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      “I thought so,” she said warily, feeling the intensity of his gaze so acutely it was like a fire racing over her skin. “But maybe...”

      “Maybe it was safe to want it from Doug because you knew you’d never get it?”

      There was something so elementally powerful about his words she stepped back, stunned by how much truth she heard. Was it possible? Had she set her sights and her dreams on a man she knew would never be able to deliver? Were her expectations and hopes that low?

      “I don’t know. Perhaps,” she murmured, wavering between a sudden rage at Tanner for working her out, and an irrational fear that no one else ever would. “I don’t usually psychoanalyze myself.”

      “You mean you don’t dwell on your abandonment issues?”

      “I don’t have—”

      “Sure you do,” he said gently. “You lost your parents at a vulnerable age and now you expect everyone else to leave you, too.”

      “You lost your parents around the same age and you don’t have—”

      “Of course I do,” he said, sounding suddenly impatient as he cut her off. “Anyone who loved Doug ended up as collateral damage in one way or another. I know that from experience. He dumped me into boarding school, remember? Why the hell do you think I’m back here, Cassie? Why do you think it’s so important to me that Oliver doesn’t grow up thinking that the people who are supposed to protect him didn’t bail and take what’s rightfully his?”