Mr. Right All Along

One stride, two, and that was it; the decision was out of his hands. Ryan came to a halt, breathing far more heavily than the effort he’d expended warranted. It was just that seeing Eve made him feel breathless and giddy and all sorts of things he didn’t normally feel. He groaned under his breath. Hell and damnation. He had a really big problem, Houston!

Eve came to a halt, her heart beating in rapid little jerks. She could lie to herself but what was the point? She had chosen to walk by the river because she had thought … hoped … that she might see Ryan here. That was the truth, although it wasn’t all of it. She wasn’t ready to work out why she’d wanted to see him when she had decided to keep well away from him. She would start with the easy bit and work up to the difficult bits later … Possibly.

‘We meet again.’ She gave a little laugh, wincing when she realised that it sounded like a rusty nail being scraped down a blackboard. Ryan was jogging on the spot, obviously keen to keep up the momentum, and she felt a spurt of irritation strike her. He could at least pretend to be pleased to see her, couldn’t he?

‘Looks like it.’ He grinned at her, his handsome face breaking into the same wonderfully warm smile he’d treated her to the other night, and Eve was instantly mollified and smiled back.

‘You’re obviously a glutton for punishment.’

‘Or desperate.’ He laughed, a soft rumble emerging from his powerful chest. ‘Can you imagine how mortifying it will be if I have to drop out after I’ve persuaded everyone else to take part in this challenge?’

He rolled his eyes and Eve laughed more naturally this time. ‘It wouldn’t look very good.’

‘Too right it wouldn’t.’ He chuckled. ‘Marie, for one, would never let me live it down,’ he said, referring Marie Thomas, the paediatric unit’s redoubtable ward sister.

Eve’s brows rose. ‘Is Marie taking part?’

‘Yep. She’s raised almost three hundred pounds in sponsorship pledges too.’

‘That’s fabulous!’ she exclaimed, genuinely impressed.

‘It is. We’re on course to raise almost ten thousand pounds all told, which is a lot of money.’

‘It certainly is. You’ll have to put me down as a sponsor. Will fifty pounds be enough? I’ve no idea what the going rate is.’

‘That would be brilliant. Thank you.’

He touched her hand in a spontaneous gesture of thanks and Eve did her best not to react, but it was like trying to turn back the tide. A rush of panic engulfed her and she gasped. Ryan bent and looked into her face, looked deep into her eyes, into her soul even, and she could see the anger burning inside him.

‘I don’t know who’s responsible for the way you’ve changed, Eve, but whoever it was, he did a real number on you. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do but if there is, you only have to ask.’ He stepped back and his face was set. ‘I want to help you, Eve. If you’ll let me.’

CHAPTER THREE (#uec279540-4d5f-57b4-8107-8638c777805d)

WHAT WAS SHE doing here?

Eve’s head spun as she stared around the kitchen. There was so much colour in the room that her eyes were dazzled. Deep yellow walls, bright blue cupboards, multicoloured china stacked on the shelves. The kettle was red, the toaster purple, the washing-up bowl an eye-watering green. It was like finding herself slap-bang in the middle of a rainbow and she felt disorientated, confused. Her life was all shades of grey, from washed-out silver to deep, dark charcoal. Colour was something she couldn’t handle. Colour hinted at extremes, at passion, at desire, at all the things she didn’t want to experience.

Colour scared her too because it reflected her feelings for Ryan. She couldn’t see him in terms of black and white or even charcoal and silver. He was imprinted in her head in glorious Technicolor exactly like this room.

‘Sorry about that. It was my mother. She seems to have a knack of phoning when it’s least convenient.’

Ryan came back into the room and Eve forced herself to concentrate. He’d put on a track suit over his running clothes, plain black, unadorned and mercifully lacking in colour. She watched as he headed to the gleaming red kettle and flicked the switch. She could hear the water hissing as it came to the boil, hear it getting louder and louder, and her senses were assaulted once more, only by noise this time. If she didn’t do colour then she didn’t do noise either!

She shot to her feet, almost overturning the chair in her haste to escape. Ryan glanced round, his expression as bland as a baby’s. She knew he could tell how panicstricken she felt but he didn’t ask her what was wrong or offer suggestions to calm her down. He simply accepted her turmoil and for some reason she felt better because of it.

‘At least have a cup of coffee before you go. It’ll only take a couple of seconds to make it.’

He took a pair of mugs off a shelf and spooned instant coffee granules into them then topped them up with boiling water. The milk was in the fridge—the jug was orange—the sugar in a bowl that had multicoloured spots on it. He dumped everything on the table and sat down, leaving her to decide what she intended to do.

She could go or she could stay and it was all the same to him, he was trying to imply, only she knew it wasn’t how he really felt. Not inside. Ryan wanted her to stay. And he wanted her to stay because he cared. That was why he had insisted she should come home with him, but did she want him to care? That was the big question, the one she couldn’t answer now and maybe not ever.

‘Fancy a biscuit? Or how about some toast?’

He half rose but Eve shook her head and he subsided back onto his chair. Picking up his mug, he drank a little coffee, blowing on the glassy black surface first to cool it. Eve averted her eyes, not wanting to watch how his lips puckered as he sucked in air then blew it out in a soft little sigh that seemed ridiculously loud to her hypersensitive ears. She didn’t want her senses to stir from their slumbers again, didn’t want to feel attraction or anything else. She just wanted to be, with all that did and didn’t entail.

Silence fell as she sat down and unconsciously she started counting the minutes. How long would it last, this silence? One minute? Ten? She’d come to dread the silences when she’d been with Damien. When he wasn’t talking, he was thinking and she had learned to fear his thoughts as much as his actions. Damien could turn peace and quiet into terror in the blink of an eye so she had chattered on, inane comments aimed at soothing him, even though they had rarely worked.

Tears started to her eyes as the memories came flooding back and she stared into her coffee, wishing she could sink into its dark heart and disappear. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t brave enough to gather up the threads and learn how to be herself again.

‘Tell me, Eve. I can’t promise it will help but it might and that has to be better than this.’

Ryan’s voice was so calm, so patient, so free of threat that Eve felt a little of the fear trickle out of her. She shrugged, her hands cradling the mug because it was something to hold onto.

‘What’s to tell? I think you’ve guessed already, haven’t you?’

‘Guessing is one thing. Hearing about what you’ve been through is something else.’

He half reached towards her then stopped and pain rippled under her skin. He wouldn’t touch her again. He knew how she felt about being touched because she had made it clear. Maybe she should be relieved yet it was more proof of how much she had changed. Ryan had often put his arm around her in the past, often hugged her in a friendly fashion, and all of a sudden she missed being on the receiving end of his warmth and kindness, missed being normal. If she could learn to give and receive the odd hug, it would mean she was on her way to finding the person she had been.

‘I was in an abusive relationship. It took me almost two years to pluck up the courage to leave and I’m still getting over what happened.’

‘You did well to get out when you did. A lot of women never find the strength to cut the ties.’

His tone was level. There was no hint of censure for her or for her abuser but Eve wasn’t fooled. Ryan hated the thought of her being treated so badly and a little more fear trickled away and a tiny bit of warmth took its place.

‘I didn’t think I’d have the strength either, which is funny, really, because I always thought that I would never put up with being abused. We used to see women like that when we were doing our rotations, didn’t we?’ She carried on when he nodded, suddenly eager to explain why she had allowed it to happen to her. ‘I could never understand why they let their husbands or boyfriends treat them the way they did, but it’s different when it happens to you.’

‘I remember one woman telling me that she hated what was happening and hated herself even more for allowing it to happen, but she didn’t know how to stop it.’

His voice was still calm, uncritical, relaxed. They could have been discussing the price of fish for all the emotion he betrayed but Eve knew it was an act. Ryan cared. He really cared. She clung to that thought. ‘She loved her partner and couldn’t imagine a life without him, I expect.’

‘It’s all part of it, isn’t it?’ He shrugged. ‘The abuser makes his victim so dependent on him that she finds it impossible to imagine not being with him.’

‘Or her. There are men who are victims of abuse too.’

‘True, although not as many men suffer abuse as women do.’

‘No.’ Eve swallowed, feeling sick. It always happened whenever she had to admit that she was a victim of abuse. Oh, she might know that she was, but knowing it and admitting it were two very different things.

‘How did it start?’ Ryan prompted, and she forced the nausea down. Now that she had got this far, she wanted to carry on to the end, surprisingly enough.

‘Exactly as you read about it in all the textbooks.’ She gave a little laugh and he laughed too and it made her feel better, as though they were in this together. It was such a crazy idea that she immediately dismissed it. Ryan wasn’t part of this and he never would be. She was the one who had to learn to cope, to live, to forgive herself.

‘Damien was so charming, so funny, so sexy, and I was completely smitten. I never realised how controlling he was until it was too late.’ She shrugged. ‘I found it touching that he wanted to see me every night, that he hated me going out with friends, that he loathed us being apart. I thought it showed his vulnerable side and that’s something a lot of women find attractive. I certainly did.’

‘So when did you realise that it wasn’t vulnerability that was making him behave that way?’

Ryan’s voice sounded deeper and she shivered. Was her story getting to him? Was he really thinking how stupid she’d been to be taken in? She tried not to let the idea take hold but it was hard when it was what she herself believed.