This was neither the place nor the time in her life for her to become aroused just being in the company of a dangerously attractive man.
She straightened her shoulders. “Did your marriage to Millie Rose’s mother break down…after or before?” She knew the relationships of many couples who went through the trauma of losing their child often didn’t survive that death.
“During.” His smile was bitter. “Maggie walked out on both of us the day the doctors told us Millie Rose had bone cancer.”
“What?” Ellie couldn’t believe someone, let alone a mother, could do that to her sick child or her husband.
He shrugged stiffly. “The prognosis wasn’t good, and Maggie said she didn’t want to spend months at the hospital for Millie Rose’s treatments and in the end have to watch her daughter die anyway.”
“So she just left?” Ellie still couldn’t believe anyone could be that cruel to their own child or leave their husband to go through that heartbreak alone.
“Yes, she just left,” Knox echoed evenly. “I haven’t seen her again since the day she walked out on both of us.”
“She didn’t go to Millie Rose’s funeral?”
“I didn’t tell her when it was,” Knox revealed bleakly. “She’d had months to change her mind, to come back and be supportive of her child who was sick and dying, but she never did. She didn’t even call, not once during that time, to see how Millie Rose was doing. I didn’t, still don’t, believe Maggie deserved to attend Millie Rose’s funeral and play the grieving mother,” he bit out harshly. “She gave up that right when she abandoned her daughter, left Millie Rose to face having to go through horrible treatments before dying anyway, and her mother wasn’t there for her during any of it. She let her daughter down in the worst way possible.”
“And her husband.”
“I don’t matter?—”
“I disagree.” Her fingers tightened around his hand. “I am so sorry you had to go through all that alone.”
He grimaced. “You were alone when you went through the end of a relationship that broke your heart and affected your business.”
She snorted. “It isn’t the same thing at all. Andrew is still very much alive. It’s the man I thought he was who died.”
He sighed. “Same with Maggie. Difficult, isn’t it?” he mused. “We have this image of them in our heads and our hearts, and although they are still physically alive, the person you thought they were is very much dead. Not only that, but you realize that they probably didn’t exist in the way you saw them anywhere except inside your head and heart. It took me a long time to come to terms with that dichotomy.”
Ellie knew she was still trying to do that where Andrew was concerned. Outwardly, he still looked like the same person she had fallen in love with. But Ellie now knew that on the inside, he was nothing like the man she had thought he was: a kind, loving, faithful man she had one hundred percent believed would always be there for her, in the same way she was for him. Instead, Andrew had been shallow, selfish, unkind, and definitely not faithful.
As Knox said, it was a dichotomy that was hard to comprehend, let alone accept.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about Knox confiding in her about his daughter and wife. Privileged, obviously. She also felt a warmth inside her at having him trust her with something so personal and painful.
Having Knox share those things with her with such raw emotion made her feel emotionally closer to him than she had to anyone else for a very long time.
Even Andrew?
Until six months ago, she and Andrew had been together for nine years. She had never thought there was any reason to doubt him or his love for her during that time. Not outwardly, at least.
She had asked herself since their breakup, once the shock had worn off, whether a part of her hadn’t always known about Andrew’s true nature but had been willfully blind to it because if she allowed herself to see the truth, she wouldn’t be able to hide from it. From the real him.
The answer to that question, unfortunately, was yes.
She had always felt sad that Andrew saw so little of his parents or his two sisters. She had lost her parents, but Andrew’s were still very much alive, and the few times she’d met them and his sisters, she had liked them all very much.
But no matter how much Ellie had encouraged Andrew to see and enjoy his family, he always came up with an excuse for the two of them not to attend any of his family’s get-togethers.
One of the reasons could be that his sisters, both older than him, still liked to tease him, as they obviously had when they were children. Andrew considered their teasing beneath the status he felt he now held in the world. As an only child Ellie knew she would have welcomed rather than avoided that affectionate teasing.
Looking back now, Ellie could only rebuke herself for not acknowledging that Andrew’s standoffish behavior toward his family was a conscious decision on his part to keep his distance from them, both physically and emotionally. As if they weren’t quite good enough to be a part of the life of the wealthy businessman he now saw himself as being.
God, she had been so stupid, so understanding of even the things about Andrew she hadn’t liked. Not just that distance from his family, but his dismissal of the family Ellie still had. Like Karen and Geoff.
Oh, Ellie had still met up with them both for lunch occasionally, but never with Andrew. She realized now she had done the same with her other friends from university, because Andrew considered them to be a load of wasters trying to hang on the coattails of their success.
Thank God Karen and Geoff and several of her school and college friends had been loyal and still there for her once the blinkers had finally fallen off and she was able to see Andrew for exactly the small man he was.