This was what he had always dreaded: that in loving someone he would lose his awareness of his responsibility to others, replacing it with the selfishness of his own needs and desires.
In her sleep Zoe cried out sharply, a small, tortured, almost animal sound of fear and pain.
Ben walked over to the bed, smoothing the damp hair off her face, touching her gently.
‘It’s all right, Zoe,’ he lied softly. ‘Everything’s all right.’
Bleakly he straightened up and walked over to the window.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘CLIVE wants to see us.’
Zoe looked listlessly at Ben. ‘What for?’
He had been increasingly less affectionate with her recently, complaining that Aldo was making things difficult for him at work, and despite the fact that she could hear the anxiety he was trying to mask she had not, as she would normally have done, tried to calm and reassure him.
Somehow she just didn’t seem to have the energy… for anything.
Life seemed to have taken on a blurred, out of focus quality—a dangerously protective numbness which isolated her not just from everyone around her but from reality as well.
‘I’m not sure,’ Ben responded, frowning slightly. ‘He rang while you were out. I arranged that we’d see him tomorrow morning…’
He paused and looked at her. ‘You won’t be working late, will you?’
Zoe focused on him. There was something in his voice, in his expression, a hint of bitterness and sarcasm, that was alien to him.
‘I don’t think so…’
‘It’s time I was at work.’ He got up and then, as he started to move past her, he stopped and looked hard at her.
‘Oh, by the way, there was a phone call for you.’
Zoe felt the tension grip her stomach. It was almost a week since she had visited the clinic and she had still heard nothing. Remembering the counsellor and all that she had said to her, she had begun to wonder if the woman was deliberately making her wait… making…
Making her what? There was nothing to decide, she told herself firmly, clamping down on her panic. Nothing to say… nothing to think. Ben had hardly mentioned the hotel since his return from Manchester, but yesterday, when he was at work, she had been looking for an envelope and had come across some notes he had made, a small but ruthless analysis of his goals and hopes.
He might not be saying much about the hotel, but she already knew how much it meant to him. How could she not do, when for the last six months they had thought and spoken about very little else; when virtually from the moment they had met they had had this one common goal in mind?
She realised that he was still waiting for her to make some response to him.
There was a phone call for you, he had said casually, not knowing, not dreaming…
‘Who? Who was it?’ she asked him, her voice hesitant, stammering almost as her anxiety tightened its coiled grip on her nervous system.
As he watched her, Ben forced himself to harden his heart against the misery he could see in her eyes.
‘A woman. She said she’d ring back.’
If she didn’t care enough about him to at least be honest with him, then why should he help her, make it easier for her to tell him that there was someone else? Was it serious, or was it simply something casual? Casual—Zoe? He remembered her passionate commitment to all that she did, her sexual intensity… her way of giving herself so utterly and totally to all that she did, and he was almost tempted to take hold of her and demand that she tell him the truth. Instead he asked her quietly, ‘You’re still keen on going ahead with the hotel then, are you, Zoe? You’re not having second thoughts or anything?’
Zoe stared at him. For a moment he looked different… older somehow and grimmer, a glimpse of how he would look in years to come when maturity and life had set its seal upon him. It suited him, Zoe recognised starkly, gave him added weight and authority, made him look the kind of man a woman—people could rely on and turn to. The kind of man who…
Who would what? Make a good father?
‘No, I’m not having second thoughts,’ she told him, and then added, ‘I do
know how much it means to you… how important it is. It’s what you’ve always wanted.’