He reached out and grasped her upper arm. “Did something happen? To your father?”
She gave a brittle smile. “He passed last year. It just happens sometimes, that I find myself talking like he’s still alive. It happened so suddenly, it’s like part of me can’t get used to the fact, like my heart hasn’t caught up to my brain. Like it doesn’t want to.” She swallowed through a suddenly tight throat, fighting off a rush of emotion. When would it stop—damn it—the grief crashing into her unexpectedly? On this occasion, it hadn’t seemed random, however. She suspected it had something to do with Jacob Latimer’s gaze. It seemed disconcertingly all-seeing, at times. It acted like a mirror to her confused inner world. She shook her head.
“Sorry. We were very close,” she said, shrugging.
“You miss him a lot,” he said slowly, studying her face. His thumb moved, caressing the bare skin of her arm. It was a simple gesture. It should have felt casual, too. It didn’t. Pleasure rippled through her, and she felt his stroking thumb somewhere deep inside her being. “Were you two alike?” he asked quietly.
“My father? In some ways. Everyone says I was more like my mother, though,” she said, avoiding his stare. “She started out in journalism, like me, and eventually went on to write over a dozen books on international relations, national politics, and a few biographies.”
“Jane McFadden?”
She nodded, still unable to meet his stare, almost every ounce of her awareness focused on maintaining her self-control . . . and on his firm, warm hold and the pad of his thumb sliding against her skin.
“I read her essays on Afghanistan and her biography of Winston Churchill. It’s no wonder you’re such a good writer, with her as your teacher. She had the ability to humanize even the most complicated of people and situations. You got that from her. Your compassion. Was your father a writer, too?”
She fought back the knot in her throat. “He was, after a fashion. He was a psychiatrist, but he regularly published case studies in academic journals—”
Emotion pressed on her chest from the inside out. It was humiliating. She felt very exposed.
“I really should be going,” she said, drawing in a ragged breath and starting to move past him. “I have a press conference first thing in the morning,”
“Wait.” He grasped both of her shoulders, stilling her. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” She was caught in his stare. “Is this what you wanted to forget, in coming to Tahoe Shores?” She could smell him, as close as he was standing: sandalwood and spice and clean skin. The ache in her throat expanded to her chest.
“Maybe. Yes,” she said, almost defiantly. She was irritated at him for pressing the topic. Although in truth, she could have just further sidestepped the issue. That’s what she usually did when people probed her about her loss. She hadn’t been able to lightly gloss over the issue with Latimer, though. “Not to forget them. Just to forget . . . you know? The pain.”
“Them?”
“My mother, too. It was an accident. You heard of that train derailment in Spain last year?”
He nodded.
“They were on it. It’d been my mom’s fantasy to do a European rail vacation. She was so excited.” She shook her head irritably. “So pointless. All of it.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Why would you?”
“I try to keep apprised of the news. I told you, I read some of your mom’s stuff. She’s a well-known author. I never heard their names connected with that train derailment, though.”
She just nodded, her throat too tight to speak for a few seconds. Finally, she inhaled with a hitching breath, and forced a smile.
“It probably sounds stupid, that I’m still grieving them so much, a thirty-two-year-old woman. It’s just . . . I was an only child. And we were close, even though we lived on opposite coasts.” She swallowed thickly. Why was she telling him all this? It was inappropriate. Her thoughts couldn’t stop her from continuing. “I could have been with them, at the end.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a ticket,” she said hoarsely. “That was part of Mom’s dream, for it to be a family vacation. But another reporter had to go in for surgery, and I had to take over his beat. I was forced to cancel the trip.”
“Thank God.”
“You don’t understand. I mean . . . I wouldn’t have chosen to die with them. It’s not that. I just regret . . .”
“That you couldn’t have spent those last days and hours with them. No one can put a price on that.”
Her gaze jumped to his. He had understood. He stood so close. She found herself sinking into his eyes.
“Even though I lived so far away from them, I never realized until after they were gone—”
“What?” he asked when she broke off.
“That I’d never felt alone before, even though I’d lived on my own since I finished college. They were always there, somehow, with me in some intangible way that I’d never bothered to consider before.”