She continued with a wan smile. “Next year Adrian will probably be gone-out making his own life.”

“That happened for a while with my family. It’s part of growing up. But Adrian will return to the fold.” He thought of his own family. “These days all my brothers go home for Christmas each year. It’s rare that one of us doesn’t make it.”

“Four boys! Your poor mother. It couldn’t have been easy. Isn’t Hunter your stepbrother?”

At the glint of curiosity in her eyes, he explained, “Hunter and Jack are my half brothers. Dad married Mother after his first wife died. He already had Hunter and Jack. Then he and Mother had Fraser and me.”

“I knew you were the youngest, but I wasn’t sure who were your real brothers-you all seem so close.”

“We are close. Hunter and Jack are every bit as much my brothers as Fraser is. And Dad had a busy job so most of the task of bringing us up landed on Mum.” He waited for Miranda to make a comment about how privileged they all were, but she didn’t. “Once Dad retired, Mother was very relieved. She’s always wanted to live in the country-although I don’t think she expected it to be quite so wet in winter.”

Miranda’s eyes were full of longing. “I can understand that-I wouldn’t care about the wet though.”

She’d grown up in the country, he knew. “You miss it, don’t you?”

“I have fond memories of living there. Just the-” she broke off “-the ending wasn’t so nice.”

Callum knew her home had been auctioned off after her father’s suicide-along with most of the furniture and valuables. He’d done what he’d could to help patch up the shambles of her parents’ finances but it hadn’t been enough.

“I think one of the worst things was saying goodbye to Troubadour.”

“Troubadour?”

“My horse. I’d had him since I was thirteen and he was rising three. I loved that horse.”

Another loss.

Her father. Her home. Her horse.

Everything she’d loved. Everything dear and familiar to her. Gone.

Callum fell silent and dug into the bacon and egg pie as if he was waging a battle.

“Look, I don’t know how we got into such distressing topics.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “It’s too depressing-especially so near to Christmas.”

He laid down his knife and fork. “I think we do need to talk about it,” he said gently. He wanted to reach out and touch the hands he suspected would be ice-cold despite the warmth of the inn’s fire.

“I’d rather not.” She inhaled audibly, and gave him a very fake and, to his mind, a very brave smile. “It’s not practical to live in the country. London is where the work is.”

Her deliberate changing of the subject warned Callum that the past still affected her deeply.

Would she ever be able to let it go?

A restless edginess shook him. He faced the fact that she might never do so. And that would leave them forever estranged. The realization was akin to looking down into a long, dark tunnel, one without a glimpse of day at the other side.

He wasn’t ready to exist in perpetual darkness. He’d find a way to see the sunlight on the other side. Because the notion of never holding her again, never making love to her, was one he wasn’t ready to accept.

It left him with no choice. She was going to hate him for reopening the wounds, but if he didn’t, he might as well kiss any chance of having her back in his bed goodbye now. Without resolving the past, they had no future.

However, now was probably not the best time to address it. Taking the conversational olive branch she’d offered, he gestured around. “The big money might be in London, but surely there are enough places like this where you could have the country lifestyle you want?”

“Maybe, but I never wanted to be an innkeeper-” she pulled a face that he found rather endearing “-or a café owner. I’d be perfectly happy catering for an array of the rich and famous.”

He laughed but his eyes remained fixed on her. “Is that what you really want?”

Her lips firmed. “What I really want isn’t possible, so I live with what is.”

She wanted her father back. “Look, about your father-”

“You’ve already apologized. Let’s leave it there.” She glanced down, her lashes forming dark shadows against her creamy skin, and her body had gone very still.

Callum couldn’t leave it-it pervaded their whole relationship.

Three years ago he’d been appointed to the board as financial director after returning from five years of working in Australia. He’d worked all hours, day and night, to get on top of the chaos after his predecessor-a good friend of his father’s-had resigned with a colon cancer scare. The cruel whispers of nepotism had infuriated Callum-particularly as he didn’t want to hurt his father’s friend with the truth.

Callum had been unknown and unproven, and that had fueled his fierce desperation to prove to his brothers, to the management team and to the skeptical naysayers that he could do the task his father had set upon him.

He’d probably gone over the top.

He’d certainly adopted a take-no-prisoners management style.

How best to explain the climate against which his actions had played out? Whatever he said was going to sound like justification for his arrogance.

He chose his words carefully. “If I could have that time of my life over again, I would have handled things differently.”

Miranda met his gaze. “Handled things differently? You mean you would’ve done a decent job of investigating before you issued a statement to the press that damaged a good and honorable man, before you called the police in to arrest my father?” The eyes that had seduced him were full of pain. “The humiliation of that was what killed him.”

“Wait a moment!” He leaned forward. “Even if no statement had been made to the press, your father would still have been arrested-just perhaps not so publicly.”

Her expression grew closed, shutting out anything he could say. “My father didn’t steal anything from your company,” she bit out.

She still believed her father had done nothing wrong. Callum sighed. “Miranda, you need to face the truth.”

“It’s not the truth. Let’s just agree to disagree.” She picked up her bag and rose to her feet.

God, but this woman was stubborn!

He snagged her elbow as she tried to force her way past his chair and pulled her to him. Ignoring the startled looks from the only other couple in the dining room, two gray-haired women, he murmured close to her face, “Your parents were living way beyond their means. I can only assume your father meant to pay back the money he took.”

She tossed the gold, tousled hair that always gave him bedroom fantasies. The gesture made him want to haul her into his arms. He wasn’t sure what he’d do next-shake some sense into her…or kiss her stupid.

“He never took it-he left us letters telling us that.”

“Letters?”

Callum had never heard anything about any letters.

“Before he shut himself up in the garage and gassed himself, he wrote letters to me and Adrian and Mum telling us that he loved us. He said he could never have done such a thing-that he’d been convincingly framed for his predecessor’s mistakes, and that the humiliation of living with it was too much for him. He apologized for being weak.”

Her eyes filled with tears, but her pain and anger glittered through the moisture. “The whole charge was a fiction to cover administrative blunders from the financial department. You know that-you’ve already said you were sorry for framing him.”

“No!” Jeez, how had this happened? He couldn’t let her labor under such a misunderstanding. “I never said that. I was apologizing for making your father’s shame so public-I didn’t need to have been quite so gung ho, but my appointment was still fresh and I thought I needed to stamp my authority. I’ve never said his arrest was unjust. I believe people should be held accountable for their actions-”

But Miranda pulled her arm free. “I’m not listening to this garbage. You’re lying! I’ll wait for you at the car.”

By the time Callum stalked out of the Rose and Thorn fifteen minutes later, Miranda’s teeth were chattering.

She supposed it served her right. She could’ve waited in the warm hallway, but she’d been so angry, all she’d wanted was to get out of the space Callum occupied. She’d needed to breathe the clean, crisp air outside to cool down.

Without glancing in her direction, he pointed the key fob at the car and the doors unlocked. She scuttled in and Callum climbed in beside her.

When he didn’t start the car, she swiveled her head to see what the holdup was. And nearly wilted under the blast of his blue gaze.

He said softly, with lethal contempt, “I’m going to say this once more and never again. I would never have a man I believed to be innocent arrested.”

Maybe Callum didn’t know the full extent of it. “The evidence was falsified. He was framed.”

“The written admission from your father was not falsified.”

The quiet menace of his statement silenced Miranda like nothing else could have.

“And no one tampered with the evidence he produced that showed what he’d done with the money he’d misappropriated.”

Her lips parted, but the shock of what he was telling her had frozen her vocal cords. At last she stuttered, “That’s a lie.” It had to be.

A muscle flexed high in his cheek but no emotion crossed his face. “You must believe what you will.”

Bile burned bitterly in the back of her throat as her stomach clenched in fear. She’d been lied to before. In the past few months, her mother and brother had both lied to her, but Callum never had. She’d even believed the lie her mother had been spinning for years about the life insurance policy paying out. Callum had debunked that myth. And he’d been telling the truth.