Page 19 of A Chance to Believe

He couldn’t help a chuckle. ‘Okay, you can have the macarena at the wedding. I must see this.’

Cassie gave him a funny look and reached for the next page. ‘Who’s the baby?’

‘Me, of course. Wasn’t I cute?’

Snub nosed with a quiff of hair that made him look like one of those kewpie dolls he remembered seeing at the show when he was a small child.

One corner of her mouth twisted up. ‘Yeah. A real cutey. You haven’t changed a bit.’

He looked again at the snapshot of him lying on a crocheted shawl in a christening dress. ‘I hope not.’

She leaned over and used her fingers to muss with his hair. ‘Yup. Still the same.’

Smoothing it down, he suppressed the warmth in his gut. The next few minutes were likely to be tough. He needed to be in control, not all mushy because a woman made him feel good in the moment. He flicked over a couple of pages of him as a toddler, pausing briefly at her request at a page showing him in his school uniform over his first couple of school years.

He shut his eyes briefly when the next pages were spread open. His mother had removed every photo of Brittany from the house when she’d done the renovation. His sister’s bedroom had been gutted and turned into a sitting room for Kimberley, eventually.

‘These are the twins? How old are they?’ She brushed a finger over the corner of the page and looked up at him. ‘Where are they?’

‘Cecily and Brittany. They were born when I was ten and Ben was a toddler. Mum lost a couple of pregnancies in between us. Then she had the twins. Identical like yours … ours, but not as high risk. Cecily died in a horse-riding accident when she was four. Brittany was killed in a car accident around thirteen years ago.’

Her attention was still on him. ‘Thirteen years. Was that in the same one that Ben was injured?’

‘Yes.’

‘That must have been tough on the whole family. Especially after losing her sister.’

‘Worse for Ben. They were very close. After Cecily died, he seemed to realise Brittany needed a companion. He became very protective.’ He flicked through another few pages. His mother had added no others after Brittany died, so the rest of the pages after Brittany’s graduation portrait were blank. ‘She was prettier than us.’

Cassie studied the photo. ‘Is she more like your mother?’

‘A natural platinum blonde and big blue eyes. Not sandy and indecisive greeny-blue like Ben and me. She was pretty and popular and outgoing. It broke my parents’ hearts.’

‘And yours?’

‘She was my kid sister. Brothers are supposed to protect them.’ In the end he’d failed, too taken up with his own problems to realise the danger. ‘I should have been there. Maybe if I’d been driving. Ben had only got his licence the day before and he was distracted by the other people in the car. It wasn’t his fault. There was another car involved. I just wish …’ He blinked away unwelcome moisture and shut the album. ‘I’ll leave these here and you can study them at your leisure. Most of the pages are labelled.’

He closed it up, ready to leave before he started blubbering.

‘Wait.’

She pushed the album onto the bed. ‘Would you like a hug? Just a friendly hug.’

The rush of emotion was almost too much for him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a hug from anyone apart from his daughter, and they were few and far between in recent years. Another sign of his girl growing up. His parents were not huggers, and Ben was untouchable with his pain. Brittany had been the hugger of the family.

‘I’ll take it.’

Cassie’s smile was tender as she twined her arms around his middle. It was awkward, and he shifted to align their bodies, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. Her belly was a problem, but it worked for him with her draped half across his chest so she could reach around him, a herbal, florally kind of scent rising from where her head rested against his collarbone. It felt good. Healing. Who knew a hug would be what he needed? Craved. Manly men didn’t do hugs. They buffeted their mates but didn’t linger over the touching.

His chest rose and fell, and he sensed Cassie’s breathing changing, easing into the softer rhythms of sleep. She was exhausted, and he’d kept her up with his trip down memory lane. All the same, he was glad of it. Now she knew maybe she could understand his family better. They’d all been impacted. Perhaps Kimberley the least. She’d been only four and Brittany had rarely been willing to spend time with her niece during that last year. She and her best friend had been partying constantly when they weren’t hitting the books. Sometimes here, sometimes at Brittany’s boyfriend’s place.

Now they were all gone, dead or elsewhere in the world. Only he and Ben staying still, trying to make sense of a world that had changed forever. Would he feel guilty about moving on if anything came out of his relationship with Cassie while Ben was still emotionally frozen? As far as Shayne knew, his brother had stayed isolated for all these years. After what he’d been through, it would be hard to trust anyone. Impossible to let them get close, although his physical injuries had improved over recent years.

He craned his neck to check his watch and grimaced. He needed to help set up for the pool party. Parker was competent enough to do it all with Jim’s help. All the salads had been made and put into the big cold room behind the kitchen, but it was a tradition for Shayne to get the barbeque going before discreetly backing off to let the kids party without obvious supervision. He could see the pool area from his office if he spun around at his desk.

Trying not to disturb Cassie, he slid across the bed, placing the long pillow under her seeking arms. He smiled as she snuggled into it with a contented sigh. She looked younger with her hair tousled and her face half buried in the soft linen, a half-smile curling her delicious mouth. He leaned over and pressed a light kiss to her cheek. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed her until she’d turned up on his doorstep.

Two weeks with her and everything had changed. He shouldn’t have fought the attraction so hard in the beginning. Now it would be so much harder to convince her to give them a try.

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