Edward.
Just when she thought she had her emotions back under control, this happened.
It was too much for one day.
His gaze met hers briefly but then shifted to her father who was frowning.
“Now what?”
“I’m here to escort you from the premises.”
“I don’t need escorting. I know my way out.” He frowned at Alexandra. “I’m your dad. You owe me.”
“I owe you nothing.”
“This is all because you bear a grudge because I left you?”
“No.” She could hardly speak. “I stopped caring about that a long time ago. I stopped caring about you. But I didn’t forget, I can never forget, what you did to my mother.”
“Look, you were a kid. I don’t expect you to understand, but it was tough after her accident. Tough on me, too. She needed almost fulltime care, and—”
“Accident?Accident?” Alexandra lost the last of her cool and he looked startled.
“Of course it was an accident. She was hit by a car.”
“A car that you were driving.”
He rocked on his feet, as if he’d taken a blow. “I don’t know what—”
“You didn’t know that I knew? I’ve always known. I saw it happen. She begged me not to tell anyone and I honoured that for her sake, but I always knew. I know all of it. I know that she ran out to beg you not to take the car when you’d been drinking but you were already past paying attention. I know that you hit her with that car, and you drove off without even knowing she was tangled under the wheels.” She had to pause to breathe and to push aside memories she’d worked hard to bury. For years she’d had flashbacks and for a brief moment the horror of that moment returned, along with the awful feeling of helplessness. “I was the one who called the ambulance. I was the one who went to the hospital with her. And I was the one who pretended not to know what had happened even though I saw it all from my bedroom window.”
His gaze shifted away from hers. “It was a tragic accident.”
It took all her willpower not to strike him.
“Drunk driving is not a tragic accident. It’s a serious crime. And you had to face what you’d done every day, didn’t you? First we thought she was going to die, and then when she didn’tdie you had to face the fact that she was going to need longterm care and that shattered her because the life she’d known was over. And you were the one who had taken it from her.” And he’d taken it from her, too, because her childhood had ended on that night. “The least you could have done was stayed and cared and loved her despite everything—in sickness and in health, right? But you couldn’t stand it, could you? So you left.”
She was dimly aware of Abby putting an arm round her. Dimly aware that her daughter was holding her. Supporting her.
Normally she would have hated the idea that she needed support from anyone, but she knew she needed it now if she was to finish this.
And she needed to finish it.
She lifted her chin and looked her father in the eye. “You wrecked her life physically and then you walked out and wrecked her mentally. So don’t ever tell me that I owe you anything, and don’t try and pretend that we are anything other than two people who once had the misfortune to cross paths. Now get out of my hotel, and if you come near my daughter again, or near me, or any of my properties or the team who work here, I’ll be getting the police involved. And this time I won’t hesitate.”
Her father stepped forward but Edward moved quickly, inserting himself between the two of them, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the man who had cast such a long shadow over her life.
“The door is behind you,” he said. “And you’re going to walk through it.”
He gave her father no choice in the matter and then the man she hadn’t set eyes on for decades slunk out of the office without a backward glance, the same way he’d slunk away from her all those years before.
He hadn’t looked back then, either.
The door closed and Alexandra felt something wash out of her. Some long-held stress. There had been so many things unsaid but now they’d been said and she felt, finally, as if something ugly that had been trapped inside her had finally burned itself out.
“Mom, you need to sit down. Evie—can you grab a chair—” Abby was holding her, guiding her, and then she was sitting and Abby was on her knees beside her, chafing her hands.
“I’m sorry—” Alexandra forced the words out. “I didn’t want you to witness that.”
