She swallowed, unable to say a clear yes or no. The thought of seeing Gideon made her go both hot and cold, burning with anticipation and freezing her with fear that he’d hurt her all over again. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing him, knowing how he’d tricked her while part of her still loved the man she’d thought of as her husband. Deep down she knew she couldn’t deny her child its father, but the reality of sharing custody with a charlatan was too much to contemplate.
Therefore, she was ignoring the need to make a decision, putting it off until she couldn’t avoid it any longer.
“He’ll always be in your life in one way or another. Are you going to twist the knife every chance you get? Or act like a civilized human being about it?”
“Stop it,” she said, hating the way he was painting her as small and vindictive. He didn’t understand how shattering it was to have your perceptions exploded like this. How much like grief it was to lose the man you loved not to an accident, but to duplicity. She rocked herself off the sofa and onto her feet. “Why are you defending him? What do you expect me to do? Lie down and let him wipe his feet on me the way our mother did? He abused my trust!”
“But he didn’t abuse you. Did he?” It was a real question, one with a rare thread of uncertainty woven into his tone.
“Of course not,” she muttered, instantly repelled by even the suggestion. Why? What did she care what other people thought of Gid—that man?
“You make it sound like you wouldn’t have stood for it, but we all hung around for it,” Theo pointed out bluntly.
She didn’t answer. There was nothing to say to that ugly truth. If she could see her toes, she knew they’d have been curled into the carpet.
“I was scared for you, you know,” Theo said gruffly. “When you married him. We didn’t know him, who he was, what he was capable of. I watched him like a hawk, and I would have stepped in if he’d made one wrong move, but he didn’t. And you...” He narrowed his eyes. “You changed. It took me a while to figure out what was different, but you weren’t scared anymore. Were you?”
Adara swallowed, thinking back to those first weeks and months of marriage, when she had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Gradually she’d begun to trust that the even temper her husband showed her was real. If the ground was icy, he steadied her. If a cab was coming, he drew her back.
And she remembered very clearly the last time her father had touched her in anger, a few weeks after her wedding. She’d been trying to explain why the engineer needed to make changes to a drawing and he’d batted the pencil from her hand, clipping her wrist with his knuckles.
Mere seconds later, Gideon had walked into the room, arriving to take her home.
Her father had changed before her eyes, remaining as blustery as always, but becoming slightly subdued, eyeing her uneasily as she retrieved her pencil and subtly massaged her wrist.
She hadn’t said a word, of course, merely confirmed with her father that they were finished for the day before she’d left with Gideon, but she’d realized she had a champion in her husband, passive and ignorant though he was to his role. As long as she had him, she had protection. Her father had never got physical with her again.
That sense of security had become precious to her. That’s why she’d been so devastated when she had thought Lexi had snatched him from her, and now the hurt was even worse, when she knew his shielding tenderness had never existed at all.
“It was in his best interest to keep me happy,” she said, voice husky and cold. “I was the facade that made him look real.”
“Maybe,” Theo agreed, twisting the knife that seemed lodged in her own heart. “In the beginning. But... Adara, I would have done everything I could to help you through this pregnancy regardless of any threats from Gideon. You’re my sister. I know what this baby means to you. But the way he spoke to me when he called, that was not just a father speaking. He was worried about both of you. Protective. I’ve always had a healthy respect for him, but I was intimidated that day. There was no way I was going to be the weak link that caused anything to happen to you or this baby.”
“Welcome to my world where you buy the snake oil and convince yourself it works,” she scoffed.
He stopped his pacing to stare accusingly at her. “You fooled me, you know. Both of you. I looked at how happy you two were in the last few months and I was hopeful. I thought finally one of us was shaking off our childhood and making a proper life for herself. You made me start to believe it was possible, and now—”