“I don’t know if caved is the right term. Maybe there was a way to compromise.”

“Maybe there was—but at the time, I couldn’t come up with one.” He flexed his fingers on the wheel, as if he was trying to restore circulation.

“Did you consider quitting County?”

“No.” His answer held a hint of sadness—and disgust. “I’m ashamed to say our relationship wasn’t important enough to me to make that kind of sacrifice. But it should have been. Karen had worried herself sick about me. Literally. And I’d been planning to propose. Yet I wasn’t willing to give up my job to keep her.”

“How did she handle that?”

“Not well. She said I was cold. Unfeeling. That from the beginning, I’d shut her out, kept a piece of myself locked away from her. That I didn’t know how to recognize love—or return it. That my heart had atrophied. That she felt sorry for any woman in the future who fell for me. Then she walked out.”

Eve cringed.

What a terrible situation.

A woman who’d fallen apart at the end of a romance, and a man who’d emerged with serious scars—and less confidence than ever in his ability to form attachments.

It was a lose-lose situation.

But Karen’s biting indictment of Brent wasn’t entirely deserved. He may have been deprived of emotional sustenance as a child—and he might have had trouble opening his heart to his almost-fiancée—but from what she’d seen in their brief relationship, he wasn’t cold or unfeeling. Nor had his heart atrophied. He was more than capable of recognizing and expressing love.

The challenge was how to convince him of that.

She touched his arm, and a muscle contracted beneath her fingers. “Did you ever consider there may have been another explanation for what went wrong? That your feelings for Karen may not have been as deep as you thought they were?”

He kept his focus on the road. “Yes. But that felt more like an excuse for my shortcomings than a rational justification for my choice.” A beat passed. “Or it did—until I met you.”

The air whooshed out of her lungs. His meaning seemed clear—but what if she was jumping to conclusions?

“Um . . .” She fiddled with the edge of her seat belt, straining to read his expression in the dim light. “I’m not certain I—”

“I meant exactly what you thought I meant.” He shot her a quick glance. “I believed what I felt for Karen was love—but in hindsight, I realize it was more superficial than that. It was hormones rather than heartstrings. She was a fine person—but she wasn’t the one for me. No woman is.”

She blinked.

What?

Hadn’t he just said—more or less—that his feelings for her went a lot deeper than the feelings he’d had for Karen?