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  “You could always work part-time for me, Kate. I need an assistant to come in for a few hours a week to keep the office under control. Hours to suit you and you can fit it around this.” He held up the book.

  “I’m not a charity case, Sean—I haven’t sunk without a trace yet and as I said, I am getting more work now.”

  “I know you’re not a charity case—I’m the charity case, I’m throwing myself on your mercy and begging you to rescue me from an avalanche of paperwork.”

  He could see that she still had her doubts, but there was a softening in her eyes that told him she wasn’t about to reject the idea out of hand. “All right—how about if we give it a trial run and see how things work out?”

  “Works for me.”

  * * * * *

  Kate needed some fresh air. They’d spent four days at the house, four fantastic days of making love and talking—getting even more comfortable with one another than they had ever been before—but she loved snow and she wanted to walk in it now that it had finally stopped falling. And maybe later on she could persuade Sean to join her for that snowball fight.

  There was plenty of snow on the ground but that wasn’t going to stop her. Kate didn’t envision going for a mad ramble across miles of white countryside—just a brief stroll to fill her lungs with crisp, clean air, while Sean was on his daily conference call.

  She scribbled a note on a scrap of paper to tell Sean that she was going for a walk and would be back within twenty minutes at the most and left it by his laptop, not wanting to disturb him while he was on the call. As an afterthought, she jotted the current time at the bottom of the note then nipped out of the kitchen while his back was turned.

  * * * * *

  “Thanks, guys, same time tomorrow.”

  Sean signed off from the call, removing the headset and turning the move into a muscle-bursting stretch. Everything was going well—he was almost starting to feel redundant.

  “Kate? All done for today, you can come back now.”

  Silence. Strange, he knew she could hear him no matter where she was in the cottage. Maybe she’d gone to the outhouse to get some supplies from the freezer. That was okay. She’d be back in a minute.

  He turned and that was when he saw the bright yellow sticky on the table by the laptop. His eyes scanned the lines and when he automatically checked the time, his blood ran cold.

  Kate should have been back over an hour ago. He knew what he’d just been watching through the kitchen window, yet he hardly dared look again, not wanting to see the snow that had resumed falling in a swirl of big flakes.

  “Oh God, no.”

  His cold-weather gear was in the utility room. He pulled everything on as quickly as he could, cursing fingers that suddenly refused to function. He called on all his training to calm the pounding of his heart—a few years ago he’d have slipped into the routine with flawless professionalism, but this was Kate missing in the snow.

  I’ll probably find her inside of five minutes, he told himself. She’d be laughing at him for panicking and worrying needlessly.

  He still turned the heat up to maximum as a precaution and put extra blankets on the bed.

  With the satellite phone safe in his pocket, Sean strode out into the white wilderness. Christ, where did he start? He looked around for any sign of footprints but the fresh snow had obliterated any sign. What direction would she have taken? Think.

  It hadn’t been snowing when she left, just badly overcast. She’d said she’d be gone twenty minutes—ten minutes there and ten back again. What was within a ten-minute walk and would be interesting enough to go and look at in the snow? The tarn, maybe? She’d asked him about it again just yesterday. His instincts told him that it was the best place to start but if she’d gotten lost…

  He needed a miracle.

  * * * * *

  Sean got what he needed.

  He found Kate huddled in the lee of a wreck of a stone wall. The way she was dressed would have been sufficient for a twenty-minute stroll in the conditions prevailing when she’d left the cottage, but were woefully inadequate for the ensuing rapid climatic deterioration.

  Her skin was like ice, her breathing was shallow and she was barely conscious, but she did stir slightly when he touched her cheek with his bare fingers. He quickly replaced the military-standard Arctic mitten then lifted Kate into his arms, calculating that he could have her back at the cottage within eight minutes and have them both stripped and in bed within the next two.

  As far as he could gauge, she was in danger of transitioning from mild to moderate hypothermia—he needed to get her back and into bed, where he could hold her close and get her body temperature back to normal.

  They were eight of the longest minutes of his life. Sean’s sense of direction took him unerringly back to the cottage. Pausing only to remove the mittens, he stripped Kate of her clothing and tucked her into bed. Semiconscious and restless, she tried to push him away, not knowing what she was doing.

  Sean shed his clothes as quickly as possible. In bed he pulled Kate to him, tucking her against his body before wrapping both of them in the sheets and blankets. With gentle urgency he massaged her back, trying to encourage warmth into the center of her body while he used his own body heat to warm the front of her, wrapping an icy arm around his torso and tangling his legs with her frozen ones. When he felt the first shiver, he allowed himself the luxury of a moment of relief.

  “Good girl,” he murmured against the top of her head. “Do it again—I know you can. Come on, Kate.”

  The shivering intensified. Sean had no idea how much time had passed, but eventually, he realized that she wasn’t quite as cold as she had been and her skin was starting to gain a more healthy color.

  “Sean.”

  Thank God. It was a whisper that saved his sanity and his life. “It’s all right, a rúnsearc.” Mouth dry, he barely recognized his own voice. “You’re safe. You’re home, here with me.”

  * * * * *

  Lying on the sofa, bundled up in several layers of clothing, with three fleecy blankets and the eiderdown from the bed covering her, Kate watched Sean moving around the kitchen as he made hot drinks for both of them.

  She was still shaking inside. The thoughts wouldn’t go away that she’d very nearly killed both of them by going out for that stupid walk on her own without checking the forecast first and checking with Sean that it would be all right. If it hadn’t been for that man and his Arctic survival training, she’d be dead. Tears began to slip down her cheeks again. She’d screwed things up again.

  Sean must have heard her stifled sobs. He was over like a shot, inserting himself between her and the arm of the sofa, so that he could wrap his arms around her and give her the comfort she needed.

  “Shh, shh, darlin’, it’s all right. I’m here.”

  “I’m sorry, Sean.” She clung to his arm. “I could have killed you.”

  “No, there was no chance of that, a chuisle.”

  “I should have asked you if it was all right. I should have checked the weather.”

  “And how would you know exactly how weird the weather can get round here? Did you go out there deliberately to get us killed? I didn’t think so. It was one of those things, Kate.” His arms tightened around her, making her look up at him. He kissed her mouth with an aching tenderness. “We’re here, we’re safe—I’ve got you.”

  He did. He’d been patient and loving, bared his soul to her and had put his life on the line to save hers. It was time they had that talk—time she told him the truth.

  Chapter Seven

  With a deep breath, Kate began.

  “Sean, there were a number of contributory factors to the mess I was when we met. This is likely to come out as a nonsensical jumble but hopefully it will make some sort of sense in the end. I’ll warn you now, it’s likely to be a long story, because it goes back a long time.”

  She nestled into Sean’s embrace, needing his strength around her to face that part
of her past that had driven them apart.

  “All my life—until relatively recently—I tried to be what other people wanted me to be, what I thought they wanted me to be. Please spare me the lecture on how stupid that is. I know it now, but when you don’t know what a mess you are and you think that what you are is normal, you don’t question it. Why would you?”

  Kate let out a heavy sigh. “So there I was, trying to be the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect friend, for as long as I can remember. God knows what triggered it. I was only a kid when I started believing I had to keep everyone happy except me.”

  Kate paused, trying to find the words to explain the forces in her past that had affected her so detrimentally. “Dad worked away a lot and when he was home, he didn’t take much notice of me and Jilly—he left parenting up to Mum and she had certain…rather rigorous expectations of me.”

  “Did they love you?”

  More hesitation. The question probed into memories that Kate didn’t want to draw into the light of day—answering it honestly was something she couldn’t do so she didn’t answer at all. “Sean,” she said softly, “it’s all in the distant past now. They’re all dead and gone and raking up the past to that depth won’t do anyone any good.”

  Sean’s arms convulsed around her. She felt his head at the side of hers. She sensed that there was something he wanted to say, but was putting a tremendous effort into keeping silent. She continued.

  “Then you came along, I tried to add the perfect girlfriend to the mix and I ended up putting a wrecking ball through your life, the one person I should never have done that to—but I did and I’ve never been more sorry about anything in my life.”

  The look in Kate’s eyes was distant as she recalled the less-than-happy memories. She tried not to feel the way his arms comforted her—she didn’t deserve that comfort for what she’d done to him.

  “I knew there was something going on in that pretty head of yours, Kate, but I could never figure out what it was. I just knew that something was wrong, because you never asked for anything—not of me, or our relationship. You were so…independent.”

  “Probably down to the way I was brought up—not to ask for things. Also, when I was a little kid, my grandfather told me that other people were more important than me and with Mum only being happy with me when I did exactly what I was told…”

  To say that Sean swore would be a vast understatement. Kate winced at the vicious expletives that damned her family to hell and back. She absently stroked the strong, muscular forearm lying across her stomach, thinking back to that time. “Sean, it’s over.”

  “No wonder it felt as if you didn’t need me.” Sean’s tone was harsh, directed at the family members who had treated Kate so appallingly badly. “I knew it wasn’t normal. I’d never had a relationship like that—I’d always felt needed, but with you, it was different again.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I needed you to need me but I never felt that you did. That’s why I kept pushing you, trying to get you to open up to me. But the more I pushed, the more you retreated…until there was nowhere else for you to go. I’m sorry, Kate, so sorry.”

  She turned in Sean’s arms and put her own arms around him, trying to take the pain from him. “It wasn’t your fault, sweetheart, it was mine. All mine. It was only when Mum went into the home, a few weeks after we split up, that I started taking a long look at myself.”

  “Your mother?” Sean’s tone reflected his bafflement. “You never mentioned her, neither did Jilly. I just assumed—”

  “What you were meant to assume,” Kate supplied. “Would you believe I was trying to protect you? From a part of my life that I didn’t want to impact on what we had? Jilly and I had a pact—neither of us would talk about her with anyone outside the doctors and medical staff. We were the only family she had, so there was no one else who needed to be a party to what was going on. Over the years, she’d managed to deliberately alienate nearly all of her friends—the ones she hadn’t alienated drifted away because of behavior she couldn’t control.

  “I know this will sound cruel to anyone who hasn’t been through it, but we had to try to keep a part of our lives unaffected by Mum’s problems. We couldn’t let it take over our entire existence. That’s why we never said anything—not to Jonas, not to you.”

  “Does Jonas know about your mother now?”

  Kate shook her head. “I don’t think so. Jilly’s never said anything about telling him, so I can only assume that she hasn’t.”

  “I think he should know—he has a right to know what you’ve both been through. Tell me what was wrong with her, darlin’. Tell me everything.”

  Dear God, this was it. She had no choice but to tell him now. “Some background first. Dad died, eight years ago now. Jilly and I had already moved to our own places—Jilly about twenty miles away but I was still fairly close to our family home.

  “Mum was living there on her own. The signs were gradual to begin with but it was only with hindsight that we recognized them for what they were. We just never even imagined that the cause could be what it was. I gave up my place and went back to take care of her. I was still working full-time, but it started to get more and more difficult. It sounds crazy, but even living with her I still couldn’t see it for what it was.”

  “What was it, a rúnsearc? You said she went into a home. What happened, darlin’?”

  Soft and low, his voice gave her the safety net she needed to face this part of her past.

  “Dementia. ‘Young-onset’, they said. I kept her at home as long as I could, but there comes a point when you have to accept that they need more care than you can physically provide. And admitting that you’ve reached that point is so difficult. It sneaks up on you—you think you can cope with each small deterioration and to begin with, you can, but it mounts up and mounts up without you realizing just how bad it’s getting.

  “Not only that—she’d always said she didn’t want to go into a home and that just added to the guilt—”

  “Guilt?” Sean exploded again. “Jesus Christ, Kate, what the hell did she want from you?”

  She reached up to cup his cheek with her palm. “Don’t, Sean. It’s done with, it’s in the past. It’s gone.

  “For the first few months I visited almost every day, but then I got the flu, so I couldn’t go. And that was when I began to realize what had happened throughout my life—I’d let other people control me and dictate everything that I did. I was in a job I hated and I’d been living my life to please everyone else but me. It was time to find out who I really was.

  “I had some savings, so I jacked my job in and started doing things I liked to do instead. I even managed to start earning a living doing them. As I told you, I’m not making a fortune, but I get by and I’m doing things that make me happy—you can’t buy that. And I thought about you every day.” She closed her eyes, remembering that time with an ache in her chest.

  “My phone number never changed. Why didn’t you call me?”

  She shook her head. “After the way we parted I had no right to. Not only that, I was convinced you’d have moved on, found someone else less complicated and you deserved to be happy.” She stroked his silky hair, kissed his cheek. “I knew Jilly and Jonas were getting serious—I also knew my name was in the frame for chief bridesmaid. I can’t lie—I heaved a sigh of relief when they told me that you weren’t going to be the best man, that you might not even be able to make the wedding at all due to work commitments. But when I saw you in the church, found out from Jilly that you were still single, it brought it all back. I wanted to keep you away because I didn’t want to risk hurting you all over again. I could have kept my distance for the few hours of the wedding reception, but then you gave me your damn phone number.”

  “I never thought you’d use it, a ghrá. I hoped, but I tried not to hope too much.”

  Kate hugged him a little closer. “I had to apologize to you—that was my justification for calling you.
I owed you that—and I thought it might give us both what we needed to move on. A little presumptuous on my part, possibly.” Her mouth curved into a small, self-conscious smile.

  “But then you stayed with me and…what happened, happened and afterward, I admitted to myself that I still loved you and I wondered if you might give us another chance.”

  Eyes closed, Kate rested her head on Sean’s shoulder. “When we were together the first time around, all the times we went to hotels and I couldn’t stay all night…it was because I had to get home to look after Mum. I took more responsibility for her—I wanted one of us to have a life and I wanted that to be Jilly, especially when she met Jonas. They were so right together. One of us could have a life at least.”

  “And you didn’t think that you were entitled to a life as well, a rúnsearc?”

  Kate shook her head. “It’s as I said—I was already a mess, trying to be what I thought people wanted me to be and even though Mum was the way she was, I’d been like that for so long I didn’t know how to be any different. Jilly may be younger than me, but she’s so much stronger than I am—she stood up to Mum all her life. Of the two of us, it was obvious that I should be the one to go back when the time came. My life was already screwed.

  “And then I met you. I’d seen what Jilly had with Jonas and I wanted the same with you, but I knew I couldn’t have it. I had the responsibility of Mum—I couldn’t expose you to that and in spite of everything, I couldn’t turn my back on her. In the end, something had to give.”

  “Us.”

  Pain shot through Kate again, emotional pain that was almost physical in its intensity. “Yes and I am so, so sorry that I put you through all that.” She wanted to cry but the pain went too deep.

  “I wish you’d told me, darlin’. That was too much for you to bear on your own. You should have shared the load with me.”

  Again, Kate shook her head. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t even share it all with Jilly. Even now, she doesn’t know how bad it got at its worst and I don’t want her ever to know. Her memories of Mum are better than mine and I don’t want to change that.”