Just One Last Night

She sighed heavily, swigging back half a cup of coffee and looking up into the dark velvet sky above, punctured by hundreds of twinkling stars. She had to get a handle on this. Her dream of a happy-ever-after ending had been smashed to pieces months ago so why was she dredging up the past? She wasn’t like anyone else—that was what Forde didn’t understand. And it wasn’t his fault he’d married a jinxed woman. But she would never let herself get close to anyone again; that way she couldn’t be hurt and neither could anyone else.

Finishing the last of the coffee, she continued to sit on as the sky lightened and the birds woke up, her limbs leaden. She hadn’t really slept well since Forde had come back into her life again—not that he’d ever left, if she was being brutally honest. She might not have spoken to or seen him those seven months before he had written to her, but he’d only been a heartbeat away, nonetheless.

This had to get better, she told herself miserably. It must. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life feeling like this. Her grief and remorse about Matthew would always be with her; she had come to terms with that and in a strange way almost welcomed it. If she couldn’t do anything else for her darling little boy she could mourn him, and as long as she was alive he would never be forgotten but cherished in her heart. But the sense of loss about Forde was different and much more complicated.

Stop analysing. She shut her eyes, letting the first gentle rays of the sun warm her face. By ten or eleven o’clock it would be baking hot and less of a blessing, but right now it felt comforting. She felt so tired—physically, mentally and emotionally—but she had to keep going. And there were people so much worse off than she was: folk with terminal illnesses or severe health issues. At least she was young and strong and fit. She mustn’t turn into a whinger—she’d always hated them.

The silent pep talk helped a little, enough to get her on her feet anyway. After leaving the coffee tray in the kitchen she went upstairs to shower and change, and by seven o’clock was on the road. After picking James up from the house he rented with three friends—it was pointless them both driving the hundred-mile round trip each day—they drove to Hillview on roads not yet traffic logged with morning traffic, arriving at Isabelle’s house just after eight.

The first thing Melanie noticed was Forde’s Aston Martin parked in the driveway. Her stomach somersaulted, but James was unfurling himself out of the truck and stretching, and didn’t glance at her before starting to unload some of the equipment in the back of the pickup. By the time she joined him on

the drive she was in command of herself, but angry. Forde had promised he’d stay away when she was around, and she didn’t believe for a moment he wasn’t aware she was starting work today. This was so, so unfair.

She heard the front door open and knew by some sixth sense Forde was standing there, but she didn’t glance his way, continuing to help James until they were done. By that time Forde had walked down the drive from the house to where they were parked, some yards from the Aston Martin.

‘Good morning.’ His voice was cool, clipped, and as she looked at him she saw the silver-blue eyes were cold and he wasn’t smiling.

Her anger went up a notch. How dared he look at her like that when he shouldn’t be here? Her tone matching his, she said pointedly, ‘Good morning, Forde. I’m starting work on the garden today or had it slipped your memory?’

‘No, it hadn’t slipped my memory,’ he said evenly, holding out his hand to James as he added, ‘I’m Forde Masterson, Melanie’s husband. I take it you’re James?’

She’d forgotten she’d employed James after she’d left Forde and the two men hadn’t met. She watched James take Forde’s hand almost gingerly and she didn’t blame him; Forde was making no effort to be friendly, his face straight and his eyes narrowed.

James mumbled a polite hello and then extracted his hand, saying he’d start taking some of the equipment to the back of the house before scampering off with armfuls of tools.

‘You spoke about your assistant as though he was a young lad just out of school and wet behind the ears,’ Forde said accusingly. ‘He’s a grown man of what—twenty-four, twenty-five?’

‘What?’ Why was he talking about James when he knew full well he shouldn’t be here?

‘And he looks to me as though he knows his way about,’ Forde added grimly. ‘In every sense of the word.’

‘James backpacked round the world for three or four years with his friends after leaving uni, and I have never suggested he was a young boy.’ Melanie glared at Forde. ‘Not that that’s any of your business. And why are you here this morning anyway?’

‘So I was right. He’s twenty-four, twenty-five?’

Why this obsession with James’s age? ‘He’s twenty-six, and, I repeat, why are you here?’

‘Answering an early-morning summons by my mother because she thought she had a bird down the chimney,’ Forde answered shortly. ‘OK? And before you ask, no, there was no damn bird.’

Since an incident some years ago when a large wood pigeon had fallen down Isabelle’s chimney and then positioned itself on a ledge a few feet up from the fireplace where it had cooed frantically until Forde had arrived and got it out, along with a cloud of soot and grime that had covered the room in smuts, there had been several such fruitless summonses by Forde’s mother. Isabelle lived in horror of inadvertently lighting the fire and burning a bird alive, even though Forde had told her repeatedly that the stainless-steel mesh bird cowl he’d had installed in the top of the chimney to prevent just such a catastrophe made it impossible. When she had still lived with Forde he had been convinced that the wood pigeon he’d rescued took a fiendish delight in sitting on the roof and calling down the chimney to fool his mother and cause him grief.

‘Oh.’ Melanie nodded, feeling guilty of her suspicions, and—although she would rather die than admit it, even to herself—a little piqued that his presence had absolutely nothing to do with a desire to see her.

‘So this James.’ Forde raked back his hair with an impatient hand. ‘Is he married? Got a long-term girlfriend? What?’

He was jealous. As the light dawned Melanie stared at him in amazement. He surely didn’t think… She didn’t know whether to take it as a compliment or an insult that he thought a handsome, virile, young stud like James would bother with a married woman two years older than himself and with enough baggage to fill umpteen football stadiums. She decided on the latter. ‘James’s personal life is his own business,’ she said icily. ‘He works for me, that’s all, Forde. Got it?’

Forde looked spectacularly unconvinced.

‘He favours statuesque brunettes who can play tennis and squash and all the other sports he’s mad about as well as he does, and who can stay up all night dancing in clubs and then go sailing after breakfast,’ Melanie stated firmly. ‘But even if I was his type, and he mine, it still wouldn’t be an option. I’m his employer, he’s my employee. End of story.’

She watched him expel a silent sigh. It was a completely inopportune moment to feel such a consuming love for him it stopped her breath. She dropped her eyes, scared he might see what he must not see. He clearly hadn’t stopped to shave before he’d left home and the black stubble accentuated his rugged good looks tenfold. Combine that with the casual clothes he was wearing—open-necked shirt showing a hint of dark body hair and beautifully cut cotton trousers—and he was any maiden’s prayer. Their mother’s and grandmother’s too.

His voice came low and intense. ‘This should be the moment when I say I’m sorry and I have no right to ask, but I’m not sorry and I have every right to ask. You’re my wife.’

It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done to raise her gaze to his without betraying herself. ‘It’s over, Forde.’

‘It will never be over,’ he said roughly. ‘It wasn’t a piece of paper that joined us, Nell, or a man of the cloth saying a few words and two gold rings. You’re mine, body, soul and spirit. I love you and I know you love me.’