Just One Last Night

He watched a black cat saunter across the car park, stopping for a moment when it noticed him, its green eyes narrowing before it dismissed him as unimportant and continued with its leisurely walk. The cat that walked alone, he thought fancifully. Like Nell. She’d come to the same conclusion about him as that damn animal, whereas he needed her in every part of his life. He wanted to share waking up together at the weekend and reading the Sunday papers in bed while they ate croissants and drank coffee, watching TV with a glass of wine after a hard day’s work while the dinner cooked, going to the theatre or to a film, or simply taking a long walk in the evening arm in arm. In the early days they’d done all those things and they had talked about anything and everything—or so he’d thought. Now he realised there was a huge part of her psyche she’d kept from him.

He started the car, frowning to himself.

He’d known she’d been damaged by her earlier life when he’d got to know her, of course. He’d just underestimated the extent of the damage and that had been fatal. Or maybe his ego had ridden roughshod over any concerns he might have had, telling him he would be able to deal with any difficulties in the future.

He nosed the powerful car out of the car park and onto the road beyond, deep in thought. But all that was relative now. One thing was for sure, she wouldn’t have responded to him as she’d done last night if she didn’t still care for him, deep down somewhere. And when he’d asked her if she loved him she hadn’t said no. Admittedly, she hadn’t said yes either …

He’d call her tonight, as she’d suggested. Everything in him wanted to come back here and bang

on the door till she let him in so he could convince her how much he loved her, but something told him that would accomplish nothing. He’d played the waiting game for months, hadn’t he? He could play it a little longer. But this time on his terms. She wouldn’t go back on her word, she’d work at Hillview and he knew how fond she was of his mother. That was the reason he’d suggested this in the first place.

Well, he conceded in the next moment. Not the only reason. It was true his mother’s heart wasn’t good since the hip operation but she hadn’t been quite so…difficult about the garden as he’d led Melanie to believe. But Hillview’s grounds did need a complete overhaul and his mother, albeit with a very pointed glance at his and Melanie’s wedding portrait, which still kept pride of place over the mantelpiece in her sitting room, had said she wouldn’t allow a stranger in to do the work. He knew his mother was with him one hundred per cent; she’d loved Melanie like a daughter and grieved for her daily.

He’d drive back to the house, shower and change his clothes, and go to the office after a pot of strong black coffee, and ring Melanie tonight. And he had no intention of fooling himself the road to getting her back was going to be easy, he just knew it was a road he’d keep walking until… He shook his head. There was no until. He’d walk it. End of story.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT HADN’T been a particularly exhausting day, not compared to some, but when Melanie walked into the cottage that evening she felt bone-weary. Try as she might she’d been unable to think of anything else but Forde all day, endless post-mortems addling her brain until she barely knew which end of her was up. If James had asked her once if she was OK, he’d asked her a dozen times. She wondered what her very able assistant would have said if she’d told him she was verging on a cataclysmic nervous breakdown, she thought wryly, going through the nightly routine of taking off her boots on the mat and then heading for the stairs. Laughed, most likely, because he wouldn’t have taken her seriously. James thought she was the ultimate cool, collected, modern woman. Everyone did. Only Forde had ever understood the real her.

She mentally slapped herself for the thought. None of that. If she was going to take up the threads of this new life again—threads that had nearly been broken last night—then she had to control her mind. Simple. Only it wasn’t.

After turning on the taps for a warm bath, she went through to the bedroom, steeling herself to glance at the bed. It was rumpled and very, very empty. A shaft of physical pain made her wince. Grimly, she stripped off the covers and dumped them in her linen basket for a wash, opening the windows wide to let in the perfumed night air. It was her imagination that she could still smell Forde’s unique scent—a mixture of the expensive aftershave he favoured and his own chemical make-up, which turned into an intoxicating fragrance on his male skin.

It was as she was slipping off her jeans that she noticed the little ball of paper in a corner of the room where it had clearly been thrown. Her note. Oh, Forde, Forde …

She shut her eyes for a moment but tears still seeped beneath her closed lids. What must he have felt like reading it? But she couldn’t go there. She mustn’t. Walking across the room, she bent and picked it up. She didn’t straighten the paper out but held the little ball in one hand, stroking where he’d touched with one finger, guilt and shame washing over her.

She continued to cry all the time she was in the bath, but after she’d washed her hair and dried herself, she splashed her hot face with cold water and took stock. No more crying. She was done.

She pulled on an old pair of comfortable cotton pyjamas and looped her damp hair into a high bun, before going downstairs and fixing herself something to eat with the groceries she’d collected on the way home. It was hard to force the food down; she was on tenterhooks waiting for Forde’s call, but she managed to clear her plate and her full stomach helped to quieten her jangling nerves some.

The call came at eight o’clock.

‘Hi.’ His voice was cool and steady. She expected him to ask how she was or mention her ignominious flight before he awoke that morning, but, Forde being Forde, he didn’t do the expected. ‘We need to iron out the details for you to work at Hillview. You said you had some conditions?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice came out as a squeak and she cleared her throat. His rich, smoky tones had brought a whole rush of emotions she could have done without. ‘But before I start, are you sure Isabelle will want me around after—after everything?’

‘After you walking out and demanding a divorce, you mean?’ His even voice belied the content of his words. ‘Quite sure. My mother has always taken the view that what goes on between a couple is their business and theirs alone. You know her, you should realise that. Now, your conditions?’

Melanie felt she’d been thoroughly put in her place, and her voice was crisp when she said, ‘Firstly, in spite of what you’ve just said, I shall need to come and see Isabelle and discuss whether she wants me to do the job. If she does, then I’ll take it, but all the arrangements will be between myself and your mother. I don’t want you involved.’

‘Can you see my mother letting me be involved?’ he asked drily.

‘What I mean is—’

‘What you mean is that you don’t want me around, popping in for a visit, things like that?’

It was exactly what she meant. ‘I can’t stop you visiting your mother,’ she prevaricated awkwardly, ‘but in the circumstances it would be better all round if you tried to avoid doing so when I’m there, I guess.’ ‘Noted.’

Oh, hell, this was going worse than she’d imagined. ‘Of course if there’s a crisis of some kind with Isabelle’s health—’

‘I’ll be allowed on the premises,’ he finished for her.

‘Look, Forde—’

‘Next condition,’ he said politely.

Melanie took a deep breath. She was not going to let him get under her skin. ‘James and I are working on a job at the moment and there’s another lined up straight afterwards, which cannot wait, but it won’t take long. We were due to begin a fairly substantial project mid-September but I’ve been in touch with the people concerned and they’re happy to delay a while. In fact they’ve said they’d prefer the work doing in the spring because—’ She faltered; too late she wished she hadn’t begun the sentence. ‘Because the lady is expecting a baby at the end of October and hasn’t been too well lately. Her husband feels it would have been a little stressful for her. So, we’ve a space for Isabelle if she wants it.’