She shook her head silently. Tears welled in her eyes.
“You owe me an answer, Tracy.”
She looked up at him. “I told you not to come.”
“He was my son too, you know.”
To Jeff’s surprise, she reacted angrily to this.
“No! It’s not the same,” she insisted. “It’s nowhere close to the same. I raised him, Jeff. I raised him alone.”
“Only because I never knew he existed!” Jeff protested.
But Tracy wasn’t listening. “Nick was my world. My whole world. You don’t know what it’s like, to lose that, to have it taken from you.”
“You’re right,” Jeff said quietly. “I don’t. But I did love him. And I wanted to be there. Not just for him but for you.”
They sat silently for a moment, suspended in a fragile bubble of grief.
Then Jeff burst it. “I love you, Tracy.”
Tracy fell painfully back to earth.
“Please. Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t love you? Or don’t say it out loud?”
“Both!”
Tracy tried to pull her hand away but Jeff tightened his grip.
“Why not? It’s the truth. I love you and you love me. You can’t run from that forever, Tracy.”
“Oh yes I can! Don’t you see?” She looked at him in utter exasperation. “You are the one person, the one person, who I absolutely cannot be with. Ever.”
“Why not?” Jeff’s voice wavered. He felt close to tears himself.
“Because everything about you, your face, your voice, your walk, everything brings him back to me. When I look at you, I see Ni
ck.”
“But you love me, Tracy. We love each other,” Jeff pleaded.
“It isn’t enough,” Tracy said sadly. “ Seeing you drags me back to the darkness.”
“And I suppose Cameron Crewe pulls you into the light, does he?” Jeff said bitterly. He knew he was being unfair but he couldn’t help himself.
Tracy didn’t answer. A gloomy silence fell as the waiter cleared their plates and returned with a dessert menu.
Jeff broke it first. “I have a proposal.”
As he leaned forward across the table, his eyes were sparkling again. It was the old Jeff. Irrepressible. Tracy thought, He’s still alive inside. And I’m not. That’s the real difference between us. The chasm that can never be bridged.
“Let’s find Hunter together. As a team,” said Jeff. “Cabot and Havers may not trust each other. And the CIA and MI6 certainly don’t. But we do. You and I can achieve far more than the lot of them put together.”
It was an interesting proposal, the same proposal that Tracy had made to Cameron not so long ago. Although even she had to admit that Cameron hadn’t been much practical help so far, other than as a sounding board. At least she and Jeff knew how to get things done.
“What would we do when we found him?” Tracy asked. “Hand him over to the British? Or the Americans?”