‘Charlie pretended,’ she said, surprising him.
‘How?’
‘He was seeing someone else,’ she said. ‘Every time he went somewhere to help after a disaster, she was there as well.’
Ryan stared at her, shocked. Now he knew why she’d leapt to that conclusion earlier: because it had happened to her before. Her husband had cheated on her. ‘That’s horrible. I’m sorry.’
‘He lied to her, too. He told her he wasn’t married.’
He knew it was rude and intrusive but he couldn’t help asking. ‘How did you find out about it?’
‘Her parents wrote to me at the hospital. He’d told Trish that I was his sister. They wanted to know if they could come to his funeral, or if I wanted to go to Trish’s. They talked about him, said how much Trish had loved him. I hadn’t had a clue.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I think I broke their hearts even further when I called them to explain that Charlie was an only child and I was his wife. And they kind of broke mine a bit more when they told me Trish had been expecting his baby.’
He remembered she’d said something about expecting to be a mum by this point in her life. ‘Had you been...?’
She shook her head. ‘We’d planned to. But then, when we got to the point where we’d planned to start trying, Charlie changed his mind. He kept coming up with reasons why we should wait a bit. So clearly he didn’t want to make a family with me.’
Which had clearly hurt her. He was glad he hadn’t kept Zoe hanging on a string like that.
‘I don’t know whether he even knew she was pregnant. She might not have had a chance to tell him, because they’d only been out there for a couple of days when they were killed, and she might’ve wanted to wait for the right moment before telling him.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘She was four months gone. If they’d lived, the baby would’ve been crawling by now.’
‘That’s tough,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry he cheated on you and I’m sorry you found out that way.’ He paused. ‘How did his parents react?’
‘I didn’t tell them,’ she said. ‘I thought about it. But what was the point? Everyone thought Charlie was a hero. And he was. He was a brilliant emergency doctor, and he went out to help in disaster areas.’
‘And he cheated on you and lied to his mistress,’ Ryan pointed out. In his view, the way Charlie had treated his wife pretty much cancelled his hero status.
‘That wasn’t relevant to anyone else,’ she said. ‘His family, his friends—they were all mourning the man they loved, the man they’d respected. What was the point of making them all feel worse? What would it achieve, telling his parents that their only son had been about to give them a much-wanted grandchild but oh, by the way, said grandchild was killed along with his father?’
‘How did you live with that, though? Knowing Charlie wasn’t the man they all thought he was, and pretending that you agreed with them—when really you weren’t just mourning the man you married, you were hurt by his betrayal?’
She spread her hands. ‘He wasn’t there to defend himself or explain himself. It wouldn’t have been fair to tell everyone the truth.’
‘It wasn’t fair to you, not telling the truth,’ Ryan pointed out.
‘That’s really why I wanted to get away from London. Not just because I was sick of the pity, but I was near to cracking and blurting it out, and then the pity would’ve been so much worse.’
‘And you didn’t tell anyone at all? Not even your best friend?’
‘I didn’t know how.’ She bit her lip. ‘I told my brother. But only because he was so upset that I was bailing out on him, so I thought I owed him the truth. He was so angry on my behalf. But I swore him to secrecy.’
‘I think you’re a nicer person than I am. I would’ve told people the truth.’
‘What was the point?’ Georgie asked again. ‘It wouldn’t have achieved anything except hurting people who were already hurting. His parents had suffered enough. And they’re nice people. They didn’t deserve to have their illusions shattered.’ She sat up and wrapped her arms round her knees. ‘I still wonder what would’ve happened if Charlie and Trish hadn’t been caught in that landslide. Would he have left me for her? Would they have brought up their child together?’
‘Don’t torture yourself,’ Ryan said. ‘You’ll never know and it didn’t happen.’
‘No, but I have to face that I wasn’t enough to keep Charlie happy. Otherwise he wouldn’t have looked elsewhere. There’s obviously something wrong with me.’
Ryan was outraged on her behalf. How could she possibly think that she was the one at fault? ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’
‘No?’ But Georgie didn’t quite dare voice what was in her head. If there wasn’t something lacking in her, then she would’ve been enough for Charlie and she would be enough for Ryan—and she clearly wasn’t enough for him, or he wouldn’t be backing away from her right now at the speed of light.
‘There’s really nothing wrong with you,’ he confirmed. ‘Nothing at all. Any man would be lucky to have you in his life.’
Did he include himself in that?
She’d ducked the issue last night, because she’d really wanted to be held, to sleep in his arms. She’d wanted to make love with him. She had no regrets at all. But she wasn’t a coward. She knew the reckoning came now, and she was going to face it. ‘So where does that leave us?’
He looked haunted. ‘I like you, Georgie. I like you a lot. I think we could be good together.’
Hope leaped in her heart. Was he going to give them a chance?
‘But.’
The hope came crashing back down again. Stupid. Of course there was a but.
He took a deep breath. ‘This whole thing scares me spitless. You want children. I never thought that was where my
