His face went bone-white, and she felt his instant need to deny her words, to back away, to somehow pretend it wasn’t so. But his own honesty was too deep for that, and so he said nothing, and she tasted his shame that it had been left to her to finally openly face the truth for them both.

“I love you,” she said very, very softly. “And you love me, and you love Emily. I know that. But I also know that especially after what High Ridge and his cronies tried to do to us, we don’t dare do anything about the way we feel. We can’t, Hamish, whatever we want, or however desperately we want it. Only I’m not strong enough to stop wanting it.” Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes, but she refused to let them spill over. “I don’t think I’ll ever be that strong. But that doesn’t change anything, so I have to find another way. And this is the only one I see that doesn’t carry an unacceptable political cost for everyone.”

“But they’re only offering you the job in the hope that it will blow up in your face,” he said.

“I don’t know if I’d put it exactly that way myself,” she replied. “They’ve got a genuine problem. They need someone to solve it for them, and whoever that someone is, a solution short of total disaster still has to be their ultimate objective. But you’re right that they also need someone to scapegoat if it does turn into a disaster, of course. And to be honest, I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t be thinking that way if they didn’t expect it to do just that. They may be right about that, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a job someone has to do… and that it will let me put some space between us. Please, Hamish. It’s important to me for you to understand. I can’t be this close to you, not knowing exactly what you feel, and not knowing what I feel. I just can’t. It’s not your fault; it’s not my fault. It’s just the way it is.”

She felt his pain, and his anger… and his shame. But under those emotions, she also tasted his understanding. It wasn’t a happy understanding, and it wasn’t really agreement, but in its own way, it was more precious to her than either of those things could possibly have been.

“How long will you need space?” he asked, and reached up to stroke Samantha.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Sometimes I think there isn’t enough space in the entire universe. Other times I hope that a break, long enough for both of us to catch our breaths, may be all we really need. But whether it is or not, it’s the best I can do. If there’s an answer, some sort of solution, I know I can’t find it while I’m so busy fighting against letting myself love you.”