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The accident seemed to have triggered distressing memories of the car accident in which her husband had been killed, and Laura had cried out his name in anguish again and again—the sound almost cutting Fabian’s heart in two. Her arms had been flailing wildly, and the attendant paramedics had literally had to hold her down to prevent her from harming herself. That was when she’d been given the sedative.
Now back in his apartment, having been advised by the doctors to rest for the next couple of days, she lay on one of the sumptuous sofas in his living room, subdued and pale, her thoughts in a place where he couldn’t join her.
‘Why do you not try and sleep for a while, hmm?’
Lowering his hard lean frame into the armchair opposite, he rested his elbows on his knees. If a man could age a hundred years in one day, then he had surely done just that.
‘I don’t want to sleep.’
‘Are you hurting?’ Fabian’s stomach rolled in a violent somersault at the idea she might be. He glanced at his watch. ‘I can give you another painkiller in about an hour. They are very strong, and we have to be careful.’
‘You don’t have to nursemaid me!’
There it was again … that bitter edge to her voice that was so unlike the woman he had come to know it unsettled him completely. Shock and trauma had obviously set in, and he would have to be patient while she recuperated and returned to her true self.
‘Why do you reject my help?’ he asked, completely against his better judgement. Her repudiation had definitely touched a very raw nerve.
‘Because I can deal with this much better on my own! Why do you assume I need the help of any man? All they ever seem to do is hurt me and cause me grief!’ Biting her lip in anguish, she turned her face away from him.
‘You called out your ex-husband’s name in the ambulance … several times.’ His voice low, Fabian had to garner every bit of courage he possessed to even mention the fact. But something told him if they didn’t talk about it now it would fester between them like an untended wound that would grow worse, possibly poisoning any chance of truly making their union work.
‘Did I?’ Still she wouldn’t look at him.
‘You talk of grief. Do you still miss him? Want him?’ His voice sounded as if it rolled over gravel.
‘What?’
Easing herself up against the mound of cushions at her back, Laura stared at him.
‘I have never heard a woman so distraught … not since my mother, of course. But that was not because she cared about my father.’ Not liking the thread of pain that wove through his words, and jealous and fearful of the road his own questioning was taking him down, Fabian pushed to his feet. ‘You are clearly not over him … are you, Laura?’
‘How could you believe that after I told you I definitely wasn’t in love with him any more?’ Slowly she shook her head. ‘I regret that he died the way he did—of course I do! But I don’t miss or want him! Living with Mark was like living with a time bomb—he was a gambler, a liar and a cheat, and that was just for starters! I knew our life together was going to blow up in my face one day. He was insanely jealous and possessive, and at times I was a virtual recluse in my own home because he didn’t want me seeing either family or friends without him there. My only freedom was when I was working. As for my “talent”—that didn’t please him at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. He viewed it as a threat—a threat that I might one day have a ticket out of the prison I was in!’
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