‘Then I won’t take up too much of your time.’
She folded her arms across her chest and arched an eyebrow. ‘Well?’
‘I’d like to apologise for last night,’ he said.
‘Fine.’ She shrugged as if she couldn’t care less about his apology and for a horrible moment Dan had the nasty feeling that he’d lost her.
He cleared his throat to get rid of the sudden tightness. ‘The whole pregnancy thing freaked me out a little.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘A little?’
He shoved his hands through his hair. In his imagination this conversation had gone a damn sight better than it was in reality and he’d been far more in control. ‘OK, a lot.’
‘Are you still freaked out?’
‘No. But I am sorry for unleashing my baggage on you like that. It wa
sn’t fair.’
She nodded. ‘It wasn’t. You wildly overreacted.’
‘I did.’
‘Look, Dan, I can understand that a pregnancy scare might have brought up a whole host of memories you’d rather forget and I get that you were feeling jet-lagged and vulnerable and spooked and whatever, but, you know, not all women are the same.’
He stifled a wince at the mention of vulnerability and focused on what she was saying about all women not being the same. ‘I know.’
‘Do you?’ She sounded sceptical.
‘Well, I’m beginning to learn through you.’ Her expression softened a bit and he felt a stab of hope that maybe he hadn’t messed it up completely. ‘I’m sorry for doubting you,’ he said, wondering if she could possibly be aware that he’d apologised more in the last ten minutes than he had in his entire adult life.
‘If I had your issues I’d be asking you to prove it.’
‘I’m glad you don’t.’
She frowned and alarm began to trickle through him. ‘I don’t like these games, Dan.’
‘There’ll be no more.’
‘Are you sure?’
He nodded, once. ‘I’m sure.’
Zoe didn’t say anything to that, just regarded him so thoughtfully and so lengthily, winding the tension so tightly within him that Dan couldn’t stand it any longer. He shoved his hands in his pockets, fixed his face so it didn’t look like he cared too much about her answer and asked, ‘So are we OK?’
* * *
Well, really, what could she say in response to such a swift and heartfelt apology but yes? thought Zoe, the last grain of her crumbling resolve to be all cold and steely disintegrating.
She’d never been one to bear a grudge—on the rare occasions she and her sister had come to varbal blows, she’d found a hug and an apology went a long way to clearing the air—and for someone who in all likelihood wasn’t used to doing it, Dan’s had been so sincere and so unexpected that her resistance had begun to crumble the minute he’d issued it.
Oh, who was she kidding? Her resistance had begun to crumble the second she’d stepped out of lift and seen him standing there, somehow looking rumpled and disorientated and way less sure of himself than usual. She’d seen the dark circles beneath his eyes, the stubble on his jaw and caught the uncertainty written all over his face and, despite agreeing with Lily that she was better off without him, her heart had begun to melt while her brain had threatened to capsize.
And she might have just about stopped herself throwing herself into his arms by focusing on staying frosty and aloof and reminding herself that he was in the wrong here, and that she wasn’t giving in any more, but the moral high ground was a lonely place to be and it was so good to see him when she hadn’t been sure she ever would again.
‘We’re OK.’
Dan blew out a breath and grinned, his face transformed into looking a lot brighter than he had five minutes ago. ‘Thank God for that.’ He yanked his hands out of his pockets and shoved them through his hair. ‘I’m so sorry for being such an idiot.’