No one had helped.
She’d learned to hide her need away. Step by step, incident by incident through the years of her girlhood, she’d learned not to ask help of anyone, not to open herself emotionally to anyone, not to trust any other person enough to ask for help—not to rely on them; if she didn’t, they couldn’t refuse her.
Couldn’t turn her away.
The connections slowly clarified in her mind.
Tristan, she knew, wouldn’t turn her away. Wouldn’t refuse her.
With him, she’d be safe.
All she had to do was find the courage to accept the emotional risk she’d spent the last fifteen years teaching herself never to take.
He called at noon the next day. She was arranging flowers in the garden hall; he found her there.
She nodded in greeting, conscious of his sharp gaze, of how closely he studied her before leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, only two feet away.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She glanced at him, then looked back at her flowers. “You?”
After a moment, he said, “I’ve just come from next door. You’ll see more of us coming and going in future.”
She frowned. “How many of you are there?”
“Seven.”
“And you’re all ex-…Guards?”
He hesitated, then replied. “Yes.”
The idea intrigued. Before she could think of her next question, he stirred, shifted closer.
She was instantly aware of his nearness, of the flaring response that rushed through her. She turned her head and looked at him.
Met his gaze—fell into it.
Couldn’t look away. Could only stand there, her heart thudding, her pulse throbbing in her lips as he leaned slowly closer, then brushed an achingly incomplete kiss over her mouth.
“Have you made up your mind yet?”
He breathed the words over her hungry lips.
“No. I’m sti
ll thinking.”
He drew back enough to catch her eyes. “How much thinking does it take?”
The question broke the spell; she narrowed her eyes at him, then turned back to her flowers. “More than you know.”
He resettled against the doorframe, his gaze on her face. After a moment, he said, “So tell me.”
She pressed her lips tight, went to shake her head—then remembered all she’d thought of in the long watches of the night. She drew a deep breath, slowly let it out. Kept her eyes on the flowers. “It’s not a simple thing.”
He said nothing, just waited.
She had to draw another breath. “It’s been a long time since I…trusted anyone, anyone at all to…do things for me. To help me.” That had been one outcome, possibly the most outwardly obvious, of her shrinking from others.