The Sweetest Secret

by Jacquie Underdown

  When she shifted back, opened her eyes and her fingertip drifted over his cheek leaving a trail of sensation that echoed throughout his body, she whispered, ‘I’ve had a change of heart too.’

  This, what was happening between them, was deep. Much deeper, much faster, than he had anticipated or experienced before.

  He understood why people said ‘falling’ in love because that’s what it was like. As though once he gave up his rigid control and allowed his emotions to run wild, it was like free-falling into a crevice. Fast. Headfirst.

  But the fall was exhilarating and equally frightening because he didn’t know what was at the bottom. Impossible to go back or change direction. Not that he wanted to. He kept holding Ellie close to him as they plummeted together into the unknown.

  He gripped her waist, spread his legs and pulled her between them so her chest was against his. He peered up into her eyes. ‘I’m falling in love with you, Ellie.’

  A slight widening of her eyes, a gentle breath outwards that sounded very much like relief, then a slow creeping smile spread over her face. ‘Me too.’

  Ellie’s lips met his again, and he held her tightly as they kissed. A kiss that was unlike any other they had shared. A kiss that was soft and probing, full of breath and warmth. Warmth that carried their true and deep feelings. Feelings of hope and joy, which they shared with each other along with all their intentions. Intentions that whispered about a future, union, and possession. Possession he ached for.

  When she pulled away, the air had shifted between them. His own body had shifted. As though with that kiss, his entire structure had transformed and recombined until she fit somewhere within that equation right in the location of his heart.

  So complex yet utterly simple.

  His body was designed to fall in love. Ellie was made for him to fall in love with.

  They spoke no more about feelings or love, instead continued with their soup as though the entire world hadn’t just changed.

  And when they were finished, and it was time for him to get back to the vineyard, Ellie gripped his hand. ‘Can you come over to my house tonight?’

  He nodded.

  She looked at her feet, then up to his face. ‘I need to tell you something that’s kind of important.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, his heart stopping for a moment. ‘Something good?’

  She didn’t answer for a long moment, just chewed on her lip, which was strangely arousing yet equally disturbing. ‘No. It’s not good.’

  A ball of glass grew and twisted in his gut. ‘Can you just tell me now?’

  ‘Now’s not the right place. Best if we have some privacy and time to talk without being interrupted.’

  ‘Are we okay?’

  She offered a strained smile and nodded. ‘I think we are.’

  He considered her for a long moment, trying to decipher meaning from her masked expression and from the small clues she had provided, but he couldn’t grip onto anything with substance. ‘Okay. I’ll come straight over after work.’

  She arched up onto her tiptoes, and with both hands on his shoulders, kissed him quickly on the lips. ‘Thank you for the surprise visit, and the soup.’

  He kissed her back, somewhat desperately. ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

  He started for the door, not wanting to leave, yet in some way wanting to get as far away as possible. ‘Yep. See you then.’

  The rest of the day dragged like his feet were held together by a rope connected to a bag of bricks. Every movement, the bricks were there, adding pressure, weight. What did Ellie want to talk about?

  His curiosity transformed into frustration. Why would she say they had to talk and then withhold what she needed to talk about? Why couldn’t she have given some kind of hint as to what was on her mind?

  His frustration leaked into his business life. He was snappy and impatient with his brothers and some of his employees.

  Near closing time, Tom pulled him aside. ‘Hey, what the hell is going on?’

  Sam’s jaw was tight. ‘I don’t fucking know, that’s the problem.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Ellie wants to talk to me about something tonight.’

  ‘And?’ Tom asked, Sam’s own impatience mirrored in his clipped tone.

  ‘And she didn’t tell me what it was about, but now I can’t stop thinking about it. And we’ve been going so well, and I think all that’s about to end.’

  ‘Have you … done something—?’

  ‘No, I haven’t done something!’

  Tom lifted his hands up. ‘I was just asking. I wasn’t accusing you of anything.’

  Sam blew out a long breath, scrubbed fingers through his hair. ‘This is why I don’t get involved with women.’

  Tom chuckled sardonically. ‘If you can’t handle this, mate, then you’ve got a long road ahead of you. If you want my advice—actually I don’t care if you want it or not, I’m giving it to you—calm the hell down. It’s probably something really minor she wants to tell you. She’s probably blowing it all out of proportion in her own head.’

  Footsteps crept up on them. Amy. ‘Hi, guys,’ she said, waving. She was smiling, but when she looked more closely at Tom and Sam, she frowned. ‘What’s going on here?’

  Sam shook his head.

  ‘He’s losing the plot because Ellie said she was going to talk to him about something tonight.’

  Amy nodded, and then said, ‘Oh,’ in a way that indicated she might know exactly what this talk would be about.

  Both Tom and Sam looked at her.

  ‘You know?’ Tom asked.

  Sam held his breath as he waited for the answer.

  Amy winced, looked away from them both. ‘I might know. But I’m not saying anything.’ She looked at Sam. ‘What she told me was in confidence. So it’s up to her to tell you.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ Sam asked.

  ‘It’s really not that big of a deal. Though it is for Ellie. It’s actually pretty huge for her.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake. All this tiptoeing around the point. Just tell me.’

  Amy shook her head, squeezed her lips together. ‘Na ah. This is between you and Ellie.’

  ‘But it’s no big deal?’ Tom asked.

  Amy shrugged and drew a deep breath in. ‘It could be. But, it doesn’t have to be.’

  Sam rolled his shoulders. ‘This is doing my head in.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘I’m heading over there now. You can do without me from here on out today, surely?’

  Tom nodded. ‘Yeah, mate.’

  ‘Would she be home yet, though?’ Sam asked, more to himself than to the others.

  ‘Yeah, I saw her leaving when I did,’ Amy said.

  ‘Okay, I’m out of here.’

  Sam rushed to his car and climbed inside, started the engine and headed directly to Ellie’s home.

  Chapter 25

  Ellie didn’t bother with small talk about how cold it was, how the snow had come down hard overnight and blanketed the roads. The look on Sam’s face when she let him into her home was enough to tell her that she better get to the point quickly.

  He couldn’t smile. He was rigidly upright. No emotion entered his voice bar social politeness. A wall had come down—a well-practised defence mechanism. And she did not like him while he was in this mode one bit—it chilled her.

  Not in a way that she was scared—she could never be scared of Sam—but, more so, chilled her because all his usual warmth was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Come through,’ she said after he perfunctorily kissed her on the cheek as he said hello. That in itself was unusual.

  Each day this week, either when she arrived at his house or him at hers, they had barely been able to get through the door without mauling each other. In fact, one afternoon they made love right up against the wall just inside the entrance to his house.

  The knotted ball of nerves in her stomach tightened. An eerie ringing sounded in her ears as
though she was walking up to the gallows.

  You’re being ridiculous, Ellie. Pull yourself together.

  But what if his feelings about her changed after she told him what she had to tell him? What if he couldn’t get past the fact that she had taken part in a marriage-wrecking affair?

  At In Bloom earlier today, after Sam admitted his deepening feelings for her, sensing that charge of emotion that burst from him and seeped into her own bones, she couldn’t continue this relationship without him knowing the full truth of her past.

  It made her feel so guilty to keep it a secret.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said, gesturing towards the couch.

  He sat, elbows on knees, hands gripped together. ‘So what did you want to talk about?’

  She was going to ask if he wanted a drink, but he was so wound up, she best just get on with it.

  Seeing him now, perhaps she shouldn’t have hinted about her need to talk to him.

  But earlier today, she was courageous. And she didn’t know if she would get a moment like that again. So she got it out there, in the open, that way she couldn’t chicken out.

  Ellie sat beside him. Not too close. About a body’s width between them. All afternoon, she had been rehearsing what she was going to say, but now the words were shrouded by nerves.

  She had to do this. No backing down.

  ‘Sam, I know that this relationship is really forcing us to deal with feelings and baggage we’d much rather leave well alone.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Although, the last week has been effortless. It’s been easy and so great.’

  Again the nod. Again no emotion.

  ‘But, I haven’t been entirely upfront with you about my past.’

  His eyes narrowed slightly.

  She rubbed her hands together, mustering all her bravery to just come out and tell him. ‘You know my last relationship didn’t end well.’

  He nodded.

  ‘There’s a little bit more to that story.’

  His eyebrows lowered, brow wrinkled. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Sit back,’ she said, then swallowed hard. ‘It’s a long story.’

  So she told him, every detail, exactly like she had explained to Amy. He allowed her to speak, uninterrupted, until the end when she burst into tears. She wiped at her cheeks, hating that these emotions still overwhelmed her. But the tears were more out of regret than anything else, and fear for how Sam might react.

  ‘That’s a lot to digest,’ he said.

  ‘I understand that. Of course it is. So if you need to take a few days or even longer to think about it all and assess where I now fit in your life, then, please, take the time to do that.’

  He sat up taller, linked his hands behind his head and sighed.

  Her stomach twisted.

  ‘I don’t need time to think about it,’ he said.

  She pulled her leg up under her and turned to face him more.

  He rubbed his palm over his chin, the scratchy sound filling the air, then he met her gaze head-on and said, ‘I really don’t think it’s an issue.’

  She baulked, sat back in the chair. ‘You don’t?’

  He shook his head, shrugged. ‘You loved him, or at least you thought you did. He was a manipulative fucker that strung you and his wife along in two destructive relationships simultaneously. He’s the one who needs his head read.’

  He pointed his finger at the chair emphatically. ‘He’s the one who should be here explaining and apologising for making you live with shame and guilt all this time. For fuck’s sake.’ He balled his hand into a fist a couple of times, then scratched his head with rough movements. ‘I really hate people like that. I hate how they can twist and manipulate until you think you’re the one in the wrong.’

  She picked at a loose thread on the couch cushion. ‘I could have left him once I found out about his wife. But I didn’t.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not jumping on board the Ellie-bashing train. You’ve beaten yourself up enough. We all make mistakes. If you were to tell me that you went straight back out and made the same choices again, then I might feel differently. If you were like some serial other-woman, then yeah, I’d run a mile. But we’re allowed at least one bad decision in our life. Surely.’

  Ellie couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Had she truly blown everything out of proportion? Had she failed to see that she was just as much a victim of Blair as his own wife was?

  Too right, she should never have continued that relationship. But she could see now that she had neglected to take into account Blair’s manipulation of the whole affair. He had played down their affair to such a level that she believed it was completely unimportant that he was married.

  Because of this, she had thought that his marriage was so terrible, such a trap for him, that their affair could be nothing but inconsequential to a marriage that was already failing.

  But he had lied. And when she did discover the truth, that he was happily invested in his marriage, to the point of having more children, she’d realised the error of her ways and immediately stopped it.

  Tears filled her eyes. Emotion clogged in her throat until it burst out in a sob. This had been such a point of shame for so long. And now, by Sam accepting it, how she felt about the affair and herself had changed. The relief within her soul was so immense, she couldn’t speak, could only cry.

  Sam shifted closer and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest. ‘Come on, Ellie, please don’t cry about it. You’re breaking my heart.’

  But she couldn’t stop as a year of anguish found an exit. Sam rubbed her back and wiped the hair from her face until all the tears she had kept inside were released.

  She had put her life on hold, spent a year searching her soul, trying to find where she was broken, for a man that didn’t deserve her time, let alone her life.

  To think that she very nearly didn’t pursue this wonderfully fertile relationship with Sam was too much to even contemplate.

  She lay against his chest for a long while, listening to his steady breath and heartbeat under her ear. His embrace was so strong and comforting, she didn’t want him to let go.

  When she was able to gather herself, she reluctantly unravelled her arms from around him.

  With this gesture of acceptance, how she felt for Sam was at a new level of intensity. Perhaps because the final barrier she had, which, without her even realising, was keeping a part of herself back, had been blasted away.

  ‘Thank you for understanding,’ she said, voice husky from the tears.

  He smiled. ‘I’m not going to judge you on your past. Especially when you overlooked mine. No-one is perfect. I never assumed you were.’

  She kissed him on the lips. ‘You’re pretty damn close to perfect.’

  ‘I love to hear you say that, but I don’t ever want you to think that. We need to be realistic here.’

  ‘Just let me revel in this moment for a little longer please before you drag me back down to Earth.’

  He kissed the top of her head. ‘Fine. Tell me I’m perfect some more. I won’t stop you.’

  She giggled; he laughed.

  ‘I hate to talk to you about past relationships. I know it adds nothing to ours. I just had to get that out in the open before I exploded.’

  He nodded. ‘I totally understand.’

  ‘Life is all about thinking you know people and having this idea in your mind about who you think they are. And you see the parts of them that are like yourself. But, in time, you discover that they are not who you thought they were. You see pieces of them so completely different to all the pieces of yourself. And the disappointment of that feels like a betrayal.

  ‘I kept falling for it. I kept thinking that men were a certain way and then they’d show me they were nothing of the kind. My love life has been a series of disappointments. It was as though I went through my childhood and early adulthood thinking people were perfect. Because I hadn’t developed a
ny flaws yet, I couldn’t see theirs.

  ‘People hide. Men hide. I hate that. I hate that I never truly know anybody. When I found out that Blair was married, I was so upset by his betrayal, but, more so, I was shocked that someone was capable of having a pregnant wife and go seeking another woman behind her back.’

  ‘I can’t even imagine what that man was thinking.’

  ‘I think, all along, that’s what I’ve been trying to heal—my relationship with reality. Blair shattered it. Then it was further shattered when I did something I never thought I was capable of. I became flawed too. I became someone who hid too.’

  He studied her pensively but stayed silent allowing her to continue.

  ‘So I’ve spent all this time thinking and thinking and thinking about what Blair had done and what I had done, over and over, trying to understand why and how. And that can be so tedious and boring and frightening.’

  He chuckled sardonically. ‘I know what overthinking feels like. Me this afternoon.’

  She kissed his lips. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘I guess at the end of the day, I’m frightened about what I don’t know about you and what I don’t know about myself and what kind of future will come from that. That’s what’s hard to deal with.’

  ‘I think we all feel a little like that,’ he said. ‘I certainly know what it’s like to learn that the person you thought you loved wasn’t a very nice person at all. I’ve done things and said things while in my relationship with Tamara that I regret. And like you, I was scrambling for some kind of footing too. I guess that’s how we learn. If it happens again now, you know what to do, right?’

  Ellie nodded. ‘Yeah, get the hell out of there as fast as possible. Don’t compromise my own integrity.’

  ‘There you go. And no matter how much we want to, we can’t predict the future. And no, we will never know the inner-world of another person, nor our own. But that’s the risk we take. And that’s why the rewards of taking that risk can be so great. Not all our life lessons are going to be easy, unfortunately. But maybe they’re the ones we learn the most from. Thanks to Tamara, I know the type of woman I don’t want to be with. But, I also know the type of woman I do want to be with. And that’s you.’