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“I don’t know where to start,” he said, honestly.

“Tell me about your mom,” she suggested. “How old were you when she first got sick?”

His knuckles glowed white as he gripped the steering wheel hard. “In my twenties. Away at university, living my life, building my business. She’d been pretty run down but then, she and dad travel a lot, host a fair bit too.”

“Host?”

His smile was just a flicker, and completely sans humour. “Weekend parties. Events. Fundraisers.” He glanced at her and Tia’s pulse fired to life. “My mother adores the attention.”

“Ah.”

“She was run down, and then got to the point where she couldn’t get out of bed. But it was only when Ewan and I came back from university that they took it seriously. She must have lost half her body weight in the few months since our last visit. She was pale. I don’t know how dad didn’t notice.”

“Perhaps he was just fooling himself.”

He lifted one shoulder, pulled them onto a road and a moment later, a highway, driving at top speed. “Knowing mum, she was probably thrilled by the weight loss.” He let out a bark of derisive laughter. “We insisted she see a doctor. She was diagnosed within a few days.”

“What kind of cancer was it?”

“Started as breast, but spread to her lymph nodes, and it was extremely aggressive and fast-growing.” Again, his hands flexed then gripped the steering wheel. His gaze was focused dead ahead. The countryside passed in a blur of roadhouses and woodland, with the bright summer sky almost too glistening to be real, particularly given the weight of the conversation.

“It was a hard time, for all of us.”

“So you do love her?”

He glanced at her, frowning. “She’s my mother.”

“Yes. But the way you spoke the other night…”

“I think she’s selfish and vain, and has made decisions that completely disregard what Ewan and I wanted, but yes, I love her. I certainly don’t want her to die.”

Tia squeezed her eyes shut. “That’s not what I meant.”

His hand on her knee surprised her. She blinked across at him, the butterflies in her stomach going into overdrive, their wings battering against her so hard it almost hurt. She moved her knees in a gesture that was definitely not subtle. He turned his attention back to the road and replaced his hand on the wheel. “I know it’s not,” he said, belatedly, like that awkward moment hadn’t just taken place.

“And what about you?” she said, after a beat. “It’s probably more important that you tell me more about your life. All the little things spouses should know.”

He started to talk then, reservedly at first, voice clipped, as though sharing the tiny patches that made up the quilt of his childhood was the last thing he wanted to do, and then more openly, the words coming with ease as he slipped into the past and talked of his adventures with Ewan, painting a picture of a quaint, idyllic childhood. It should have made her hate him, on some level. That was usually how she felt about the very entitled, despite her job. But the way Hamish spoke brought such an image of complexity and depth to it that she couldn’t begrudge him the perfection of his childhood.

Before she knew it, he was pulling off the highway and taking a main road, and then a small side road, and finally a lane, slowing down as he approached wide gates and then pulling over altogether. “Wait here,” he said, jumping out of the car with an athleticism she wasn’t sure she’d fully appreciated before and striding towards the gates, pushing them open with a muscle memory that showed he’d done it a billion times, then returning to the car and driving through. A moment later, he was out again, closing the gates, and then they were driving up a long, gently undulating drive towards the most magnificent house she’d ever seen—and she was a luxury realtor! But this wasn’t fancy or modern. It was the history of it that immediately screamed at Tia, the authentic charm, the overgrown roses, the hedges that were trimmed to create a garden made of walls, a potager to the side, and a lake that was filled with ducks that took flight when their car drove by. Wisteria was scrambling up one wall, bursting with purple blossoms. She put her window down on impulse, breathing in the fragrance of jasmine and listening to the hum of bees above the quiet hum of the electric engine.

“Oh, Hamish,” she said, overcome by uncharacteristic emotion, feeling almost like she might cry. It was just too perfect to believe. “What an incredible place.”

His features were hard to read, his face in profile to hers. He stared at the house almost as though a person might if they’d seen a ghost. She glanced at it, and before her eyes, there they were: children. Ewan and Hamish, as they’d once been, two dark-haired boys running wild with sticks they held as swords, dodging and hiding behind the trunks of ancient oaks, running wild and free toward the lake and diving in without a spare thought for their clothes or shoes.

“Will you show it to me?” she asked, surprised at the emotion in her voice.

“Yeah,” his own was gruff in response, rubbed raw by feeling. “Let’s go.” And this time, when he reached over and squeezed her knee, she didn’t flinch away. She was surprised to realise she didn’t want the feeling to stop.

Chapter Seven

IT FELT A LITTLE SELFISH to ask him to show her the grounds before they went inside, but Tia didn’t care. As a professional realtor, she had an eye for detail, and she was desperate to devour the place before meeting his parents. Besides, she got the feeling Hamish wasn’t quite ready. That he wanted more time.

And could she blame him?

This was his first time home in years, and after an unimaginable trauma had played out, partly here. How could the property fail to be linked to that time of his life, that horrible betrayal? And yet, as they walked from the wisteria-covered side of the house to the back, where the potager she had glimpsed a part of upon arriving was shown to be so much larger and more bountiful, Tia felt something shift in Hamish. He started to speak with more passion. Enthusiasm. Some of his preparatory tension even seemed to ebb away as he pointed at a particularly grand oak on a gently rolling hill. “Our favourite to climb, for obvious reasons,” he said, as his arm brushed hers.

“I was never one for tree climbing,” she admitted.