She’d been wrong.
Not even the horrors of war had prepared her for seeing Robert again. She simply couldn’t believe he was standing in her living room, as warm and alive as the last time she’d seen him. The night she’d hurt him terribly and then watched as he’d been cut down by shrapnel.
God in heaven, how was she going to handle this? How was she going to tell him everything that had happened since he’d left? Things that would change both their lives forever. The questions gnawed at her like voracious little beasts. Questions that terrified her more than the threat of any bomb or soldier’s bayonet or stray bullet. Questions she had absolutely no idea how to answer.
Standing next to the hearth, Robert regarded her with hard, suspicious eyes. He may look the same, she mused, but the last months had changed him. Made him hard. Maybe even bitter. She considered the bitterness in her own heart and wondered if the last months had been as hard for him as they had been for her. She didn’t see how.
Still, the steely gaze that swept the length of her remained starkly familiar. The pull was still there, too, she realized, and a shiver rippled through her hard enough to make her hands shake. She endured his scrutiny with stoic silence, hoping he couldn’t hear the deafening rush of blood through her veins or see her shake.
Refusing to be cowed, Lily stared at him, trying to keep her thoughts on the business at hand and failing miserably. He offered a commanding presence that unnerved her as much as the sight of any enemy soldier. Broad shoulders. Lean hips. Legs slightly bowed with muscle. He seemed taller than she remembered even though she knew that was an impossibility. He had the most fascinating face of any man she’d ever seen. Intelligence and a subtle cunning burned bright and hot behind piercing blue eyes. Laugh lines cupped a mouth that was much more harsh than it had been when she’d known him. A five-o’clock shadow darkened a square jaw that lent him a hostile countenance. Even from three feet away she could smell him, an out-of-doors scent that reminded her of mountains and rain—and a time when he’d ruled her senses as surely as he’d held her heart in the palm of his hand.
Lily cut the thought short with brutal precision. Now wasn’t the time to remember how well she’d once known this man.
“You can’t possibly be my contact,” he said after an excruciating minute.
“I am.” Having lost her appetite for the tea, she took it to the sink and dumped it.
“Lily, for God’s sake, I thought you were dead.”
For a while, Lily had thought she’d been dead, too, only to realize that sometimes it was much more painful to be alive. The old pain roiled inside her as the memories shifted restlessly. Memories she’d refused to think of because the pain was too great. Memories that had eaten at her from the inside out for nearly two years. If it hadn’t been for Jack, she wasn’t sure she would have survived. Sweet, precious Jack had given her hope when the last of her hope had been all but ripped from her heart.
Gathering her frazzled nerves and the tangled remnants of her composure, she turned to face him. “As you can see, I’m very much alive.”
“I can see that. But…my God, how—”
“I was injured.” Self-conscious, she touched the scar at her temple and tried not to remember that her physical injuries had not been the worst of what she’d endured.
He stared at her with those hard eyes, and she knew the shock of seeing her was giving way to the need for an explanation. A explanation she had absolutely no idea how to relay. She’d consoled herself with anger in the weeks she’d been held captive, tried hard to convince herself that Robert had abandoned her. Some days she’d even believed it. Days when it was easier to be angry than it was to hurt.
“Why didn’t you contact me?” he asked incredulously. “Why didn’t you let me know you were alive?”
Because she hadn’t the slightest clue how to answer him without opening a Pandora’s box of pain that would change both of their lives irrevocably, she turned to rinse the cup. Stacking it neatly on the rack, she crossed to the fire to warm her hands, aware that Robert had trailed her.
“I can’t discuss that right now,” she said.
He stared at her, his expression incredulous and angry. “I deserve an explanation, damn it. We were…together.”
Pulse pounding like a jackhammer, she stared at him. “It’s in the past, Robert. Let it go. I’ve moved on. Maybe you should have, too.”
Robert felt as if he’d been slapped. “I want to know what happened.”