Page 42 of Legal Attraction
“I take every divorce case for my dad,” he said. “Because he should have divorced my mom. But he could never bring himself to do it—no matter how badly she treated him, how many times she cheated on him.”
“Ronan...” She touched him, just her fingers on his arm.
But his skin tingled with the contact and he shivered in reaction. Or maybe he was just suddenly very cold as he relived some of those moments from his past.
“They fought all the time,” he said.
“That must have been horrible,” she remarked, her voice soft with sympathy.
He wasn’t looking for sympathy. He just wanted her to understand. “It was...so bad that I ran away. That’s how I met Simon and Stone and Trevor.”
“On the streets...”
She must have heard the story. Allison McCann had put out several press releases touting the rags-to-riches story of the lawyers of Street Legal.
“So all the stories about you and your partners were true?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“It must have been rough.”
He chuckled, but with a bitterness he’d never been able to leave entirely behind him. “Living on the streets was safer and easier than living at home.”
“Are your parents still together?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. My father and I don’t talk about it anymore.” But they talked once a week—about the weather, sports, the practice...anything but his parents’ marriage. That was the arrangement he’d made with his father—once he’d contacted him again. “And I want nothing to do with my mother.”
“I am not your mother,” Muriel said. “I didn’t cheat on Arte.”
“I know that now,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
But he knew an apology was not enough to make up for what he’d done to her. He wasn’t sure what it would take for her to forgive him. Moreover, he wasn’t sure what it would take for him to forgive himself.
* * *
Muriel watched Ronan turn away from her and head for the door. He was just going to walk away?
“Coward!” she called after him.
He stopped and glanced back at her over one of his broad shoulders. “What?”
“You’re running away again, just like you did when you were a teenager,” she said.
His lips curved into a slight grin and amusement glinted in his dark eyes. “You think I’m running from you?”
“Maybe...”
Or he was running away from what he’d done.
Or from what he’d admitted to her about his past.
“I didn’t think you wanted me to stay,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that,” she said.
“You’re a passionate woman.” His dark eyes gleamed with passion of his own.
And Muriel’s heart began to pound fast and furiously. Even as angry as she was with him, she had missed him. Badly. Her body ached with an emptiness only he had been able to fill.
