He sighed. “Yeah. Once.”
“What’s she like? I mean…is she nice?” I mentally chastised myself for sounding like a high school girl. I was twenty-eight years old, but I’d never been good with women. Though, given my current predicament, I wasn’t all that great with men, either. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’m sure she’s great. She’s opening her home up to us.”
“She looks like Tessa.” His eyes flashed to mine then back to the road. “I just want you to be prepared for that.”
I focused on my lap. “Yeah. I’ve seen a picture of her.”
“It’s eerie though. First time I saw her, I couldn’t drag my eyes away.”
My stomach wrenched. Why did that hurt? And not the idea of her looking like Tessa—I’d accepted that fun fact weeks ago. But the idea of Heath gawking at her seared in a way I had no right to feel.
“I’m sure she’s beautiful,” I mumbled and shifted awkwardly in my seat.
His head swung in my direction, his lips tight and an eyebrow arched in curiosity.
“I just mean, if she looks like Tessa, she has to be gorgeous.” I smiled.
His hands tensed around the steering wheel. “Don’t do that,” he said roughly.
My head snapped back at his tone. “Do what?”
“Put on that fake-ass smile and lie to me.”
“I’m sorry. What?” I snipped, glancing back at Tessa and finding her astutely listening to our conversation. I smiled and tossed her a wink.
She smiled back, but it never reached her eyes.
“See? You’re even teaching her to do it,” he said—again roughly.
I cocked my head to the side, leaned an elbow on the console, and hissed, “What is your problem?”
“Don’t placate me with a smile,” he replied curtly. “Open your mouth and tell me what’s bothering you.”
“Nothing is bothering me except your attitude.”
Tipping his gaze to the rearview mirror, he asked, “And what about you, sweet girl? You worried about something back there?”
She looked at me with wide eyes and instantly shook her head. “No.”
Crap. She was scared. Guilt pooled in my stomach. She’d seen way too much in her young life. If I wanted her to feel comfortable with Heath, it was definitely going to be a lead-by-example kind of thing.
I sucked in a deep breath as he pulled to a stop at a red light.
“I wasn’t placating you with a smile,” I lied.
He twisted in his seat to face me, resting his muscular forearm on the steering wheel.
I focused on Tessa to avoid his gaze—and his sexy forearm—before continuing. “I’m just nervous about meeting Elisabeth, and I look like…well.” I waved my hands over my face and down my scrub-covered body. “Like this.”
I cautioned a glance back in his direction, but his face was unreadable.
Slowly and purposely, he raked his eyes over me from head to toe, a chill spreading over my skin in their wake.
When he got back to my face, he licked his lips and told me, “You look like a survivor, Clare. And the minute you find something ugly in that is the moment we have problems.”
Shit. That felt good. And, if he had stopped there, I probably could have made it the rest of the way without tears. But he didn’t stop there.
“Tessa,” he called. “How do you think your mama looks today?”
“She beautiful,” she answered.
He smiled and tossed me a wink. “Your girl’s got good taste.”
She did. But only because she’d always liked him.
My chin began to quiver as I fought tears back. “Thanks, Heath.”
“You can’t thank me for the truth.”
He was wrong. But I didn’t have the words to correct him.
The light turned green and he slowly accelerated. However, a dirty and broken piece of me would forever be left at that stoplight. He’d taken it from me and replaced it with something to be proud of. The tiniest smile pulled at my lips as a single tear rolled down my cheek.
“Elisabeth and Roman are both good people, Clare,” he said, misreading my overflowing emotions. “I wouldn’t be taking you there if I didn’t know that.”
I nodded and peered out the window. I felt his eyes on me every so often, but he didn’t speak the rest of the drive, allowing me my own moment of privacy even as he sat directly beside me. It was the kindest thing he could have done. And it stripped another piece of my filth and left it on the side of a Georgia road.
Right where it belonged.
Ten minutes later, Heath followed an identical black SUV down a private drive. I found immediate comfort in the lack of a gate.
Sure, there was nothing to keep someone out.
But there was also nothing to keep me locked inside.