She took a sip of her coffee.
‘Come on,’ he said, waggling his eyebrows at her. ‘You know you want to tell me.’
‘But do you really want to hear?’
He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this, wishing he’d gone with his first thought and walked away. ‘How about a quick rundown of the highlights?’ he suggested.
‘Lowlights would be more accurate,’ she said.
‘Were they that bad?’
‘No...’ She reached out as if to reassure him and for a moment her fingers brushed his arm. ‘But highlights are all sparkle and excitement. Champagne and strawberries.’
‘And lowlights are egg custard?’
She laughed. ‘Give the man a coconut. My first twenty-one years were all wholesome, nourishing, good-for-you egg custard when I longed for spicy, lemony, chocolatey, covered-in-frosting, bad-for-you, sugar-on-the-lips cake,’ she said.
‘Thanks for the coconut, but I don’t deserve it,’ he said. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course not. No one ever does.’
‘Try me.’
She looked at him over the rim of her cup, then put it down. ‘Okay. It’s taking quiet beach holidays in the same cottage with my family in Cornwall every year, when I dreamed of being in a hot-air balloon floating across the Serengeti, bungee jumping in New Zealand, white water rafting in Colorado like my brothers.’
‘Why?’
‘Given the choice, wouldn’t you have preferred hot-air ballooning?’
He thought about it for a moment then said, ‘Actually they both have a lot to commend them and Cornwall does have surfing.’
Tash, who was finding this a lot harder than she imagined, grabbed the distraction. ‘You surf? In one of those clinging wetsuits?’ She flapped a hand to wave cooling air over her face. ‘Be still my beating heart.’
‘You don’t?’ he asked, refusing to be distracted.
‘Surf? I can’t even swim. The most dangerous thing I do at the seaside is paddle up to my ankles with my nephews and nieces. Build sandcastles. Play shove ha’penny down the pub.’
‘And again, why? You mentioned that you were sick as a kid, but you look pretty robust now.’
‘Robust?’ She rolled the word round her mouth, testing it. ‘Thanks for that. It makes me feel so much better.’
‘No need to get on your high horse; you have a great body—one that I guarantee would cause a riot in a wetsuit—but that wasn’t the “why” I was asking. Why were your parents so protective?’
And suddenly there it was. She’d lived a lifetime with everyone knowing what had happened to her, looking at her with a touch of uncertainty, of pity.
She’d left all that behind when she’d left home. She hadn’t told anyone in London, not even Toby, but when Miles had introduced a private health scheme for the staff late last year, the insurance company had put so many restrictions on her that he’d called her into his office, convinced she was a walking time bomb. She’d told him everything and now the bastard had used it against her.