Capturing the Single Dad’s Heart (10 page)

‘I take it your mum was too caught up in Creepy Leonard to notice what was going on?'

‘To be fair,' Erin said, ‘even if she had been looking out for me, she wouldn't really have known what was going on because I covered my tracks pretty well and we were barely speaking to each other.' She bit her lip. ‘And then one night I went to this party. I wish now I'd never gone in the first place, but I guess it's easy to see things in hindsight.'

‘And you were still very young,' he said gently.

‘I made some really bad decisions, Nate, and my brother was the one who paid the price for it. I don't think I can ever forgive myself for what I did.' She swallowed hard. This was something she almost never spoke about. ‘Nobody at work knows about this.'

‘They're not going to hear anything from me,' Nate promised.

‘Thank you.' Though that didn't make it any easier to tell him. Every word felt as if it ripped another layer off the top of her scars. But if they were to have any chance of a real relationship, he needed to know who she really was. What she'd done. ‘Andrew, my boyfriend, had decided that night was the night we were going all the way.' She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I wasn't ready. I didn't want to do what he wanted, because I wasn't even going to be sixteen for another couple of months, but he was nineteen and he expected me to behave like the rest of the girls in his crowd. He didn't want to wait any longer.'

And she'd been so, so shocked by his reaction at her refusal. By the way he'd pushed her into one of the bedrooms, locked the door behind them and thrown all the coats off the bed. Shoved her onto the mattress. She could still feel the weight of his body on hers, his hands gripping her wrists and holding them above her head. The panic when she'd realised that nobody would be able to hear her scream—and, even worse, that nobody was going to come to her rescue even if they did hear her.

‘He said age was just a number and it didn't matter. I said I didn't want to do it, but he wasn't listening. He wanted to have sex with me.' She swallowed hard. ‘So he pushed me into one of the bedrooms, locked the door and took what he wanted.'

Nate took the mug from her hand and placed it on the low coffee table next to his own, then drew her over towards the sofa and scooped her onto his lap, holding her close.

‘Oh, honey,' he said, his voice gentle. ‘What a horrible, horrible thing to happen to you.'

‘I guess it was my own fault. I knew what that crowd was like. And we'd—well—I'd let him touch me more intimately than I should've done at that age, and I'd touched him. Even though I knew I wasn't ready... It was good to be accepted by someone. To feel loved again—because I didn't think either of my parents cared about me any more. I really thought Andrew loved me, Nate. He'd been pushing me to go the whole way with him for a while, but I'd held off, and...' Bile rose in her throat, and she grimaced. ‘Maybe Creepy Leonard was right and I was a tease who deserved what I got.'

‘Absolutely not,' Nate said, and kept his arms wrapped round her. ‘No means no, and Andrew should've accepted that and waited until you were ready.' He stroked her cheek. ‘Violence doesn't solve anything, but I'd quite like to flatten the guy, right now.'

‘Violence
really
doesn't solve anything,' she emphasised. ‘That's why Mikey ended up in a wheelchair. After Andrew finally unlocked the door and let me out of that room, I called my brother and asked him to come and get me. I didn't say what Andrew had done, but when Mikey took me home I realised Mum and Creepy Leonard were out, and I just broke down and told him. He said I had to call the police, but first he was going to make absolutely sure Andrew never did that to another girl—and he drove off before I could stop him.' She dragged in a breath. ‘On the way back to confront Andrew, Mikey had the accident.'

Nate stroked her hair. ‘Erin, it was an
accident
. It wasn't your fault.'

‘No? According to my mother, if I hadn't been an attention-seeking whore, Mikey wouldn't have been driving, let alone anywhere near the crash site.' Erin swallowed miserably. ‘And she was right.'

‘No, she wasn't,' Nate said. ‘Erin, we deal all the time with patients who've been paralysed in accidents, and we talk to their relatives. You know how many of the relatives find it hard to accept what's happened and the consequences. Blaming someone for the accident is the only way they can start to come to terms with it. It sounds to me as if that's what your mother was doing, and because you were the closest person to her you were the one who copped the flak.'

Why wouldn't he understand? ‘But it's
true
,' Erin said again. ‘If I hadn't gone to that party, Andrew wouldn't have forced me to have sex with him, I wouldn't have called Mikey afterwards to rescue me and Mikey wouldn't have ended up in the crash.'

‘It's a chain of circumstance, and you can't know that the crash wouldn't have happened anyway. Mikey could've been driving anywhere, at any time, and still had that crash.' He stroked her face. ‘Did you tell your mother about what Andrew did?'

It was another memory that made her flinch. ‘I tried.' Erin closed her eyes. ‘She said I was making it up, trying to get attention away from Mikey in his hospital bed.'

Nate couldn't suppress a curse. ‘What about your dad?'

‘Mum sent me to live with him because she couldn't bear the sight of me—because it was my fault Mikey was never going to walk again, and every time she saw me it reminded her of what I'd done.'

‘Did you tell your dad about Andrew?'

Erin shook her head. ‘I didn't think he'd listen, either. Not that Dad had fights with me, the way Mum did, but he felt guilty about having the affair and leaving us, and he avoided talking about anything emotional. Dad's one of those men who just can't deal with emotional stuff. He simply looks away, mumbles, “All right,” and changes the subject.'

‘So you were all on your own? What about your friend's mum? Did you tell her?'

‘No.' At least, not then. She'd talked to Rachel later, when it was way, way too late. But she couldn't bring herself to tell Nate about that. Telling him this much had drained her emotionally. She didn't have the strength to tell him the bit that had finally broken her.

‘So Andrew got away with it?'

‘I guess.' She bit her lip. ‘I feel bad about that, too, because I hate to think he might have gone on to do the same thing to someone else.'

‘Erin, it really wasn't your fault. You were still a child yourself and you needed someone looking out for you, not blaming you.'

She could guess from his expression what he meant. ‘Don't judge my mother too harshly,' she said softly. ‘She was really upset about what happened to Mikey. And I can see where she was coming from.'

‘Has your mother ever seen the situation from your point of view?' Nate asked.

The crunch question. ‘No,' Erin admitted. ‘But that doesn't matter because I can see hers. And I can't forgive myself for what happened to Mikey, because he wouldn't have been in his car that night if I hadn't asked him to rescue me.'

‘What does Mikey say about it?'

‘Pretty much what you do,' she said. ‘Actually, he's the one who told me I ought to tell you about this.'

‘He was right. I'm glad you did.'

‘Even though you know now how—' she caught her breath ‘—how
bad
I am, deep down? You don't think I'm going to be a bad influence on Caitlin?'

‘You were young and you made some mistakes,' he said. ‘Just because you've made some bad choices, it doesn't mean that you're a bad person.'

Was that true? For the first time ever, Erin thought that maybe there was a chance. Maybe the way she'd lived her life ever since had started to make up for her actions as a teen.

‘If you were talking to someone who'd been in your situation, would you judge them as harshly as you judge yourself?' he asked.

She thought about it. ‘Maybe not.'

‘Definitely not,' he said, ‘because you'd see that circumstances played a big part in what happened. It's very clear to me that you can see similarities with Caitlin's situation and your own,' Nate continued. ‘You've persuaded Caitlin to talk to you and trust you, so you can guide her into not making the same kind of mistakes that you did.'

She looked away. ‘So you think I'm using your daughter to try and stop myself feeling guilty?' Which she was, in a way. Which made her hate herself even more.

‘No. I think you're being a strong, kind woman who's using her experience to stop someone else going off the rails in a similar situation. Isn't it time you stopped beating yourself up about the past?' he asked. ‘What you went through was terrible. Erin, your parents both abandoned you at a time when you needed a bit of support, you had to deal with your mum's new man behaving inappropriately towards you and then you were raped by the boyfriend you believed loved you. The fact you've managed to get through all that and you've become a doctor who makes a real difference to people's lives—you're amazing, Erin.'

‘I don't feel amazing,' she said. ‘And don't try to sugar-coat it. I didn't behave well when I was fifteen. I was rude, surly and uncooperative. I drank alcohol when I was under age, and I went to clubs with a fake ID. I skipped school and I failed every single one of my exams.' Between the shock of Mikey's accident and finding out that she was pregnant, and then losing the baby, she'd given up. She hadn't even seen any point in turning up to write her name on the exam paper. So she'd stayed at home, curled in a ball underneath her duvet and crying about the wreckage of her life.

‘That was then. Half a lifetime ago,' he said. ‘You're a different person now, and it's the you of today I want to get to know better.'

Nate really still wanted to know her? Even after what she'd done?

Hope bloomed in her heart.

She knew she ought to tell him the rest of it—about the baby and the miscarriage—but right now she was too raw.

‘But.'

Ah. She'd known it was too good to be true. This was where he'd do the ‘it's not you, it's me' speech. He'd take the blame, to make her feel better—but he'd still leave her. Just as she'd always thought: relationships didn't work for her.

‘The thing is,' he said, ‘Caitlin needs all my attention right now. I want to get to know you better, Erin, and to date you properly, but I don't see how that can happen for a while. Not until Caitlin's really settled. It's not fair of me to ask you to wait for me for an unspecified amount of time.'

He was right. She couldn't complain. Especially as she agreed with him. Completely. ‘You're right about Caitlin. She needs you,' Erin said. ‘And I—well, everything that happened means I don't tend to get too deeply involved with anyone.'

‘Because you blame yourself and you don't think you're worth loving?'

She flinched. ‘You don't pull your punches, Nate.'

‘Neither do you. But you
are
worth loving, Erin. If things were different...'

‘Yeah.' She knew that one well. It was a line she'd used herself, often enough, to get out of emotional involvement. To back away rather than being the one who was rejected.

‘Or,' he said, ‘we can try something.'

‘Such as?' She couldn't quite let herself hope.

‘Let's look at it logically. You don't want to date anyone, because you can't forgive yourself for a mistake you made when you were fifteen—half a lifetime ago. When you were still a
child
, Erin. I don't want to date anyone, because I've already made enough mistakes where my daughter's concerned and I need to put her first.'

‘Uh-huh.' He'd summed it up pretty fairly.

‘So maybe,' he said, ‘we can date in secret.'

‘Date in secret?' she asked. How on earth could he think that was a logical solution?

‘Nobody else needs to know about this,' he explained. ‘Just you and me. No pressure. We take it at our own pace and see where things go between us.'

‘You really want to date me?'

‘I really want to date you,' he confirmed, his blue eyes full of sincerity.

She blew out a breath. ‘Even though you know the truth about me now?'

‘Even more so,' he said. ‘So, you and me. How about it?'

‘I...' She stared at him. ‘I don't know what to say.'

He pressed a kiss into her palm and folded her fingers over it. ‘No strings attached, Erin. We simply go on dates and get to know each other better.'

‘How are we going to find time to date, between work and Caitlin?'

‘Maybe we can snatch a little time between work and home,' he said. ‘I didn't say it was going to be conventional dating. It'll probably be breakfast out rather than dinner, or a snatched coffee here and there, or a walk in the park. But we can still make time for each other and get to know each other properly.' He paused. ‘If you want to.'

Oh, she wanted to. So much. He was the first man in years to make her want to take a risk. And if he was prepared to take the risk, too... She smiled, then. ‘OK. Let's give it a go.'

‘Good.' He stroked her face. ‘We'll take the pace at one you're comfortable with. And I hope you realise that I'll listen to you—if you say no, then as far as I'm concerned you mean it and I'm not going to push you.'

She knew he meant it, and tears pricked at the back of her eyes. ‘Thank you.'

‘Have you ever dated anyone since Andrew?' he asked.

She'd already told him that. And that she'd kept her relationships very short. But she also knew that wasn't quite what he meant. ‘You mean, have I had sex with anyone since I was raped?'