theo’s father did, because of Dad betraying my mum, my inability to trust was the cause of Neil’s death.”

“Bullshit.”

She jerked at the vehemence of his tone. “What?”

“You heard me. Your inability to trust no more caused Neil’s death than the color of your hair. You had an argument about infidelity. What if you’d argued because you forgot to pick up his dry cleaning? What if he’d simply decided to have a beer at this particular bar without even coming home first? Would that mean you were to blame for Neil being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

He slid along the couch until he was once again in her personal space, crowding her senses with his nearness. “Was I to blame for Jodie’s accident?”

“No! You can’t still think it was your fault?”

“You know I did, for a long time. Hanging onto the guilt became easier than letting it go and moving on. With all that’s happened in the last few days, I’ve finally put that behind me. I’m ready now to fight free of that stranglehold. Isn’t it time you did the same?”

He cupped her face with gentle fingers. “You’re using Neil’s death as a smoke screen. You already told me you were never in love with him, but I won’t believe you if you tell me you’re not in love with me. It’s written all over you, the same way it’s written all over me. So tell me right now. Tell me you love me.”

“I do love you,” she whispered.

His lips claimed hers. Hot, demanding, and impatient, she couldn’t stem her response to him. She wanted the feel of his mouth on hers to be enough. She wanted the truth of her words to be enough. She did love him. Passionately.

But.

Something held her back. She saw herself one day picking up the phone, hearing Daniel say, “I’m sorry, honey. I never meant you to find out this way.” She saw herself turning into her mother, broken into tiny pieces and spending years of her life trying to glue herself together again. Lily Grace hadn’t been able to let go of her husband even after he’d trampled all over her heart. She’d loved him that much, that passionately.

Was that Ana’s future if she threw caution to the wind and let love sweep away all her doubts?

Tears streamed in liquid heat down her face. He must have felt them dampen his fingers as he broke the kiss.

“There was a silent but, wasn’t there?” He grazed his thumbs across her cheeks, catching tears in their tracks.

She nodded and he sighed, for a moment resting his forehead against hers. Then he pulled away.

“Back to the lack of trust again?” His voice was tight and it cut through her like razor-sharp wire.

“Yes.”

“I know it won’t make any difference to point out that I’m not Theo’s dad or Neil, or even your father. If I tell you that when I make a commitment to stay faithful to one woman it might as well be chiseled in stone, you still won’t believe me, will you?”

“I want to believe you, but in time, if things start to go wrong—”

“Hold on a goddamned second.” He stood abruptly, towering over her. “If at some point in the future things between us started to get off track, don’t you think I’ve got balls enough to talk to you about it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not sorry. You’re asking for a relationship to come with a money-back guarantee. I can’t give that to you, no one can. There’s nothing else I can say, nothing else I can do to earn your trust.” His fingers raked across his scalp and his eyes were the dark blue of an uncharted ocean sinkhole.

“We should talk about this tomorrow,” she said, and panic tore her control to shreds at the shuttered way he continued to look at her. “It’s best if you stay at Adam and Jimmy’s tonight.”

“Tomorrow?” His laugh contained not a trace of humor. “Will you feel differently in the morning?”

Heart thudding sickly against her ribs, she sank farther into the sofa, all her strength bleeding out of her, leaving nothing but weary acceptance.

“No. Probably not. I think we need to get back to our own lives—our own separate lives,” she said, and her lip wobbled uncontrollably for a moment until she finally reined in her emotions. “As soon as possible.”

He said nothing else, just dipped his head in a slow nod and left the room. A soft, hiccupping sob burst from her, but even through her tears she heard the click of the front door closing behind him.