Was that tentative hope in her eyes?
He couldn’t examine it, because this was the foggy morning at boarding school all over again. After this, after Rowan had looked right into him, she’d see what everyone but he saw—the lack. The flaw that had made him a child to be turned from without looking back. He swallowed.
“A second chance for me,” he admitted, cringing at how pathetic that sounded. “At having a family.”
She looked as bloodless as he felt.
He shook his head in slow negation, all sensation falling away as a rushing sound invaded his ears. “I was fooling myself.”
“That’s not true, Nic—” Rowan started forward but he froze, lifting hands to ward her off, unwilling to have her touch him when he felt so skinless.
The way Nic threw up a wall of resistance, looking utterly rigid, like a block of stone, stopped Rowan in her tracks. She flashed back to the way he’d clamped down on his wistful sadness when talking of his siblings that morning and her heart tipped out of balance on a hard oh. How had she ever thought Nic was detached? He was the opposite. His emotions were so scythe-like he couldn’t bear to experience them.
“It doesn’t matter,” he asserted.
The backs of her eyes began to sting. She hated herself then for working her body into sterility. For provoking him into unprotected sex and letting him think briefly that she could give him what he needed. She never could.
A terrifying bleakness filled her. If he had loved her they might have found a workaround on making a family together, but there was absolutely no hope for a future with him now.
Rowan ducked her head and brushed a strand of hair back from her face, revealing a porcelain cheek locked in a paroxysm of disorientation and panic.
What must she be thinking? Nic wondered. That she was relieved not to be saddled with an emotional derelict? That she’d had a lucky break? That what he’d revealed made her so uncomfortable she wanted him out of her space?
“I know I’m not like other people,” he said, trying to gloss over his confiding something so personal and implausible. “I observe life. I don’t participate in it. Yes, I would try to make the best of things, but my best isn’t good enough. Any child I created would only suffer and turn out like me. Emotionally sterile.”
“No, Nic. That’s not true...”
He rejected her outreached hand with an averting of his head. Her shoulders were sinking in defeat and he wanted to pull her softness into him, beg her to fix the broken spaces in him, but he knew enough about relationships to know that was not what you asked of another person. You didn’t burden them with fulfilling you. Either you came into the relationship whole and able to offer something to build on, or you did the right thing and walked away, leaving them intact.
“I should get back to work,” he said.
When Rowan didn’t say anything he glanced at her.
She was staring with wide eyes, her lips pale in a kind of shock. Finally she offered up a barely perceptible, “Me, too.”
He made himself leave, but felt her gaze follow him all the way down the hall.
* * *
“You’re saying Legal is holding you up?” Nic paraphrased a week later, barely listening to the litany of excuses being offered to him.
“Yes, that’s exa—”
“Learn to say more with less, Graeme. That’s how this corporation has grown to where it is. Have Sebastyen call me.” He ended the call, telling himself to quit acting like every self-important bastard in need of anger management classes he’d ever worked with. He was going on a week without sleep, his appetite shot despite Rowan leaving him hearty stews and tender souvlaki and chocolate brownies that melted on his fingers. He wanted an end to this unbearable tension, but the clock ticking down on his time with her frayed his temper a little more each day.
His laptop burbled with an incoming call. Sebastyen got to the heart of the matter immediately. “We’re dragging our feet on several initiatives, waiting on the signing of the petition and the reading of the will. Did you receive the revised documents? Any word on when you’ll see forward movement on that?”
Nic glanced at the date on his screen’s calendar. He’d been putting off talking to Rowan, knowing it would upset her, but time was running out on that too. He ended the call with Sebastyen and went looking for her.
She was in the breakfast room, where abundant windows around the bottom of the south-eastern turret caught the morning sun and French doors led onto the front courtyard. Bins from the island’s thrift store were stacked next to sealed boxes adorned with international courier labels.
“Rowan?”
She jerked, and the look she cast him was startled and wary. They were only speaking when they had to, and every conversation was stiff and awkward. They stared at each other, face-to-face for the first time in days.
Nic wanted to rub at the numb ache that coated his scalp and clung like a mask across his cheeks. His facial muscles felt locked in a scowl. He’d been trying to put her back at a distance, but all he could think was that he’d let her inside him and now there was no way to get her out.
He’d been devastated by her infertility. She wanted a family and something in him desperately wished he could give her one, even though he’d heard her qualifications loud and clear. The right man. Not now. His entire being was hollow with the knowledge that even she knew he would ultimately disappoint her.
He took in the growing fretfulness in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he lied, with a pinch on his conscience. “I just need to talk to you about the papers I asked you to sign.”
Her back went up immediately. Her knuckles on the pen she clutched glowed like pearls. “I said I’d do it tomorrow. I will.”
“That’s not it. Legal had to make a change.” He took a breath. “After I explained that your parents were still married.”
Her brow pleated, but her confused expression quickly gave way to dawning comprehension.
Rowan distantly absorbed what had never occurred to her. The relationship between her parents had been so minimized the last thing she would have called her father was Cassandra’s next of kin. She was her mother’s closest relative. But that wasn’t actually true and of course Nic was way ahead of her on that.
“Don’t—please don’t go to my father with those papers.” Waiting to sign the papers tomorrow was her one excuse to stay here with him. For him to yank that away would cause a huge fissure to open in her.
“I was only going to offer to do it if you prefer not to,” he assured her gently. “But he does have to be the one who signs.”
Her heart gave a hard beat. Of course he did. She should have seen that ages ago. But her mind hadn’t been on anything but tomorrow—and not for the reason it should be. She was leaving and her heart was breaking. She shook herself back to reality.
“You caught me off guard. Of course I’ll take them to him. I should have realized.”
He shrugged off her stilted promise with stiff negligence. They couldn’t seem to overcome the intimate revelations of a few days ago. It had drawn a line beneath their relationship, leaving it summed up as unworkable. He wanted children. She couldn’t give him any. He thought he was incapable of love. She couldn’t prove him wrong when he couldn’t love her.
Did she love him? Yes. Her girlish crush had deepened and matured into something abiding and strong. But so what? She had thought an affair could bring them closer, that she would touch him, draw him out, but she had turned into yet another person who had raised his expectations and then dashed them. He’d never trust in her love.
“While I have your attention...” she began, and then had to clear her throat.
Her abdomen tightened with foreboding. She told herself to quit being so nervous. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been mentally preparing herself for this. She had been working nonstop on arrangements, determined to finish by Nic’s deadline as a matter of pride. She had talked to Frankie, booked travel, and even begun packing her things. She still found herself beginning to shake.
Get a grip, Ro. You knew the end was coming.
Which was the part that was making her fall apart. Dispensing of things was sad, but they were just things. Even the house was something she was gradually letting go of as she accepted that the people she loved would no longer be there to welcome her into it. There was one thing she couldn’t face letting go of, though: Nic.
She tucked a strand from her ponytail behind her ear. Her hand was shaking and she saw his gaze fix on it. She folded her arms.
“I’m almost finished, so I should tell you where everything stands. These boxes are going to a theater manager in London who wants to set up a dedicated display in his lobby. A courier is coming tomorrow.” Rowan jerked a look to the ceiling. “Mum’s gowns are being auctioned. I gave the auction house your PA’s details. They’ll set up a convenient time to send a team to inventory and pack those properly.”