Break Up To Make Up
Fiona Harper
For Adele and Nick Hughes this idyllic evening for two is the last place either of them wants to be. Their marriage over, they never believed they could find their way back to each other. But stranded in this picturesque cottage, Adele and Nick find they cannot resist the spark that has always fizzed between them.As the twinkling firelight begins to work its magic, this couple discovers that the wonderful thing about breaking up is making up….
Break Up to Make Up
Fiona Harper
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Janine, my ever-capable friend,
who gave me inspiration.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
ADELE fought the urge to run from the bathroom screaming. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and ordered her hands to stop shaking. When she felt her heart rate slow a little, she opened her eyes again.
Nothing had changed. Eight legs and a fat, hairy body still inhabited her bath. She took a few steps backwards, never letting her gaze off the spindly legs, checking for any twitch that indicated it was thinking of making a sudden move.
Once the edge of the tub obscured her view of the intruder, she fumbled on the shelf above the sink. Toothpaste and toothbrush went flying as she grabbed the glass they sat in. All she needed now was something flat and not too flexible. Her eyes darted round the room, hardly taking anything in. She made herself look again, more slowly this time.
Balanced on the washing hamper was the magazine she’d been reading last time she’d been having one of her ritual soaks. The sort of soak she ought to be having right now, if it weren’t for the intruder. Righteous anger bubbled in her chest. How dare that nasty little…squatter…spoil her plans for the evening?
She seized the magazine and marched towards the bath, trying not to let her steps falter as she drew close. It had been much easier when she’d had someone else to do her spider-catching. But those days were gone. This was between her and eight-legged Freddy over there.
She lifted the upturned glass in her hand, hoping it wasn’t going to slip. Even her fingertips seemed sweaty. Her breath came in gasps, punctuated by long gaps when the air stayed locked in her chest. Two more steps and she’d be close enough.
The glass was only inches away from the creature now. Everything went very still. Even the spider—as if it sensed her approach. And then it darted. Straight towards her up the side of the bath.
Adele didn’t stop to think; she just threw both glass and magazine in the direction of her attacker and raced out of the bathroom. And while the sound of shattering glass echoed in her ears, she slammed the door and leant against it. Just in case it was thinking of trying the door handle.
See? This was why she shouldn’t be doing this! Her phobia made her irrational. She would have moved away from the door at that point, but a noise from inside the bathroom made her grip the door handle tighter.
If only…
No, she wasn’t going to do it. She wasn’t going to wish him here.
She did not need a man to catch a spider. Especially that man.
Her fingers forgot the door knob as she let out a long sigh and ran them through her long dark hair.
I can do this, she thought as she stood there in the silence. I’ve got to. No one else is going to do it for me.
Her hands shook as she smoothed down the folds of her spotlessly white towelling bathrobe and tightened the sash. It was a pointless gesture. Her furry friend in there didn’t care what she looked like, but somehow she needed to present a calm and cool front, to be the Adele she knew how to be, the Adele who wasn’t fazed by anything or anyone.
She turned to face the bathroom door and imagined herself in one of her business suits, her hair in its usual coil at the nape of her neck, not fanning over her shoulders and falling over her face. It was all about mental attitude, wasn’t it? You could do anything if you put your mind to it.
She’d been sent on some stupid training seminar when she’d worked at Fenton and Barrett. She had pretended she was listening, but really she’d been plotting how she was going to start her own firm of management consultants. She’d made her dreams come true since then and she could certainly use the same trick now.
What had those people waffled on about? Oh, yes. Visualisation. She concentrated, and in her mind’s eye the creature in the bath became a butterfly, brightly coloured and fragile.
Anyone could pick up a butterfly, couldn’t they?
She wrenched the door open and marched over to the bath. Shattered glass covered the bottom, but the creature she sought was now halfway up the side under the taps. If she didn’t know better she’d think it was giving her a cocky look.
‘Butterfly,’ she murmured under her breath as she extended her hand forward and closed her fingers over it. The distance from the edge of the bath to the window suddenly stretched to the size of a football pitch. She tried to walk slowly, but after a step and a half she was running. ‘Butterfly!’ she shouted as the legs started to twitch in her hand and she fought the reflex to gag.
‘Yuck! Spider, spider, spider, spider!’ she yelled as she opened the catch with her free hand and threw the horrible thing out of the window. Then she shivered and rubbed her hand on her robe over and over again until she thought she’d wear the little loops away.
She really needed that bath now. But before she could do that, there was a whole lot of glass to clean up. There was no one here to catch spiders and there was no one here to pull the shards out of her bottom if she missed a bit, so she’d better do a good job.
Her head was practically in the cupboard under the kitchen sink when the doorbell rang. The sun had only just set and it was light enough not to have to turn the lamps on, but dark enough not to be able to see what she was looking for. Her fingers stretched into the shadows at the back of the cupboard.
Where was that darn dustpan and brush? It had to be here somewhere.
The bell went again and Adele banged her head on the top of the cupboard. She did not have the kind of doorbell you could ignore, all soft chimes, indicating someone was waiting patiently at the door, flowers in hand. Oh, no. This was one of those insistent ones that grated like an old-fashioned bicycle bell.
All she’d wanted to on a Saturday evening, after spending all day at the office, was to sink into a silky rich bubble bath and read the next four chapters of her book. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
She rubbed the back of her head as she took silent, quick steps to the front door and yanked it open, not even caring she was in her bathrobe.
She was going to deliver a brisk ‘Yes? What do you want?’ But the words died on her lips. Leaning against the wall, with a twinkle in his eyes and a dimple in each cheek, was the most infuriating man she’d ever had the displeasure of knowing.
She knew her mouth was hanging open, but she couldn’t seem to get it closed again. He smiled and the dimples deepened.
‘Hi, Adele.’
‘N…Nick!’
In the last few minutes the sun had tucked itself even further below the suburban skyline of slate roofs and chimney pots and the glow from the porch light made him seem warm and golden in contrast.
He looked so…real. Not like the Nick she’d been screaming at in her head for the past nine months, anyway. In her memory she’d made him shorter, more boyish and much less attractive. She could feel the familiar chemistry starting to frazzle her brain already.
He looked deep into her eyes and she felt another few brain cells pop into nothingness.
He hitched an eyebrow. ‘The one and only.’
She shook her head, not even knowing where to start. Why was he here? How long had he been back in the country? And more importantly, why was he standing on her front doorstep as if nothing had ever happened?
‘Can I come in?’
She wanted to slam the door in his face, tell him he could get lost and contact her through her solicitor if he had to, but somehow she found herself nodding. He’d always seemed to have the irritating knack of getting her to go along with almost anything he said. And although he meant well, she was the one who always seemed to end up getting hurt or having to tidy up the resulting mess.
It had been a really bad idea to let Nick Hughes into her life.
It had been an even worse idea to marry him.
Adele marched down the hall and Nick followed. She turned to face him once they got into the kitchen. ‘What do you want, Nick?’
This was the moment he’d been waiting for, the moment he’d rehearsed so many times in his head he’d lost count. Never once in all his daydreams had he felt this nervous.
Adele turned to look at him and he tried not to wince. He’d been afraid of this. He’d hoped that after all this time she’d be in more of a mood to talk. Obviously not. Time had made no impact whatsoever on the healing process.
Diving right in and telling her why he was here wasn’t going to work; he would have to build up to it slowly. He swallowed the heartfelt plea on his lips and replaced it with the widest, cheekiest smile he could muster.
‘That’s a nice way to greet your husband.’
Adele’s eyes narrowed.
He took a deep breath. He had to do something to stop her throwing him out on his ear. Somehow he had to stay in the same building as her long enough to get her to listen. The urge to wisecrack was overpowering, like an itch begging to be scratched, but he managed to mumble something less inflammatory.
‘How about a cup of tea?’
She just continued to stare at him, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. OK, not one of his best efforts, but his brain was like fudge after what seemed like a week on a plane and a cup of tea would give him at least another fifteen minutes to talk Adele round.
‘I’ve had a really long trip,’ he added.
She stayed as still and hard and cold as the granite on the kitchen worktops. And just when he thought she’d solidified and was going to stay like that for ever, she shook her head and marched over to the kettle. He kept a very close eye on her. When Adele was in this kind of mood, she was just as likely to throw the kettle at him as she was to switch it on.
She filled it with water, her back still to him, as she repeated her earlier question.
‘What do you want, Nick?’
He waited until she turned to face him.
‘We need to talk.’
Nothing funny about that statement. It seemed his valiant efforts to ignore the old joke-when-stressed reflex were paying off.
She shook her head. ‘No. We needed to talk months ago. It’s too late.’
‘I’ve got something important I need to discuss with you.’
‘Hah!’
He flinched. ‘What do you mean, hah?’
‘You don’t do important, though, do you, Nick? Or responsible, or reliable, or anything that might involve getting serious in the slightest.’
Adele was on the attack. All his good intentions crumbled and he resorted to the only form of defence that worked. A slow smile turned the corners of his mouth up. ‘It’s part of my charm.’
‘It’s why our marriage fell apart.’
There wasn’t a flicker of a smile on her lips. It definitely wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He was so tired he could hardly think straight and he tried the one thing left in his arsenal that was guaranteed to get a reaction.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. It was time to break out the dimples.
He widened his smile just that little bit more and watched Adele’s eyes closely to see if he could detect a thaw. She couldn’t resist his dimples.
‘Stop it, Nick.’
The air of innocence in his shrug should have won him an Oscar.
‘I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work.’
That’d be a first. Obviously Adele had grown another inch of armour plating while he’d been away. But there were always chinks; it was just a case of locating them. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place, the frosty outer shell hiding a scorching core. Fire and ice—that was Adele.
He walked towards her and she backed away from him. ‘You said you wanted to talk? Well, I’m busy at the moment.’
‘I can see.’ He looked her up and down and felt a familiar surge of heat as he saw one shapely leg revealed by the split in her bathrobe.
Adele straightened and yanked the knot of the sash even tighter. ‘Call me at the office next week. I’m in the middle of a big project, but I may have a few minutes to spare on Thursday. Where are you going to be staying?’
Nick raised his eyebrows and looked around the room.
‘No way! You are not staying here.’
He blinked. ‘It’s my home too.’
‘Correction. It might be your house, but it stopped being your home the moment you waltzed off across the Atlantic and didn’t bother to come back for nine months.’
Adele crossed her arms and looked at him. Now was not the time to remind her that he had come back, as soon as he’d been able to. Two short weeks after their massive fight, he’d travelled five thousand miles to patch things up. But he’d walked into the house and found it empty. Adele had moved out and was staying with her best friend.
No, it wouldn’t do to remind her. She wasn’t in the mood to be confronted with her mistakes at the moment. To be honest, he didn’t think he could face the memories either. So he tucked them away at the back of his brain and ignored the sick feeling building in the pit of his stomach.
He took off his jacket, slung it over the back of one of the chairs surrounding the big pine dining table and dropped into the squashy sofa tucked into the corner of their country-style kitchen.
He was in a big enough hole as it was. He might just as well carry on digging. Anything to keep her mind off shoving his six-foot frame through the front door. Adele might be petite, but she was surprisingly strong.
‘How about that tea?’
Adele closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. He’d won the first round, but he felt like kicking himself in the behind for making her look so tired and world-weary.
‘Get it yourself. I’m going upstairs. And if you think you’re putting that bag you dumped in the hallway in my bedroom you can think again. You know where the spare room is.’
Ouch.
Nick grimaced as Adele spun round and stomped up the stairs. He had not handled that well, but arguing back would have made her dig her heels in deeper. He’d learned long ago that getting her to laugh was the solution.
She had a good sense of humour; she just kept it on a tight leash most of the time. And if there was one thing he was good at, it was making his wife smile.
Seeing Adele defrost was a wonderful thing. She started off all spiky and hard—like one of those puffer fish—and he’d just keep being impossible until he could see the glint in her eyes and the way her jaw worked overtime to keep a straight face. If he timed it right, he’d give one last smile, one last look, and she’d let out a big puff of air and deflate, becoming the warm, passionate woman he loved so much.
He let his head fall back onto the sofa cushion and closed his eyes.
He knew what she thought: that her husband had chosen a once-in-a-lifetime job over her, but that wasn’t the way he saw it at all. Adele was too busy being self-righteous to see that she was the one who had refused to budge an inch. It had been her decision to put the marriage on hold.
There might be two sides to every story, but Adele was always, always convinced hers was the right one. The annoying thing was, most of the time she was right. However, now and again she got things spectacularly wrong. And when she did, it was usually something big.
He wiggled into a more comfortable position. The jet lag was catching up on him and this sofa was so comfy. The jacket of one of her business suits was draped across the back. It smelled of her perfume, warm and spicy. If he closed his eyes, it was almost as if she were sitting next to him.
They’d spent many happy evenings cuddled up together on this old sofa with glasses of wine after the evening meal was finished. And there had been other times when they used the sofa for much less relaxing pursuits…
He smiled to himself as he drifted off to sleep. Less relaxing, but so much more fun.
The kitchen door creaked slightly as Adele pushed it open. She paused. It was quiet. Too quiet. Nick was like a naughty toddler in that respect. If he was silent, he was probably up to no good. The door swung wide and she spotted him, sprawled all over the sofa, sleeping like a baby.
Even that made her want to scream. How did he do that? Turn off all the tension between them and lapse into unconsciousness? She was nowhere near relaxed. Drink ten espressos—doubles—and you’d have an idea of where her nerve levels were. Then she looked at Nick again and a sigh left her chest unbidden.
Fast asleep like that, he looked so angelic. His hair was just that little bit too long to be spiky and there always seemed to be a bit that fell across his forehead. Many a time she’d woken early in the morning, smiled at him and brushed the wayward strand away. It was all she could do at that very moment to stop herself crossing the room and repeating the gesture.
She had to get out of here. Now. Before she forgot all the reasons why Nick Hughes should not be let within a five-mile radius of her heart.
She grabbed her handbag off the counter and closed the kitchen door. Moments later she was fully kitted out in coat, scarf and gloves and was making her way down the road. Mid-February in London was invariably damp and cold, and this night was happy to follow the trend.
She found herself at Mona’s house. Her precariously balanced life had just fallen off a precipice and she needed her best friend. Mona answered the door with a baby on her hip.
‘My God, Adele! What’s happened?’
‘It’s Nick.’
Mona gasped and put a hand to her mouth. ‘Is he…? Was there an accident?’
‘No. Worse.’
‘Worse than falling off the side of a mountain?’
‘I’ve no idea whether he’s been climbing or not recently, but I do know where he is right this very minute. My extreme-sports-loving husband is alive and well and fast asleep in our kitchen—my kitchen.’
Mona’s brows gathered together like thunderclouds. She pulled Adele into a gruff hug that was both sudden and unexpected. ‘You’d better come in and tell me all about it.’
When Adele pulled away she had baby drool on the front of her jacket. She stroked her goddaughter’s head and gave her a kiss then let Mona lead her into the sitting room.
‘He just turned up out of the blue.’
‘No warning at all?’
Adele gave her friend a knowing look. ‘What? Nick? The man who is so bad at forward planning that he can’t even decide what he wants to eat for dinner until he’s hungry?’
Mona popped Bethany on the floor and gave her a rattle to play with. ‘What does he want?’
Adele shrugged. ‘Who knows? I tried asking him, but he just got all…Nick…on me. He says he wants to talk.’
‘About what?’
Adele let out a breath and felt her stomach plunge downwards. ‘I suppose he could be back to ask for a…you know…divorce,’ she said quietly. ‘That would explain why he didn’t just want to launch into it. Even Nick wouldn’t just turn up after nine months—’
‘Nine and a half, actually.’
Adele closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. ‘Well, however many months…Even Nick wouldn’t just turn up and say, Hi, honey, I’m home—and, by the way, you’re history.’
Mona nodded. ‘Of course, you’ll want to get in first.’
Her friend looked so serious Adele dared not mention that she hadn’t thought of that. But she should have. Where was her old fighting spirit? Suddenly the furnace of indignation was about as lively as the rain-soaked coals on a typical English barbecue.
Mona sat back and gave her a questioning look.
‘Please don’t tell me you want him back!’
A reflex answer should have popped out of Adele’s mouth at that second. A firm no. Of course not. Never in a million years. Instead she closed her eyes and rubbed the sides of her face with her hands.
‘Adele?’
‘I thought I wanted him gone for good. It was an easy decision when he was thousands of miles away, but now he’s back and…I don’t know…divorce just seems so…final.’
‘Don’t you dare let him wear you down with that boyish charm of his, Adele!’
‘I’m not!’
‘Pah! You’re weakening. I can see the cracks from here. Have you forgotten how he treated you when he left?’
No, she hadn’t forgotten. She remembered every last detail of the day he’d dropped the bombshell.
His work as a special-effects designer for TV and films had really been taking off, after years of only just scraping by. Seemed he’d actually been doing more than just messing around in the shed at the bottom of the garden with bits of scrap metal and rubbery stuff.
After a couple of popular TV commercials, he’d been asked to do the effects for a low-budget independent film. Against all expectation, the film had been a huge hit and Nick’s name had been put firmly on the map. They’d both been so pleased at the time. She’d even been able to put up with the strange hours and the fact he could disappear for days at a time, often arriving back with no warning at four in the morning. If she’d have known what was going to come of all of it, she might not have been so thrilled for him.
One day, he’d burst into her office and announced the big news, wearing a grin so wide she’d thought his face would split. He’d been offered a job on a big Hollywood project, some scifi film, and he had five days to pack and get himself out to California to meet with the producers. If they liked him, he needed to start almost straight away.
That was when things started to go seriously wrong. Nick had been so busy in the following months that Adele had almost felt as if she were single again. Often the only evidence that he’d come home at all when she woke up in the mornings were the plans for the next contraption he was going to build doodled in the margins of one of her reports.
And then he’d wanted her to leave her business behind and move halfway across the world at a moment’s notice. As if. For the first time in her life she’d had roots. A home. A purpose. There was no way she was going to throw all of that away on a whim. It had been time to put her foot down.
They’d had a huge fight. The worst one they’d ever had—and that was saying something. Even so, when she’d yelled, ‘Take the stupid job if you really think it’s that important!’ she hadn’t expected him to take her at her word and jump on a plane.
Mona’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘Come on, girl. You’ve got to be strong.’
‘I am strong,’ Adele said, her face drooping. At least, she wanted to be. Month upon month of pretending she’d been fine without Nick had been exhausting.
Mona’s husband had upped and left when baby number two had arrived only ten months ago. She and Mona had got through the early months of their individual crises by channelling their anger into weekly ranting sessions in Mona’s front room.
The period after Nick had left had been the worst in her life and she was not going to give him the opportunity to send her spiralling back to that dark, lonely place.
She sat up straighter. ‘No, you’re right. Who needs men? Stuff ‘em!’
‘That’s more like it. Now, how are you going to deal with the daredevil who’s currently snoozing in your kitchen?’
Fire him into next week with one of his homemade canons?
Tempting. Very tempting, in fact. She should encourage that feeling, let it grow and swell, and then she wouldn’t do the other thing she was sorely temped to do—run back home just to look at him while he slept. Kiss him awake and show him how much she’d missed him.
But she couldn’t weaken like that. She wouldn’t.
He’d done the one thing he’d promised never to do: he’d left her, and she wasn’t about to give him the chance to hurt her that way again. At least, that was what her head was telling her. Her heart had a crazy agenda all of its own.
Adele shook her head. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to go and talk to him at some point. I just can’t face it tonight. When Nick catches me on the hop, I always end up agreeing to one of his crazy schemes. I need to be prepared. Focused.’
She could not let Nick know he still had the power to make her quiver every time he came near. He’d use it against her. He’d make her believe they’d have a chance then he’d yank the rug right from under her feet again. It was inevitable.
She needed to protect herself. Nick had to believe she was totally immune to him and there was no way she was going to convince him of that tonight. She was still in a state of shock and likely to do something stupid—like tell him she’d been joking about the spare room.
‘Stay here,’ Mona said. ‘We can make battle plans over a bottle of red wine.’
‘Thanks, Mona. You’re a lifesaver.’
Mona picked up Bethany, who was starting to grizzle, and stood up. ‘Come on, young miss. Time for bed.’ She turned just before she headed out of the living-room door.
‘Does he know about…you know?’
Adele threaded her fingers together and squeezed until her knuckles hurt. ‘No. I never told him.’
CHAPTER TWO
THERE WAS A HAND brushing his face. Nick sat up, suddenly wide awake, and realised the fingers were his own. He had hooked his elbow behind his head while he’d been sleeping and now his hand felt fat and numb.
The lights were still on in the kitchen, but it was dark outside and he had no idea what time it was. He shook his dead hand until he could feel the blood prickle then took a look at his watch. Six a.m. No way!
He shook his head and looked again. No wonder he felt so stiff. He’d spent the last twelve hours on a two-seater sofa, crunched into goodness-knew-what strange positions.
Adele would probably be up in an hour or so. She had always been an early riser, a complete contrast to his night-owlish tendencies. He felt crumpled and stale, not just from his strange sleeping place, but also from the long flight from LA the day before. No point trying to sweet talk Adele if he was looking rough and smelling even worse. He’d better hop in the shower and spruce up before he tried talking to her again.
He dragged his bag upstairs, and almost barged into the master bedroom on autopilot. An idiotic mistake. He’d have to think quicker than that if he wanted to get on Adele’s good side. Even he wasn’t daft enough to think he could jump back into his life after all this time as if nothing had changed.
Only he wished he could just slide back into his old life. He and Adele had been so happy. One moment of rash anger had probably cost him his marriage. He hardly ever lost his temper, but Adele had pushed and pushed and pushed until he’d erupted.
It just proved to him that his usual technique of sweeping everything negative under the carpet and wisecracking until it all went away was a much safer option. If he’d done that last May, maybe things would have been different. He wouldn’t have had to live with the ache deep inside that just wouldn’t go away, no matter how many practical jokes he’d played on his colleagues to distract himself from it.
Half an hour later he was shaved, dressed and making coffee in the kitchen. The idea was to catch Adele on the caffeine high after her obligatory morning coffee. He knew all the little tricks to get her onside, had employed them so many times it was almost habit.
Of course, this time he had to be extra careful. It was a bit more serious than the incident in which he’d finished off her designer make-up in an attempt to get a latex head he was about to split with an axe to look a little more lifelike.
And then, of course, there had been the time he’d used her best casserole to mix up gungy alien blood. She had not appreciated the green food colouring that wouldn’t come off no matter how hard she’d scrubbed. He’d learned the hard way to stay clear of Adele’s kitchen utensils. She was unusually finicky in that area.
No, this time he was going to be sensible and talk properly to her. That was plan A. Then he had to get her to agree to plan B, which hopefully would lead to fulfilling plan C. Plan C was the big one: making Adele see they were meant to be together.
He just couldn’t fail at that one, so he was going to pull out all the stops. It couldn’t hurt to smooth the way a little—with caffeine and smiles and dimples.
He turned the coffee machine on and sat himself at the table, opposite the door. Any moment now, she’d appear.
But Adele didn’t appear. And patience was not one of Nick’s strong suits.
Perhaps his wife would like breakfast in bed? Or was that taking the schmoozing a bit too far? When he’d left, Adele had not been one for Sunday-morning lie-ins. Not unless he’d been there to convince her there was something worth staying in bed for.
He leant back in the wooden chair, deflated. He’d missed Adele. Really missed her. When he’d got back to California after his first trip home, he’d been surprised how long the anger had bubbled inside him. He hadn’t been able to shake it off as normal. But then, that was understandable, wasn’t it?
Anyone would be angry if their wife had dumped them at the first tiny hiccup. They could have worked something out about their jobs and his six-month contract in Hollywood, but she hadn’t even bothered to consider it. She’d been too busy screeching at him about how important her job and her life and her friends were to her. It had come as a rude shock to find that he was bottom of the list—if he was on there at all.
His job was just as important to him, but Adele never took him seriously, even when someone had pulled out of a contract and he’d been offered a last-minute chance to work with highly acclaimed producer Tim Brookman. He was practically Hollywood royalty. It had been an opportunity he just couldn’t refuse, and it hurt more than he cared to admit that she hadn’t enough faith in him to support his decision.
Irritation started to buzz round his head. He swatted it away and checked the clock. It was half-past eight now. Surely Adele wasn’t still sleeping? Perhaps he’d better go and check she was OK.
He raced up the stairs, but slowed his pace as he neared their bedroom door. He smiled as he remembered the way she snored softly sometimes. It was so sweet. And it was strangely gratifying to know that perfect Adele had one tiny flaw.
But there was no snoring now. In fact, there was no sound at all.
He nudged the door open and blinked as he saw the room was unusually bright. The curtains were drawn and cold February sunshine lit up the empty bed. The covers were neatly in place and the elaborate arrangement of scatter cushions at the head of the bed was undisturbed.
His stomach bottomed out, just the way it had when he’d walked into the bedroom almost a year ago and seen the empty wardrobe, doors flung wide, hangers bare like autumn twigs.
Then he’d found the crisp, polite note saying she was staying at Mona’s and didn’t want to see him. He’d turned around and gone back to America, appalled his wife had bailed out on him so easily. At least he’d managed to persuade Mona to get her to move back into the house after he’d left.
He marched over to the wardrobe and wrenched the door open. Breath whooshed out of his lungs as he found the neat row of jackets, blouses and dresses—grouped by function and then by colour. If Adele found a pair of cargo trousers among her summer dresses, she’d get all itchy about it.
Now he was just plain confused. Adele’s clothes were here, but Adele wasn’t.
He turned and headed back downstairs and was just at the bottom step when he heard the front door open.
Adele jumped back, startled.
What the heck was going on?
Adele’s face turned a fiery red and she was unusually flustered.
A horrible thought scratched at the back of his mind to be let in.
‘Have you been out all night, Adele?’
She fumbled with the Sunday paper tucked under her arm. ‘I think that falls into the category of none of your business, don’t you?’
None of his…? The woman was priceless!
‘You’re still my wife!’
She refolded the newspaper and gave him a long, hard look. ‘Well, we can always do something about that.’
Nick saw an uncharacteristic flash of red behind his eyes. Seismic activity he was surprised she could still provoke after all this time. He stormed through the house, down the garden path and into his workshop, slamming the door behind him.
None of his business!
He should have stayed to have it out with her, but his feet had been moving before his brain had engaged. He didn’t feel much like going back into the house now, anyway.
Ethel, the shop mannequin he’d rescued from a skip, was still holding a pose in the corner of his workshop. At least she was predictable. Once upon a time, he’d have sworn Adele was too, but her refusal to compromise about his job had shattered that illusion. Like the dummy, he’d discovered she could be hard and cold in a way that had taken him totally by surprise.
‘What do you think my chances are, Ethel? I need a woman’s perspective.’
Ethel stared out of the window, her bright blue eyelids unblinking.
Nick sighed and fiddled with the soldering iron sitting on the bench.
‘Yeah. Thanks for nothing, babe.’
Adele was working on her laptop when Nick came to find her. She was still all jittery after their confrontation in the hall. She’d almost faltered—almost. But in the end she’d managed to pull herself together and Nick would never know how close she’d come to soothing his anger away with a kiss.
She tried to pretend she wasn’t aware of him standing in the doorway of the little box room they used as a study.
‘I’m busy, Nick,’ she said eventually, without looking round.
‘We’ve got to talk some time.’
She shrugged and tried to concentrate on the words on the screen. None of them seemed to be recognisable as English any more. She read a sentence for the third time then gave up.
‘OK. We’ll talk.’ She swivelled round in her chair and folded her arms. ‘Fire away.’
Nick shook his head. ‘Not like this. Let’s get onto neutral territory. How about I take you out to lunch?’
Once upon a time, she’d loved spending long, lazy Sunday lunches with Nick. They’d sit outside in the pub garden in summer and huddle up to the fire inside in winter. She didn’t want to be reminded of happier days, but he was right. They had to talk at some point and she might as well get it out of the way.
‘OK, but you’re paying.’
‘Of course.’
Nick flashed his dimples and Adele had the feeling she was agreeing to a whole heap of trouble.
‘What’s this all about, then, Nick?’
They’d sat through most of the main course talking about nothing. Whether that was a good thing or not, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that the small talk was getting to her and she had to know one way or the other. Her heart broke into a trot at the thought of the ‘D’ word that might come out of his mouth. Bizarrely, it was the last word she wanted to hear, despite the fact it had been the one at the forefront of her mind since last summer.
Nick played with a roast potato on his plate.
‘It’s Mum’s sixty-fifth birthday this year.’
Adele nodded. ‘I know.’ Then she frowned.
What was he up to? She leaned forward and tried to catch his gaze. He seemed to be absorbed in shepherding all his peas into a little pile with his knife.
‘How is Maggie?’
She’d been a bit of a coward on that front after Nick had left. Everyone knew she was useless at keeping up with correspondence and she’d hidden behind that as an excuse to keep contact with Nick’s family to a minimum. Yes, she’d dashed off the odd email and sent a Christmas card, but she’d avoided the messages on the answering machine, pretending to herself she was too busy with her work. In the last few months, everything had gone a little quiet.
The truth was, she was just plain scared. Scared, now she and Nick were no longer a couple, that maybe his mother and sisters would go cold on her. Just as her own parents had. She’d only been part of the family by default, after all. It had been easier to avoid anything deep than risk finding out her fears had some foundation.
He poked the pile of peas with his knife and sent them scattering. ‘You know Mum…’
Adele tried not to let the shame show on her face. She’d been a coward, plain and simple.
She knew Nick’s mother better than she knew her own. Which wasn’t difficult, seeing as the last time she’d seen her parents in the flesh was a good three years ago. But that was nothing unusual. It had been that way since they’d packed her off to boarding-school so her mother could flit around the world with her father as he moved from exotic location to exotic location with his job.
Maggie Hughes was the sort of woman she’d fantasised about having as a parent in her teenage years. Her house was always full of children and grandchildren, who complained constantly that she had her nose in their business just a little too much, but it never seemed to stop them coming. She had a big heart and had made sure Adele always felt part of the family, always felt wanted. She was a little too indulgent with her only son, perhaps, but nobody was perfect.
‘Give her my love when you speak to her, won’t you?’
Nick coughed. ‘Well, I was kind of thinking you could tell her yourself—in person.’
‘And when would that be, exactly? You haven’t forgotten with all your Hollywood high-flying that she moved in with Auntie Beverley last year, have you? Scotland is a long way to go for a cup of tea and a chat.’
‘She’s having a big birthday bash. Charlotte is organising it and, of course, my other sisters have been roped in too.’
Adele could imagine it. Nick had three older sisters. They were a formidable force en masse. Their only weakness was a huge soft spot for their baby brother. She’d heard plenty of stories about the scrapes Nick had got himself into as a cheeky young lad, and for every misdemeanour there was a matching tale of how one or all of the sisters had bailed him out, duffed up the bully, or cleaned up the resulting mess.
‘What’s this party got to do with me?’
Nick looked at her from under the wayward tuft of hair. ‘Mum wants you to come. In fact, she’s insisting.’
‘Why?’ Maggie was always so sensible. ‘Surely she knows that having both of us together at the party would just make things awkward. Why would she want to risk her big night like that?’
‘Er—that’s the thing, you see. I haven’t really told her about…us.’
Adele felt the band of tension across her forehead tighten a few notches. ‘Us?’
‘About our…you know…problems.’
The plate on the table swam before her eyes. The sinking feeling that he’d done it again—walked away from a difficult situation, leaving someone else to deal with the fallout—crept up on her and sat on her shoulder whispering nasty little words in her ear.
Surely, not even Nick could be that daft? She looked at him. That lopsided cocky smile said it all. He always pulled that one out of the bag when he knew he’d done something that was going to make her blood boil.
It was all Adele could do not to pick up his plate and pour the contents, gravy and all, over his head. She should have had a medal for managing to stand up and walk stiffly from the restaurant without spontaneously combusting.
She gulped in a lungful of winter air and hoped it would cool her down before he caught her up. She did not want to make a huge scene in the car park of The Partridge.
This was typical Nick! Why had she even let him open his mouth in the first place? She had known no good could come of it, yet she’d trotted down the road with him like the class-A doormat that she was.
She caught a flash of a brown leather jacket at the corner of her eye and knew Nick had managed to pay the bill and give chase.
Well, tough. She wasn’t ready to talk to him right now. Thankfully, they’d decided to walk down the road to the nearest pub for lunch. It would only take her ten minutes to get home.
She listened to the staccato rhythm of her boots on the pavement as she stalked off in the direction of the house. Make that eight minutes, if she kept up this pace.
Nick could see Adele strutting from the car park and followed. He really wanted to sprint, but a little voice inside his head whispered that it would be better to let his wife cool off a bit. He compromised by jogging.
Boy, she could walk fast when she took off like this. It was a minute or so before he gained enough ground to get within talking distance.
‘Adele!’
She didn’t even turn round, just held up a hand in his direction. The face obviously wasn’t listening.
‘Come on, Adele. Please?’
She had to stop at that moment to cross a road and he caught her up.
He started to open his mouth.
‘Don’t! Just don’t,’ she warned.
He shut it again.
‘You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Nick. I can’t believe you’d turn up here after nine months of no contact and invite me to a birthday party.’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘This is a new level of insensitivity, even for you.’
Now, hang on a minute! How many times had he called and tried to apologise in the days after he’d left? How many times had she slammed the receiver down before he’d been able to get more than a syllable out? If they hadn’t communicated for nine months, it was more to do with Adele than it was with him. At least he’d tried.
In the end he’d done what she’d obviously wanted and let her be. And now she was blaming him for it?
‘Well, maybe you’ve got all the answers, Adele, but I certainly haven’t.’
She stepped back from the kerb and looked at him. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean, I’m not sure myself what is going on between us. What is this? Are we separated, or was it just a really long cooling-off period after a fight? If I can’t figure it out, how am I supposed to define it for anyone else? You wouldn’t talk to me. I have no idea what’s going on in your neat and ordered little head.’
Adele shook her head and crossed the road. He had to wait for a couple of cars to turn the corner before he could catch her up again. No more hanging around waiting for her to fill him in. He’d waited nine months and he was going to get his answers right now.
‘What did you tell people, then, Adele? What was your take on it?’
And then he shut up. He knew exactly what Adele would have told her friends. Mona would have had every last grisly detail and would be in no doubt that Nick was the black-hearted villain of the piece, while Adele came off snowy white and smelling of roses. The woman was so blinkered sometimes.
He marched along behind her in silence. He should have listened to his gut instinct. Adele was in no mood for even reasonable explanations. Anything he said would just make it worse while she was in this state.
While he waited for her to unlock the front door, the sparks flying off her were almost tangible.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ she said, and marched off, leaving the door open.
He stepped inside and closed it. Despite the twelve hours of sleep he’d had the night before, he was starting to flag again. He went into the living room and switched the television on. Maybe he could doze in front of it for a bit.
Adele would calm down soon enough. She always did. Her anger was quick to flare up, but it usually burnt itself out pretty quickly too. He flicked the television on and dropped into his favourite armchair. Just fifteen minutes watching the footie and he’d make her a cup of tea as a peace offering and see if they couldn’t discuss things without world war three starting.
A little later, just as he was considering hauling himself out of his chair and switching the kettle on, he heard Adele coming down the stairs. Or, to be more precise, he heard a whole lot of bumping and crashing, then thump, thump, thump—as if there were two of her jumping down each step.
He arrived in the hall just in time to see Adele wrestling his bag down the last three stairs.
‘Adele? What on earth are you doing?’
Adele stopped what she was doing, partly to answer, partly to catch her breath. Her arms were aching. How did a bunch of rumpled shirts weigh so much?
‘I thought that was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? I’m throwing you out.’
The look on his face was classic. If she weren’t ready to kill him, she’d want to laugh. Finally, Nick Hughes had come across a woman who refused to melt at his feet and he was totally floored.
‘You can’t throw me out. I live here too.’
‘Not any more. You can find some other poor sucker to rope into your hare-brained schemes. I’m finished with the whole lot of it.’
Her stomach dipped as she realised the implication of her own words. Was this really what four years of marriage had come to? She looked at Nick and the sickness sank right into her toes. That had wiped the dimples off his face. She should be feeling pleased he was finally getting the message, but suddenly she felt her eyes moisten.
‘I’m sorry, Adele. Really I am. I should have told Mum…something.’ He shook his head. ‘But she loves you like a daughter and I didn’t want to upset her. She’s not very…’
He swallowed the rest of the sentence. She felt her heart squeeze as he struggled to find the words.
‘She’s been…I mean, going to be really sad for us. I didn’t want to tell her until I knew for certain there wasn’t any hope.’
No hope.
Her lip quivered and she pressed her mouth into a thin line to disguise it. Nick gave her a rueful smile. Now, this was the smile that really did some damage. It was heart-wrenchingly lopsided and utterly genuine.
The fault lines started to widen. Hadn’t he said he didn’t know how to define their relationship? Did that mean he hadn’t made his mind up, that maybe he didn’t want a divorce after all?
And, even if he did, why should she punish Maggie for her son’s abandonment of his wife? Although there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel for her and Nick, she didn’t want to cause bad feeling in the family.
She breathed in and out once, sharply. Family. For four years she’d been a part of a family and that had been wonderful. Phone calls on her birthday. Loud, overpopulated Sunday lunches with too much food and too little elbow room. The world was going to seem horribly empty when all that had gone for good.
She closed her eyes. No. She had to be strong. She couldn’t weaken now. Missing out on one last chance to see them all—to say goodbye to them—was the price she’d have to pay to keep her sanity and her heart intact.
She had to focus on the fact that, once again, he was asking her to drop everything and trot off after him. And there were no guarantees that he wouldn’t leave again after it was all over. He hadn’t mentioned wanting to get back together again, had he? He just needed her to save his skin.
Too bad. He could save his own sorry hide.
He had no idea of the torment she’d been through after he’d left. She had to remember that black place and all the reasons why she never wanted to go back there.
So as Nick lounged against the door jamb, she let the blackness feed her anger until it was good and bubbling. And then she hauled his bag the short distance to the front door and flung it onto the garden path. When Nick let out a strangled hey and dived after it, she slammed the door and locked it behind him.
She punched the button on the remote control again and again. Celebrity chefs. TV’s Worst Mishaps. Top Ten Pop Stars She Didn’t Recognise. Why wasn’t there anything good on the telly? She had more than fifty channels to choose from, for goodness’ sake. There had to be something mildly interesting. Even a schmaltzy TV movie would be better than nothing.
Mind you, it was almost three o’clock in the morning.
She yawned. Normally she’d have been tucked up in bed hours ago, but tonight she just couldn’t calm down enough even to bother with the pretence of going upstairs and getting changed into her PJs. And there was something oddly comforting about sitting in the dark with only the flicker of the television for company.
Mona would say she was wallowing. Mona would probably be right.
But a girl was allowed to wallow after she’d kicked the man she loved out of her life for good.
She threw the remote onto the sofa cushion next to her and tried to concentrate on the sitcom rerun she’d stopped at.
It was no good denying it. She loved Nick. He wouldn’t make her half as crazy if she didn’t. She might try to kid herself she was trying to lock him out of her heart as well as her house, but, in reality, there was no point. He was firmly embedded there.
But that didn’t mean they were capable of building a life together.
They had different priorities. No, it was more than that. They were so utterly different that she wondered how things had lasted as long as four years. Five, if you counted the year before they got married. And then there was the year before that, when Nick had steadily pursued her and she had steadily refused until he’d worn her down and made her laugh.
She’d been very firm with him. One date—no more.
Only she’d discovered one date wasn’t enough. Well, that was how it had seemed at the time. Maybe she’d have been better off listening to her feminine intuition—the alarm in her head that had yelled code red, code red every time Nick was in range.
She sighed and let her eyes wander round the room. It was stupid to feel so desolate at the thought of saying goodbye to Nick for ever. She’d made up her mind months ago.
The light on the answer-phone was blinking. Her heart hiccuped into action. Nick?
She jabbed the button and waited for the message.
‘Hi, Nick. It’s Debbie.’
Sister number two.
‘Mum thought you might have got back by now. Hope the jet lag’s not too bad. Anyway, just to let you know that Mum is over the worst of her last round of chemo, so it’s all systems go for the party. Give me a ring and I’ll fill you in. Tell Adele there’s a chocolate torte with her name on it waiting for her. Bye.’
Chemo?
Nick’s mum had cancer? The whole world seemed to somersault. Maggie couldn’t die. She was too resilient, too vital. Why hadn’t Nick told her?
Because you never gave him a chance, a little voice whispered. Too busy feeling sorry for yourself. You shut him out while you were grieving and then, when you were ready to listen, he’d given up. And she’d been too proud to call him, too battered and hurt to risk losing him again if he rejected her. She’d lost so much already. It had been easier to blame him and nurse her grief.
If only she could call him now. He must be feeling awful. But she’d slung him out without a thought as to where he might go and she had no idea how to contact him.
Whereas she had a few close friends she had known for years, Nick always seemed to have a nebulous cloud of acquaintances. He was popular, but he was always giving up one interest to try another, tiring of the same sports clubs and restaurants quickly.
The only one who’d been constant was his old college mate—what was his name? Kelvin? Connor? No, Callum. That was it. But she’d only met him twice and had no record of his address or phone number.
She sank back into the sofa and clicked the television off. The room was plunged into darkness, but she just sat there staring at nothing, for what seemed like hours.
Then she heard a rattle at the front door. She held her breath. It must be the wind, surely? She strained to hear more but it had all gone quiet again. The door had two locks, anyway. She was just about to breathe out when she heard the noise again.
No. This time it wasn’t just a rattle. She could hear the lock turning. Goose-pimples broke out all over her arms and her stomach nosedived, but somehow she couldn’t move. All she could do was huddle herself into a ball in the corner of the sofa and try to slow the rise and fall of her chest.
If only Nick were here! Why couldn’t this have happened last night when the big lunk had been asleep in the kitchen?
Then came the sound she had been dreading: the second lock clicked and she heard the door creak open. She held her breath and, as quietly as she could, she eased herself off the sofa and hid behind the armchair. Her ankles cracked as she crouched down and she was sure the noise was as loud as a gunshot.
Someone was in the house! She began to shake. The phone. She needed the phone.
But it was across the other side of the room, and the intruder was moving down the hall towards the living-room door. She couldn’t risk it. Even if she could creep over there and make it back in time, she’d be heard talking once she made the call.
She peered out over the arm of the chair just as the living-room door brushed across the carpet. A shadow moved towards her and she froze.
CHAPTER THREE
THE burglar felt down the side of the armchair. He was so close his breath warmed the air near her. He didn’t find what he was looking for and moved his arm to reach behind the side of the chair where she was hiding.
Adele did the only thing she could think of. He wasn’t wearing gloves and when his hand was only inches from her face she lunged forward and sank her teeth into the exposed skin of his wrist.
He let out a yelp of pain and jumped back, tripping over his own feet as he did so.
‘What the…?’
Adele had been preparing to scratch and bite and kick and do anything she could think of to get out of there safely. Her leg was draped across the arm of the chair, ready to spring over it and out of the door while he was off balance.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose. That voice…
‘Nick?’
There was a shuffling noise as he got to his feet.
‘Thanks for the warm welcome, sweetheart!’
‘What are you…? What do you think you…?’ The adrenaline surge quickly converted fear to anger. Given a choice of fight or flight, Adele was ready to get down and dirty. However, the heightened state of awareness seemed to be short-circuiting her ability to form a coherent sentence.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and tried again.
‘What the heck are you doing creeping round my house in the middle of the night?’
‘Our house.’
‘Stop nit-picking! You scared me half to death!’
‘I was looking for—’ Nick leaned over and turned on a table lamp ‘—this.’
He reached past her and picked up a leather wallet lying by her foot.
‘And this.’
A mobile phone was only a few inches away.
Adele stared at it. It wasn’t the one he’d used to have. For some strange reason the knowledge made her very sad.
‘I took them out of my jeans pocket earlier on. I discovered that it’s actually very hard to find somewhere to stay with none of my friends’ phone numbers and no money for a hotel.’
She was so dazed she didn’t know what to say. One minute she’d been wishing him here and, now her wish had been granted, she was ready to boot him out of the door again. All her anger suffocated in a cloud of bafflement.
‘How did you get in?’ she asked, still staring at the phone.
Nick reached into his back pocket, pulled out a set of keys and dangled them from the tip of his finger. Adele focused on them slowly.
He shrugged. ‘I thought you’d be in bed. I’d planned to slip in quietly, get my things and disappear again. You would never have known I’d been here.’
‘You have keys?’ Why were the most basic concepts so hard to grasp all of a sudden?
‘Yup.’
She tightened her forehead until her brows puckered. ‘So, if you still have keys, why didn’t you use them when you first turned up here?’
‘Dunno. I was trying to be polite, I suppose.’
Nick? Trying to be polite? Did not compute.
He’d dive-bombed into her life again in his size-eleven boots, tried to manoeuvre her into going to a party five hundred miles away and he was worried about letting himself into his own house? It was so absurd she couldn’t even start to get her head round it.
So she did the only thing she could; she collapsed into the chair, one leg hanging over the edge, and started to laugh. And then she found she couldn’t stop. Pretty soon, tears were running down her face.
Only Nick could do this. The man was impossible, intolerable and impossible some more.
For once, Nick didn’t have a cheeky grin plastered all over his face. He just kept staring at her and blinking. He looked so lost, and when he looked like that he was impossible to resist.
She let the rest of the mirth out on one long breath and shook her head. ‘You’ll never find anywhere to stay at this time of night. You might as well go and get your things and put them in the spare room. We’ll talk later.’
When Adele swept into the kitchen at six-thirty that morning she found Nick sitting at the table waiting for her. She stopped in her tracks and tilted her head to one side.
‘You’re up early.’ About three hours too early for his normal routine.
‘You said we were going to talk.’
She pushed up the stiff cuff of her blouse and looked at her watch. ‘I’m not missing work today, Nick. I have a life and I’m not putting it on hold for you.’
He grimaced. ‘Yeah, and don’t I know it.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He rubbed the corner of one eye with his index finger. ‘Ignore me. I’m tired and grumpy. The rest of us mortals don’t spring out of bed before dawn without a hair out of place like you do.’
He might not be dressed, but he was looking much better than mortal with his pyjamas done up on the wrong button and his hair sticking up in five different directions.
Hold on. Since when did Nick wear pyjamas?
But then her thoughts veered dangerously to what he normally wore in bed and a blush crept up her neck and kept going until it was under her hairline. Pyjamas were definitely better for her blood pressure than the alternative.
Adele looked down at her skirt and blouse and her high heels then smoothed an invisible hair into the twist at the back of her head.
He’d done it again. Sometimes, all Nick had to do was be in the same room as her and she was questioning herself. When she’d walked down the stairs this morning she’d felt confident, efficient, ready to face the world. Now she just felt…overdressed.
‘I’m just up and ready for the office, that’s all. Some of us can’t spend all our time locked in the garden shed until three in the morning and call it work, you know.’
Nick yawned and covered his hand with his mouth. ‘I’m too tired to have this argument again. Can we just take it as a given that I act like a three-year-old and you’re the grown-up? Then we can skip all the shouting.’
She wanted to say ‘No, I don’t want to skip it,’ but that would make her the three-year-old, so she bit her tongue and made her way to the coffee-maker. Much to her surprise, it was already on and hot, steaming coffee was waiting for her.
Nick got up from where he was sitting and handed her a mug.
‘The office doesn’t open until nine. We’ve got time to talk.’
Adele opened her mouth to speak.
‘Yes, I know you always like to be in before eight, but even then we’ve got time.’
She closed it again and nodded. However, once she and Nick were seated either side of the table again, the room fell into silence.
Finally, Adele could bear it no more.
‘Why didn’t you tell me your mum was ill?’
Nick’s jaw dropped. ‘How did you find out?’
‘Debbie left a message for you on the answer-phone. I suppose your mum’s not the only one who doesn’t know we’ve been living apart for almost a year.’
‘You know how close they all are. If any of them knew, they’d be sure to blab it to Mum and I didn’t want to give her the extra worry.’
‘You should have told me.’
Nick gave her a lopsided look. ‘I seem to remember hearing an awful lot of dial tone in our phone conversations.’
‘Not then. Now. Why didn’t you say anything yesterday?’
‘It seemed too much like emotional blackmail.’
She took a sip of her coffee. ‘I would call it being honest, actually.’
‘Are you telling me that you wouldn’t have felt duty bound to make the trip, even if it was the last thing on earth you wanted to do?’
She looked down and rubbed at a mark on the table with her fingertip. Nick was right. She would have gone to the party whether she wanted to or not if she’d known the truth. The thought didn’t sit comfortably with her. In her opinion, knowing all the facts meant she was in control. She wasn’t going to let him use keeping her in the dark as an excuse, even if, by some strange logic, it sounded kind of noble.
‘Well, I know now, don’t I?’
Nick’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘What are you going to do?’
She breathed in and sat up straight. ‘I propose we deal with this in an adult manner. I’ll go to Scotland with you. I love your mum and I wouldn’t want to upset her, but—’
Nick leapt up from where he was sitting and hauled her into his arms.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘I really mean it. This is going to mean so much to Mum. You don’t know how grateful I am.’
She would have told him how much she understood if he hadn’t been squeezing her so tight she thought her lungs would collapse. So much for dealing with this in an adult manner.
Her hands made contact with his shoulders and she was going to prise herself from the hug, but then the smell of him, the warm feeling from his arms around her started to work on her senses. It had been so long since she’d hugged anyone.
In fact, she didn’t think she’d had a proper cuddle since Nick had left. Mona didn’t do mushy stuff, as she put it. That left baby Bethany and her older brother, Josh. But even those hugs were bitter-sweet, reminding her of what could have been, but now never would be.
She told herself to let go, to ease herself out of his arms now his grip was loosening, but he smelled so good and felt so warm that she had to hang on for a couple more seconds. And then a few seconds more.
Slowly, she became aware that the hands that had been squeezing were now flat against her back. The fingers started to move, softly stroking, and a shiver skipped up her spine and kept travelling upwards until the tingle concentrated somewhere behind her ears.
Then she heard him inhale, as if he were breathing in her scent and couldn’t get enough of it, and it tipped her completely over the edge. Moisture welled in her eyes and collected in her lower lashes.
She yearned for the days of blissful ignorance when she’d thought they’d last for ever. She missed the knowledge in that, in at least one person’s eyes, she was special, good enough. It was such a pity that reality had eventually had to intrude on the fantasy.
He pulled back to look at her and she saw an answering ache in his eyes.
‘Adele,’ he whispered as he lowered his head.
She meant to duck away from the kiss, but somehow she couldn’t. She was trapped by a magnetic force that kept her clinging to him. Maybe it was a trick of memory, or maybe it was because she’d been unknowingly waiting for this moment for the last nine months, but this kiss was even better than the ones she tried not to remember, more electrically charged, more tender, more sweet, more…everything.
It was only as her fingers wandered to the top button of his skew-whiff pyjamas that she came to her senses. What was she doing? Was she mad?
She mustn’t forget that when she’d faced the worst crisis of her life, he’d abandoned her. She hadn’t been able to depend on him. No matter how much they cared for each other or how good the chemistry was, it didn’t mean they could survive a future together without tearing each other into tiny shreds.
She left the button in its proper place and scrabbled away from him.
He reached for her and she shook her head. ‘This changes nothing.’
In fact, it had. It made the path she had to take even clearer. If she were to keep her heart safe from this man, she was going to have to take drastic measures. She slipped into business-mode, all starch and crisp efficiency. It was the only way to get through this.
‘As I said, I propose we deal with this in an adult manner, no matter how daft it is that you’ve been keeping your mum in the dark.’
Nick’s smile wavered altogether. ‘I was trying to save her extra stress at a time when she already had enough on her plate. Breast cancer is pretty serious, you know. I wouldn’t call what I did juvenile.’
Inwardly Adele squirmed, but she didn’t twitch a millimetre on the outside. Not even an eyelash. She made very sure of that.
‘I know cancer is serious. I’m not stupid. I’m just saying you went about this in entirely the wrong way. You just bounded in like you always do and played the situation from moment to moment, rather than considering what the long-term consequences would be. You have to tell her the truth about us.’
‘What is the truth, Adele? One minute you’re pushing me away, the next you’re…What happened just now, for instance?’
She shuffled backwards until her bottom bumped against the counter. ‘That was you getting over-enthusiastic, as usual.’
The wary look in his eyes said he wasn’t buying it completely. So what? Neither was she, but that didn’t mean she was going to cave in and admit it.
‘You make me sound like a Labrador.’
Adele swallowed. She hadn’t meant to insult him, only keep him at arm’s length the best way she knew how—with words. Sharp, nasty, barbed-wire words.
And the truth was, at his best, he was like a Labrador—loyal, loving and with boundless energy, but that didn’t make him any less destructive, and she had more at stake than a pair of soggy slippers or a chewed newspaper.
‘And you seemed fairly enthusiastic yourself,’ he added.
He was right. How pathetic had she been? She’d spent almost a year carefully building up her defences against him and he’d turned them to marshmallow in just over twenty-four hours.
She had to do something to safeguard herself, to make sure the barbed wire was nailed firmly in place.
‘You want an answer from me about where this relationship is going?’
He threw his hands up, asking a question. ‘I was hoping that we’d have a chance to work that one out on the drive to Invergarrig.’
‘You don’t have to wait for the weekend; I can tell you now.’
Nick just stared at her.
‘I’ll go to the party with you, Nick, but there are some conditions.’
‘Conditions,’ he echoed.
‘Yes. It’s time you stopped stampeding over other people’s lives. It’s time to take responsibility for your actions.’
His mouth thinned into a line, but while he wasn’t answering back or flashing his dimples she needed to forge on.
‘I will do you this favour if you agree to a divorce. When we get home from Scotland, I’m going to see a solicitor.’
He couldn’t have looked more stunned if she’d actually reached out and slapped him round the face. Her stomach lurched as she heard her own words echo in her ears.
There. She’d said it out loud; she couldn’t undo it now.
‘It’s time to move on. I’ve got a life of my own to lead. I can’t spend the rest of it clearing up after you.’
Nick looked her straight in the eye and this time she did squirm. He seemed greyer, with all the boundless energy sucked out of him.
‘Fine. At least I know where I stand now.’
The sticky edge of the envelope refused to behave itself. Even when Nick had finished trying to smooth it down it was still bumpy and slightly off to one side. He propped it up against the coffee-maker—Adele’s first stop after a busy day at the office.
His bag was waiting for him in the hall, standing guard almost. He picked it up, hauled it outside and closed the door gently behind him. Then he stared at the glossy black paint on the front door for a good ten seconds.
The keys were warm when he pulled them from his back pocket. The letterbox felt icy in comparison, still cold from the overnight frost. He pushed against the stiff flap and dropped the bunch of keys inside. When he heard them jangle against the mat, he turned and walked away.
The air seemed curiously still when Adele opened the front door and dropped her briefcase in its usual spot. She tried to work out what was missing as she wrestled herself free of her coat and hung it away in the cupboard.
Nick must be in his workshop, rummaging for his famous recipe for fake blood. She’d make them a nice dinner and they’d discuss the situation calmly and rationally. They just didn’t work well together as a couple, that was all. There was no reason why the separation couldn’t be amicable. They could still be friends.
The envelope was the first thing she saw as she walked into the kitchen. She frowned. Nick’s handwriting in bright green felt-tip.
She picked it up and opened it, using her index finger as a paper knife, and pulled out a couple of thin sheets torn from a ring-bound notepad.
Adele, I’m staying at Craig’s for a couple of nights—thought it was best we both had a bit of space. Mum would like us to be up in Invergarrig on Friday night for a family dinner. Let me know if that’s not convenient and we’ll travel up on Saturday instead. I’ll give you a call in a couple of days when we’ve both had a chance to cool down.
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