Beautiful Secret (Beautiful Bastard 4)

“We did,” I told her. “We do.”

I stepped closer, put my hands on her hips. To my profound relief she didn’t pull away, and I bent, kissing her neck. “Ruby, I’m so sorry.”

She nodded, her arms limp at her sides. “You hurt me.”

“I was an idiot.”

Pulling away, she closed her eyes to collect herself and then, to my absolute horror, she picked up her box and walked down the opposite way from me, down a row of cubicles and out of the office before I could gather the right words to make her stop.

* * *

Bringing home the folders was an exercise in going through the motions. I remained just as useless for the remainder of the weekend.

Sleep. Eat. Drink myself into a stupor. Stare.

My phone was disturbingly silent. I was grateful to receive no calls from Tony, no calls from family, nothing more from Portia. But it devastated me every time I looked down at my phone and had heard nothing from Ruby.

So when it began buzzing over where I’d hurled it a few hours before, on a throw pillow on the floor across the room, it took a few full rings for me to startle out of my trance and answer.

I stumbled over, and cursed down at the screen, answering it anyway. “Max.”

“I talked to Rebecca earlier,” he said by way of greeting.

“Mm?”

“Mum’s in bits over this. Rebecca already told her she thinks Ruby’s going to be the one.”

My sister. “She’s never bloody met Ruby.”

“Doesn’t matter, apparently.”

I spoke into my tumbler of gin, “At least you two never dive in to anything headlong.”

“You sound pissed.”

Staring into my drink, I told him, “On my way. And miserable.”

“Aw come on, then. Tell me what’s happened?”

“Ruby ended things.”

Max fell silent for several beats. “She didn’t.”

“Yeah, she did. Our affair in New York cost her her job, whereas I got a slap on the wrist. She thinks she might not get into Maggie’s program now.”

He blew out a heavy breath. “Fucking hell.”

“And I went to have dinner with Portia the night after Ruby and I finally shagged, not knowing Tony’d given Ruby an ultimatum: me or her job.”

“And she chose you,” my brother guessed.

I laughed into the tumbler. “Right-o.”

“You idiot.”

“Exactly.” I finished what was in my glass and dropped it onto the floor. “So, needless to say, she’s ended things with me quite soundly.”

“So you’re going to drink yourself into a stupor of self-pity on your couch then?”

“You know what my life with Portia was like,” I started. “And with Ruby . . . I’d never thought much before about children or finding what you have with Sara, but I did with her.” I stared out the window, at the sky and the new leaves as they shook in the early spring breeze. “But I will never be okay after this. She changed me and I . . . I don’t want to go back.” The line was quiet for a moment and I reached for my glass again, refilling it. “So drinking myself into an amnesia of what I’ve lost—that sounds about right.”

“Or,” he suggested with a laugh that said, You twat, “you could get off that stupid arse and go talk to Maggie. For fuck’s sake, Niall, you act as if you’ve got no resources. Figure out what you can bloody well fix and fix it. This is what you do, mate.”

* * *

I had a bit of time to reflect—finally sober—on what I wanted to say while I took the train from London to Oxford. Margaret Sheffield was a bit of a hero of mine, having served on my thesis committee and been more of a mentor to me than my own alcoholic advisor had ever been. Although Maggie’s specialty was civil engineering, she had a hand in designing and overseeing the construction of many of the cornerstone commercial buildings in crowded London neighborhoods, and I idolized the way her career easily straddled engineering, architecture, and broader urban planning. One of the proudest moments of my professional life to date had been when a colleague had introduced me at a keynote conference as “our generation’s Margaret Sheffield.”

But I’d never been to see her on such a personal matter. In fact, aside from the heated moment I’d stormed into Tony’s office last week, I’d never really been to see anyone from my professional life with a personal matter. So even though the cold wind whipped around me as I trudged down Parks Road toward the Thom Building, I was flushed with nerves.

Maggie had been around long enough to deserve an emeritus office in one of the grander buildings, but preferred being closer to the action, she’d said. Her building was an odd, hexagonal structure but from it she had a beautiful view of the University Park just to the east. Just being here again, close to Engineering and the materials sciences buildings, brought on a heavy sense of nostalgia. I’d been young when I lived here. Young and married, and for that reason always a bit different from my peers who spent their days working hard and evenings partying harder.