Jenna sat quietly, letting him speak. She had an image in her head. An image of a beautiful, successful woman. The sort of woman she’d always imagined a man like him would choose. The cream of the crop. Bright and brilliant, like him. They would have been a golden couple. ‘Was she beautiful?’

‘No.’ His hand dropped from her face and he sat up. Stared out across the sea. ‘Physically I suppose she would be considered beautiful,’ he conceded finally. ‘But to me beauty is so much more than sleek hair and well-arranged features. Connie was cold. Selfish. Beauty is who you are and the way you behave. We were both very wrapped up in our careers. We worked all day, wrote research papers in what little spare time we had—our house had two offices.’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘How could I ever have thought that what we had was a marriage?’

‘Go on…’

‘I wanted us to start a family.’

‘Oh.’ It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have a child. That was one question she hadn’t asked. ‘You have—?’

‘I brought the subject up one night, about a week after I’d made Consultant. I thought it would be the perfect time.’

‘She didn’t agree?’

He stared blindly across the ocean and into the far distance. ‘She told me she’d been sterilised.’

Jenna sat up. ‘She—Oh, my gosh—and you didn’t know?’ She licked her lips, digesting the enormity of it.

‘At medical school she decided she didn’t ever want to have a baby. She wanted a career and didn’t want children. In her usual ruthlessly efficient way she decided to deal with the problem once and for all. Unfortunately she didn’t share that fact with me.’ The confession was rough and hoarse, and she knew for sure he hadn’t spoken the words to anyone else. Just her. The knowledge that he’d trusted her with something so personal was like a gift, fragile and precious, and Jenna tried to understand how he must be feeling, unwilling to break the connection between them by saying something that might make him regret his show of trust.

In the end she just said what was in her heart. ‘That was wrong. Very wrong.’

‘Some of the blame was mine. I made assumptions—didn’t ask—I suppose I could be accused of being chauvinistic. I presumed we’d do the traditional thing at some point. It came as a shock to discover she had no intention of ever having a family.’

Jenna reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. ‘She should have told you.’

‘That was my feeling. I suddenly realised I’d been living with a stranger. That I didn’t know her at all.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘But you know how that feels, don’t you?’