by Liz Fielding
When she’d heard the car draw up outside, had looked out and seen it was Max, her first thought had been to ignore him. She’d used the deadlock on the door so he couldn’t get in. Then he’d rung the doorbell, taking her by surprise, and she’d known that wouldn’t do.
She owed herself more than that. She needed to face him. Put an end to this once and for all. She’d buzzed him up and then slipped out of her wrap and back into her dress. Stepped into shoes that brought her nearly to his height. Full body armour.
She’d wanted him to see that after tonight there was nothing he could do or say that could provoke her into anger, or reduce her to tears. But even then, some little part of her heart had hoped that he’d find a way to touch her. Bring her back to life.
But she couldn’t allow it.
Tonight he’d not only stood her up, but he’d stood up Bella Lucia to save some sham of marriage. Still trying, in his head, to protect his mother from his father’s infidelity. To save himself from the fallout.
And he had no idea what he’d done. He thought he could brush it aside, that all he had to do was turn up, explain and everything would be all right.
‘Is that it?’ she asked.
‘You want me to go?’
He sounded surprised.
‘You’ve apologised, explained. What else did you have in mind?’
‘Don’t be like this, Louise. It was a genuine emergency.’
‘You should have called an ambulance.’
‘Believe me, I wish I had.’ Then, ‘I have the ring…’He reached into his ticket pocket, produced a perfect diamond solitaire.
‘So it’s true. You did find time to visit Garrard’s?’ She took the ring from him before he did anything as hideous as taking her hand and placing it on her finger.
He frowned. ‘How did you know that?’
‘One of the photographers outside the restaurant said you’d been seen there.’ She moved it so that the diamond flashed fire, burning her with its brilliance. ‘Be prepared to read about it in the Courier’s Diary column tomorrow.’
She took one last look at it, then handed it back.
‘You don’t like it?’
‘It’s quite lovely, Max.’ But too late. ‘Unfortunately if you married me you’d be committing bigamy. You’re already married to Bella Lucia.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘Is it? Really?’ She considered trying to explain. That she wasn’t turning him down just for herself, but for him, too. That forcing him to put her first was hurting him as much as always coming a poor second was hurting her. They were bad for each other. But it was too late. She was too tired. And he wouldn’t believe her anyway. Better to keep it simple…‘You did understand what I said on the last occasion you stood me up? You do recall asking for one last chance?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘But?’ She shook her head. ‘Don’t bother to answer that, Max. There is no “us”.’
‘If you’d been there…’he said, a little desperately. Then, angry at being backed into a corner, ‘I don’t know what you expect-’
‘I expect nothing from a man who would put business before life.’ Her throat was beginning to ache. The words were becoming harder. ‘Of a man who is incapable of doing anything else.’
It was why she hadn’t leapt in with an eager ‘yes’ the instant he’d asked her to marry him, she understood that now. Some inner sense of self-preservation had come to her rescue. The small, still voice of common sense telling her that, no matter what he said, he could never change. That she would always be waiting for him to turn up. To a party, their marriage, the rest of their lives.
If she’d made a promise to him nothing short of an act of God would have stopped her from delivering on it, but there was no point in telling him that. All that remained now was pride. The need to walk away with her head high.
‘What we had was great while it lasted, Max, but if we’re honest it was just sex. Steamy, memorable sex, but nothing more than the gratification of old desires.’ The casually dismissive words seemed to be coming from someone else. ‘Curiosity satisfied, ghosts laid,’ she said. ‘Now, we can both move on.’
‘No! I don’t want to move on. I love you!’
‘Need, desire…’
Love was something else. Something more. It was because she loved him that she couldn’t stay with him. Knowing that each time he let her down he’d feel more guilt…
Another minute, she begged, enough strength for just one more minute…
She hadn’t needed a ring, or even for him to say the words. The words meant nothing. ‘I love you’ was in what you did, the way you treated someone.
This was how James must have felt, she realised. Maybe she deserved this numbing blow to her heart that, for the moment, left her beyond feeling. She should be grateful for that reprieve, however short. The pain would come soon enough, but it was a familiar heartache. She’d lived with it before. Through all the years when he was out of reach. She could live with it again. For the moment all she asked was the strength to finish it without falling apart and she crossed to the door, opened it, a silent invitation to leave.
For a long moment Max didn’t move. He just looked at her with the bewildered expression of a child who’d been shouted at and didn’t know why.
He just didn’t get it. Never would…
‘Please…’ she said.
It sounded too much like a plea, too weak and in two strides he was beside her. For a moment she thought he was going to seize her, kiss her as he had before when she’d been on the point of walking away. But this time he just stood there, looking at her as if he was imprinting her image on his brain. Or maybe that was her, taking one last look…
‘I’ll see you tomorrow?’ he asked, finally. ‘At six-thirty?’
Business as usual? Was he serious?
It was too much…
‘You will be there?’ he pressed when she didn’t answer.
She shook her head, but he didn’t take it as a refusal, only as an admission that she didn’t know.
‘You’re exhausted,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about this tomorrow.’ And then he walked through the door she was not so much holding open as clinging to, down the stairs, out of her apartment. Out of her life.
It was all she could do not to call him back but she hung onto her sanity just long enough to hear the street door close. To close and lock her own front door.
It was only when she heard his car start, pull away from the kerb, that all the bottled up emotion shattered and she picked up her answering machine and hurled it at the wall, where it broke in a dozen pieces, along with her heart.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MAX left because she’d given him no other option. Louise had somehow managed to blank herself off from him, put herself some place far beyond the flare-up of temper that would have worked for him. He could have used her passion to break her down, bring her into his arms, but she’d put up a wall of ice to keep him out.
That in her own living room at close to two o’clock in the morning, she’d been wearing high heels, a dress he knew she’d have discarded for the comfort of her wrap the minute she’d got home, told him that it was deliberate. That she was playing a part.
The fact that she was still awake, clearly hadn’t even thought about bed, bothered him more. She hadn’t removed her make-up, and her hair was pinned up in that sexy way that suggested all it would take was one pin to bring it all tumbling down in his hands.
It all suggested that sleep had been the last thing on her mind. That she had more important things to do…
He pulled over, turned in his seat to look back. Her light was still on and for a moment he was tempted to go back, do anything, promise anything…
No.
She’d made it clear that she thought his promises were meaningless, and she was right. He’d been making promises to her all his life and then letting her down.
He needed to think about that. Really think about
it before he could go back, attempt to change her mind, convince her that he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life. He had to ask himself not what he wanted, but what Louise wanted from their relationship. And why he wasn’t giving it to her.
She’d told him all he needed to know, but, convinced that the proposal was nothing more than formality, he hadn’t bothered to use the information. Analyse it. Hadn’t listened to what she’d been telling him.
What three words would you use to describe yourself…?
Driven. Dumb. Dumped.
Louise went back to her packing. Concentrating on folding, packing. It took a while. She’d need suits as well as holiday clothes for this trip.
The last time she’d gone to Melbourne, she’d been running away from one family, searching for a new one. This time was different. This time she was reclaiming her life from a crippling obsession that had held her in its thrall since childhood hero-worship of Max had changed into something out of reach. Ultimately destructive.
She should have had a husband, children of her own by now, but there was no going back.
She didn’t have a family of her own and it seemed unlikely that she ever would have. But she did have a thriving business and a talented assistant whom she was ready to make a partner.
Gemma could bring in a junior, continue to run the London office. She, in the meantime, would concentrate on expanding her own business. Stop scanning the horizon for something, someone, who would never be there.
Her phone began to ring. It was the airline confirming her seat on the evening flight out of London Heathrow.
That was something her contact at the diary page of the Courier would be interested in, she thought. An unmistakable message that even Max would understand.
And a kindness. In his anger, he’d blame her. She didn’t want him to feel guilty. He was how he was. He couldn’t help it.
She’d call Gemma first thing, catch her before she left for the office and brief her about everything that had to be done. She’d better call Patsy, too, in case there was anything she wanted to send to Jodie. Then she’d spend the day with her parents out at Richmond Hill before going straight on to the airport.
Max…
He’d asked her if she planned keeping their six-thirty date. Well, it was just business, so it didn’t matter if it was Gemma who delivered the completed marketing plan which was, even now, sitting on her desk waiting to be delivered.
At six-thirty, she’d be unfastening her seat belt. Settling in for the long flight east.
She replaced the receiver, then bent to pick up the pieces of broken answering machine that were spread all over the carpet.
Under one of the larger pieces, she found a tiny gold safety pin. She looked at it for a moment, sitting back on her heels, wondering how on earth it could have got there. Even if she’d dropped it, and she couldn’t imagine how since the only pins she had were kept in the carryall she used for work or travelling, her cleaner had been in yesterday morning and she wouldn’t have missed it.
She reached out a finger and touched it, remembering the moment when she’d given one exactly like it to Max. How he’d taken it. Put it in his ticket pocket, next to his heart.
It had been a special moment. A moment when anything might have happened. When it had happened.
No regrets.
She’d got what she’d wanted. If it hadn’t worked out quite the way she’d expected, if she hadn’t managed to get Max out of her system, she still had more than she’d ever dreamed possible. She’d dared to risk everything and, even if she didn’t have Max, she had somehow reclaimed her life. No more deep freeze…
She picked up the pin, placed it on the table beside the broken bits of answering machine, then frowned as she remembered the moment Max had pulled that damned ring out of the same pocket.
No. It couldn’t be. He’d been wearing a dinner jacket tonight.
For it to be the same pin, he’d have had to move it from suit to suit along with the rest of the contents of his pockets that he carried with him, always.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just habit…’
But even as she said the words a tear welled up, fell. Soaked into the carpet.
Max hadn’t slept. He’d spent the night thinking. About Louise. About himself. About the bleakness of a future in which she wasn’t there at the start and end of every day.
Shining a light into every corner of their relationship, exposing feelings that he’d always refused to acknowledge, finally understanding a pattern of behaviour that had ended in that scene last night.
Searching for some way to show her that, despite everything he’d done, he was serious. That she was more important to him than a hundred restaurants. That he loved her…
He woke, groggy, just before ten, still in the armchair, an idea, half formed, struggling to the surface. He showered, shaved. Resisted the urge to go straight to her office and tell her what he was going to do.
Six-thirty. That was their time.
It would give him time to put his plan into action so that she’d understand that it wasn’t some empty promise.
She had to understand.
It was his secretary, bringing in the mail, who looked doubtful. She listened to him telling the company lawyer to set the wheels in motion, insisting that it be done in time for his daily meeting with Louise, then, when he rang off, said, ‘Are you expecting Louise this evening?’
‘Has she called to say she can’t make it?’
‘No, but…’
‘But what?’
She went and fetched the early edition of the Courier, folded it back at the diary page.
In between a torn heart, one enclosing a photograph of Louise, one of himself, was the headline:
“NO DIAMONDS FOR THESE VALENTINES…
Expectations were high of an announcement that Max Valentine had popped the question to his latest squeeze, Louise Valentine, at the Bella Lucia Diamond Jubilee party last night. Max, who has been working with Louise on the expansion of the restaurant group, with new premises in Qu’Arim and Meridia already well in hand, was spotted recently in the Queen’s jewellers, Garrard’s, investing heavily in a girl’s best friend.
Max, however, wasn’t at the party and I have it on good authority that London’s favourite PR consultant has already booked her business class ticket and is at this very moment packing her bags, preparing to hotfoot it to Australia, eager to expand her own expire.
He didn’t stop to question the veracity of this statement. It rang too horribly true. Instead he raced to her apartment, grabbed the front door as someone was leaving and raced upstairs, hammered on the door to her apartment.
It was opened by Cal Jameson.
‘Max,’ he said. ‘Louise said to expect you.’
‘She’s here?’ Relief flooded through him. ‘I have to see her, tell her…’
‘She was leaving as I arrived,’ Cal said. ‘Gave me a key, told me to make myself at home. I’m staying for a week this time-’
‘Where is she?’ he demanded, cutting him short. He wasn’t interested in Cal Jameson’s plans. Only in finding Louise.
‘I couldn’t say exactly. Somewhere between here and Melbourne. That’s in Australia,’ the younger man added helpfully.
‘She’s gone? Already?’ Max clawed back his hair. ‘She can’t have. What about work? Her parents?’
‘Damm it, Max. You’ve got it bad. You need a drink-’
‘I don’t want a drink. I just want-’
‘Louise. I know, mate. I know. You’d better come in.’
Louise gripped the arms of the seat, hating the moment of takeoff. Hating the moment when the huge jet banked over London. Letting out a sigh of relief as the ping of the seat-belt warning light went off.
A stewardess offered her a drink, but she shook her head. No alcohol, minimum food, lots of water. And sleep. She needed sleep. At least the unexpected upgrade from club to first class gave her all the
stretch room she needed.
She even had an empty seat beside her.
No one to disturb her while she laid out her plans for expansion into Australia, she congratulated herself. No one to disturb her, ever again.
It couldn’t be more perfect, she told herself as she bent to retrieve her laptop at her feet.
Then someone took the seat beside her.
She glanced sideways at her new companion, nodding distantly, not making eye contact-the last thing she wanted was a chatty travelling companion-then did the fastest double take in history.
‘Max!’ His name was expelled on what felt like the last breath in her body. Then, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s six-thirty,’ he said. ‘We always meet at this time of day.’
‘But Gemma was going to-’
‘Stand in for you? While I’m sure she’s a perfectly capable young woman, that wasn’t the deal we made. And as I’m sure you’ll recall, Louise, I paid in advance.’
She gasped. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’
‘Of course you can. You can believe anything of me. The fact that you’d get on an aircraft and run away to the other side of the world to avoid me proves it.’ He opened his briefcase, took out a thick envelope. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate it,’ he said. ‘It has given me an opportunity to demonstrate just how serious I am when I tell you that I’ll never stand you up again.’
‘I’m not running away!’ she said, fiercely. ‘This has nothing to do with you, Max. This is about me. I’ve spent my whole life wanting something just out of reach. It’s time to grow up, move on, live the life I’ve got, not the one I dreamed…’
She applied the brake to her mouth, but not soon enough.
‘Not the life you dreamed of?’ he asked, gently.
‘Not all dreams are good dreams, Max.’
‘No. And not all mistakes are bad.’ He leaned back, closed his eyes momentarily. ‘Not that last night was a mistake. I did what I thought was the right thing, Louise. I can’t change who I am.’
‘I know. I understand…’
‘It was all the other times that I got it wrong. But maybe not entirely wrong.’