‘That clearly makes you a lot of money.’

He raised his eyebrows at this.

‘Apartments in New York, Singapore, and London? The TAG Heuer watch you carefully put in your pocket before washing up? The handmade Italian shoes you’re wearing under very expensive jeans and …’ She trailed off at the look on his face.

‘Lily Atwell, have you been checking me out?’ he demanded, teasingly.

‘No.’ She blushed, furiously. ‘Paying attention. That’s all.’ Doubting he would believe a word of it. She certainly didn’t.

He topped up the glass she had barely noticed finishing before filling his own.

‘I don’t think I realized how hungry I was,’ he said.

‘Wasting away now there’s no staff on hand to feed you?’ Lily winced at the bite to her words, hating how quickly she had drawn that hurt to the surface and hating how his head jerked back as if slapped.

‘Look, I sent them away because … because I just needed some time. Some space. All those people …’

‘I understand,’ she said into the silence he had withdrawn into.

Dark fury tinged his eyes. ‘Just because you were close to Blake—’

‘I understand,’ she repeated, placing weight on the last word because it hadn’t been Blake she’d been thinking of.

In an instant the fury disappeared, wiped away by the hand rubbing across his face.

‘Of course. I’m sorry. I—’

‘It was a long time ago. I was seven and …’ She struggled to find the words that would join them in their grief. ‘Very different circumstances,’ she shrugged.

Henry felt like a complete arse. He’d spent the last few days rolling his grief around an empty estate as if he was alone in that experience. As if no one could or would understand. Lily was right, it was under very different circumstances but it didn’t lessen, or take away from the loss of her own father.

He remembered the fishing accident that had taken Anthony Atwell’s life and devastated the small community of Hawke’s Cove. The vigil that had been held that morning, the sun not even broken over the horizon, as the entire town came down to the harbour, bundled against the frigid cold of the winter’s morning, with candles and a grief-stricken silence. He remembered watching the way that the people had parted, allowing Marion Atwell and her young daughter through the crowd to stand at the foot of the harbour, waiting and hoping to see who came back. The jagged sobs that had wracked Lily’s mother’s body as she’d taken one look at the captain’s face and crumpled onto the floor, while the people nearby had tried to help hold her up.

Grief, aching and hot, surfaced in his chest and horrifyingly he felt the hot press of tears against the back of his eyes. For himself. For her.