Inconsolable by Ainslie Paton

Author:Ainslie Paton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises, Australia Pty Ltd
Published: 2015-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

21: Attacked

Foley found him at the bottom of the sweeping Gone With The Wind staircase. Drum, Patrick, Trick. She didn’t know what to call him, what to make of him, this enormous half-empty house, his care of her when she was sick, the way he wrestled with his emotions, with whatever guilt, fault, horror he thought he’d unleashed.

He was sitting on the last step, head in his hands. She went down and sat on the step behind and adjacent him, and he registered her presence with a ripple of muscles across his shoulders.

As a kid she’d had a sixth sense about bullies, about people who weren’t nice, had less than honourable intentions. The kind of kids who’d nick someone’s lunch, dob you in for a minor crime, make up nasty stories about you, embarrass you on purpose. That’s how she’d picked Gabriella, with her nice suits and pleasant ways and her self-serving agendas.

It wasn’t an easy skill to acknowledge, to trust, because it meant believing the worst in people. She hadn’t trusted it with Jon, she’d had a sense of his duplicity, but was so tied up in the life less ordinary of him, in the extravagant sex, she’d ignored it, until it kicked her butt and put a whale-sized dent in her confidence.

She had no sense of anything threatening about Drum, not at first, not beyond the time she’d challenged him, and not now that his complications were more in her face. While the weather raged, she gave up second-guessing. She would trust in him.

She touched his shoulder. “I’m here if you want to talk. But I’m here if you don’t, too.” He didn’t react so she slid down the smooth step to sit beside him. “I’m not giving up on you.” She had so many questions but she forced them to queue behind his needs. His hand was on the step, close enough to hers that if she spread her fingers their little fingers would touch.

He turned his head. “It’s cold, it’s late, early, whatever. You have to work. Go to bed, Foley.”

It was cold, her feet were going numb and despite the robe, made out of something lightweight but beautifully soft and warm, she had a case of shivers. He was cold too, but in a different way, he was intent on freezing her out.

“What will you do?”

“I have a mattress, I use it down here.” He nodded at the space between the front door and the staircase. It would be cold, drafty, and hideously uncomfortable.

She wanted to curl up with him, defrost him. “I’ll stay here with you.”

“No.”

So quick. No room for debate. He’d shaved and the temptation to touch his face, to learn him cheek to cheek and use her lips to taste the smoothness of him was ridiculously primitive, like gluttony after long starvation. She separated her fingers and pressed the edge of her little finger against the side of his.

He whipped his head around to face her. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I do.

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