Daniel stood rooted to the spot, Sophie's words echoing in his head.
If he had been raised a gentleman…
Daniel closed his eyes and sighed heavily, ashamed by what had just transpired between them.
His mother had raised him to be a gentleman – polite, kind, chivalrous.
He knew that, he knew he was all those things.
He'd always treated Rosa like a princess, always acted the gentleman with her, and look where that had gotten him.
Dumped and alone.
Sighing heavily, he sat down on an overturned bucket nearby, his head in his hands despite the mountain of work that waited behind him. He felt all the strength, all the drive flood out of him, leaving him… tired.
Sophie Roberts just… just pushed his buttons, he thought with shame. She really wasn't unkind or pushy, she just… she just pushed him. She had a sharp tongue and a silly way of speaking, but she wasn't hateful, wasn't spiteful.
And he knew he was just projecting his hurt feelings from Rosa onto her, and that wasn't fair. Just because Rosa used and abused him for years, treated him like shit didn't mean that Sophie was the same way. Didn't mean that any woman was that way, really. He'd just picked the wrong woman to fall for…
Hell, it didn't mean that every woman who crossed his path was going to treat him poorly. Though Rosa had left Hay a long time ago now, Daniel mused that he'd now settled into the solitary lifestyle, reveling in it in some ways. He didn’t have to shave if he didn't want to, didn't have to make small talk before coffee if he didn't want to, didn't have to force a smile and watch a movie when all he wanted to do was disappear into a book or go to bed early.
Living alone certainly had its advantages. And he'd been doing it so long now, he didn't feel alone, didn't feel lonely. He would have these moments of abject loneliness that would almost stagger him in his tracks for a few months after Rosa left, after EVERYONE left, but those had subsided over time.
So when this whirlwind of energy came blowing across the street from Fairfields, it rocked him in his shoes, Daniel mused. It was going to take him time to adjust to being among the living, breathing world again, rather than with just his fields and his solitude.
Still, he thought, his eyes still downcast, he was a gentleman through and through, and it was time he acted like it.
No matter what happened when he and Sophie met next, he would either be polite, or he would keep his mouth shut and not say a word. Better that than snapping back at her for something that she wasn't the cause of.
Because most of what he had said to her so far he didn’t mean.
And he certainly regretted every word.
With a resigned sigh, Daniel stood again, turned back to the truck and got back to work.
**
As Sophie watched him from the window in the front door of Fairfields, she wondered what was going through his head as he stared at the ground forlornly, his head in his hands.
If during any of their conversations he would have said one kind word, given her the smallest smile, she would have walked back across the lane, knelt down and asked what the matter was, maybe patted him on the shoulder and given him a kind smile, trying to lift whatever burden he was carrying.
But as it was, she pulled the curtain and slowly walked away from the image of him sitting alone in the middle of his drive, her heart aching.
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