Jess took a step forward and slapped her hand on his chest. ‘Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare call this being honest! This is you being a chicken-crap coward! This is you being scared of being close to someone, of exploring your feelings, of admitting that I mean more to you than a quick fling.’
Luke scowled at her. ‘Get real. This is about you making decisions on my behalf, insinuating yourself into my bed and my life—’
‘Insinuating myself into your bed and your life?’ The words roared out of Jess with the force of a freight train. ‘Who was the one who kept saying that this was a bad idea, that we shouldn’t sleep together because it would get complicated? That was me!’
‘Well, we did, and I knew that I’d regret it!’
Luke’s eyes were a deep green and as hard as granite. He was slipping further and further away from her to a place where she wouldn’t be able to reach him.
‘Luke, please don’t do this...’ Jess’s anger faded and she put her hand out to him. She winced when Luke jerked away from her touch. He was gone, slipped over. She’d lost him...
Jess felt her heart crack. ‘Why are you deliberately misconstruing my actions?’ she demanded. ‘I tried to give you a heads-up eight years ago about St Sylve and you tore me apart. I believe that you need to know that your mum loved you—adored you—but I’m being told that I’m an overbearing, interfering, controlling witch.’
Jess heard her voice grow stronger and she squared her shoulders and looked Luke in the eye.
‘And the icing on the cake? You slept with me because I was handy? Nice, Luke.’ Jess scrubbed her hands over her face. This day had gone to hell in a handbag... Her voice vibrated with emotion when she spoke again. ‘I thought you were it, Luke.’
‘It?’
‘The person I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. It just goes to show how utterly stupid I can be on occasion.’ Jess’s voice broke. ‘But you know what? I deserve more and I definitely deserve better. There were kinder ways to get rid of me, Luke.’
She took her keys out of her back pocket and played with them, fighting back tears. She looked around the room.
‘Please ask Angel to pack up my stuff. I’ll pay her to do it. I’ll send a courier company to pick it up. I can’t be here another second. Consider me history, Luke.’
When she was at the door she thought she heard him say her name, softly and laced with pain. But when she turned around Luke was still sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at the carpet between his legs. It was just her active imagination, conjuring up scenes and possibilities that were impossible.
Walking away from him, from the place—the person—she considered her home took more courage than she’d known she had.
* * *
It was two-forty a.m. and Luke couldn’t sleep. Instead he lay on the leather couch in front of his flat-screen, watching the final advert for St Sylve for the... He’d forgotten how many times he’d watched it. He watched Jess jump into his arms, felt his heart clench each time she did it.
The rain hammered down outside, as it had done for the past week. He’d spent the day placing sandbags next to the stream that ran past the eastern vineyard. The stream was pumping, and more rain upstream would cause it to break its banks and flood the vineyard. He recalled his grandfather talking about that same stream bursting its banks in fifty-eight and washing away a good portion of the vines.
He had no problem learning from his forefathers’ mistakes.
It was learning from his own that he was having problems with.
Earlier tonight, unable to sleep, he’d reopened the envelope Jess had left behind and properly read the papers inside. The contents of which he was still trying to process...
According to the notes Jess had jotted down, his aunt had died shortly after his father passed away, but her daughter, who now lived in the cottage, had kept her mother’s papers and knew about Katelyn.
Long story short: his mum hadn’t left him. According to the daughter, his mother had left him at St Sylve for a couple of days while she sorted out a house to rent close to her sister. She’d already moved the bulk of his toys and clothes and his father had known that she was leaving.
He’d been an oops—a very welcome mistake for his mother, a way to be trapped into marriage for his father. They’d married, and the relationship had always been stormy. His father’s affairs and his inability to share his time, his money and St Sylve with her had led to her decision to leave.
She’d been on her way to collect him when she’d died. Subsequently his father had refused his aunt permission to see him or to have anything to do with him. She’d sent letters and birthday presents every year. When Luke had left school his aunt’s health had been failing and she’d decided to let fate run its course. If he chose to seek her out then so be it.