.

      For what felt like a long time to Dervla he stayed that way. Then his hands fell away and he dragged a hand across his unshaven jaw as his head came up.

      The action was so intensely weary that her tender heart took a direct hit. She had been so dazed to find him standing there she had missed the fact that he looked totally exhausted.

      More than that, she realised, her troubled stare taking in the telling tension in the skin pulled taut across his chiselled cheekbones and the strain etched into the lines radiating from his deepset eyes, he looked like a man who had been to hell and made the return journey.