Second Chances: Novella One

by Jo Briggs

  “Plus I want our first time to be more comfortable than on a wet patch of grass! I want you in my bed again, Layla,” Evan stated, more boldly than he felt inside. “But I know we still have so much to straighten out first.”

  So much for keeping it as just friends to begin with!

  Layla looked so taken aback that Evan wondered whether he was going to have to do some serious backtracking.

  To his surprise, she replied, “I would like that too.” Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. “But we should talk first. I want all the issues out in the open before we go down that path.”

  “Agreed,” he said with a smile as he slid a finger over her cheek where a drop of water had just landed. Looking skyward, he remarked, “We’d better head back as it looks like it is going to rain hard.”

  ***

  Layla

  Following the horse ride, Layla went in search of her phone, which she had left in the sun room, to see if she had received any messages. She was expecting one from either Cameron or Ava, and another from Lucy to ask what she’d decided to do about Bennett coming up to Yorkshire. Layla’s new house was still a few days away from being ready, and she wanted to spend that time alone with Evan to talk. While she missed her child dreadfully, she was not sure if she could risk him being around Evan until the latter had been told everything, but she was scared where to start.

  Grabbing her phone, Layla found an expected missed call from Ava. Leaving the sun room, she stepped outside on to a decked area that gave way to a perfect view of the English patchwork countryside, sprawling far towards the horizon. Selecting her sister's number from her list of contacts, she dialled it.

  “Hi, Layla!” Ava's voice was still a little scratchy from where she had a breathing tube in her throat.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Layla asked anxiously.

  “Yes, I’m fine, don't start worrying,” Ava answered. “They are taking excellent care of me and the food here is to die for. Don't think I want to leave until I can stand on my own two feet again and cook for myself, otherwise I might die from having to experience Cameron's soup!”

  There was obvious teasing in Ava’s voice and hearing Cameron’s feigned hurt reply in the background, Layla couldn’t help but laugh. It was an in-family joke that you had to avoid Cameron's cooking against all costs as he’d caused food poisoning to his sisters and parents when he was a teenager.

  “And how are you doing?” Ava asked.

  Layla was aware of how anxious she would be over her being alone with Evan.

  “Things are okay. We just came back from a horse ride. I rode Pepper.” Layla tried to keep her voice within its usual volume and neutral in emotion while knowing that Ava would guess the significance of the name.

  “Wow, I bet that felt strange?”

  As well as Pepper being the first gift that Evan ever bought her, during one of her solo rides to seek solitude while recovering from the loss of her parents, Layla had taken a tumble when she tried to take a jump at an awkward angle. Luckily, Layla had taken her mobile with her and was able to alert Evan as to her whereabouts.

  Due to concerns over internal bleeding, some routine tests had been carried out. They showed a significantly high pregnancy hormone in Layla’s bloodstream, but the ultrasound did not find a foetus. When the hormone started to decline in another test a couple of days later, the doctor had simply concluded that the force of the fall had caused its loss.

  “As funny as it might seem, it was therapeutic to get on her again,” Layla replied. “It led to us coming to a tentative understanding about things.”

  The sisters continued to discuss what the doctor had said and then agreed to talk the next day.

  ***

  Evan had given Layla the security access code needed to hook up her laptop to Wi-Fi. After setting herself up at a large table alongside his desk in the study, she sighed as a hundred unread emails stared back at her. She had programmed her smart phone to push through only the truly urgent messages; namely those from her sister, her assistant, the managers of her stores and the interior designer. All of these unread emails were of lesser importance, but she never totally trusted the technology and always went through everything with a fine tooth comb. ‘Control freak’ was a nickname that those close to Layla often teased her with.

  “Do you mind if I put on some music?” Evan queried.

  “No, that’s fine,” she said. “I’m used to working with a lot of background noise. My studio gets rather chaotic when we’re under pressure to put a collection out or have photographers booked to visit for a showing.”

  Layla employed a team of twenty, varying from style consultants and colour predictors to textile designers, pattern cutters, a merchandising consultant and a PR consultant. Her main day-to-day conversations were held with her assistant, Maisie, who was her frontline defence, fielding away the majority of responsibilities to enable Layla to spend most of her time sketching ideas. As she was a perfectionist about every single pattern or fabric used with her creations, the only person to bypass Maisie was her assistant designer, Luke, who had that final say so.

  Evan disappeared off into the media room to turn on the music system. With hi-tech speakers wired into every room, the music instantly drifted to her ears. He then brought in two mugs of tea and settled down in front of his laptop.

  After working her way through half of the unread emails, Layla launched Skype to talk to her son; a regular occurrence at this time of the afternoon when he came home from nursery. With Evan safely absorbed in his own work and making the occasional phone call, Layla assumed he wouldn’t pay much attention to her conversation or bother to approach her side of the room to see the little boy on the video.

  Obviously, she was wrong. Almost immediately, Evan seemed to become distracted from his own work by overhearing her light-hearted interaction with this unknown child. With a curious expression etched on his face, he walked over and peered at her screen, waiting for an introduction. Layla panicked.

  Doing her best to remain calm, she introduced Evan. Her son had seen some old photographs of the man, yet he knew neither his name nor his relative significance. Layla thought Bennett would not connect Evan to those pictures, but was a touch nervous about Evan piecing the clues together. With the greetings out of the way, Layla swiftly wound up the conversation, her heart in her mouth the whole time, just waiting for Evan to call her out on her secret. But it never came. She was going to have to confess all before speaking to her son again on Skype, because her nerves would not take another moment like that one.

  “He looks so much like you,” Evan remarked quietly, his sad tone not lost on her as they locked eyes.

  Layla knew he was thinking about their dead child. Gulping down her feelings of guilt, she smiled meekly and nodded.

  ***

  Evan

  Evan couldn’t help but enjoy watching Layla work her way through the remaining emails. She did not seem to notice him staring as she hummed along to the songs, while doing a slight upper-body dance when she got right into a verse. He remembered how she’d always enjoyed music, and they had gone to many concerts and nightclubs where her enthusiastic dancing had caused a stir.

  “Who’s singing this? The voice seems familiar, but I can’t quite place it or the song.”

  Evan woke up from his trance with a bump to find Layla looking at him curiously. Feeling his cheeks flaming up, he said, “Me,” quietly, feeling quite embarrassed. He had removed the song from his iPod on several occasions, but it always made its way back on when Amber came to stay.

  “You?” she asked, incredulously, looking quite taken back. “I don't recognise the song. Is it a cover?”

  “No, it’s a song I wrote myself. A friend of mine from Cambridge is a music producer, and Amber arranged, as a birthday surprise, for me to have some studio time. My friend mixed and recorded this song, and a couple of others, for me,” Evan explained, feeling slightly awkward. He hoped Layla did not recognise that the lyri
cs were clearly about her.

  Layla

  Layla listened intently to the rest of the song. “It sounds fantastic, Evan. You can truly feel the emotion of each word.”

  She felt breathless listening to the intensity of his singing voice; it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. As the chorus repeated several times, Layla began to wonder who he had written it about; obviously someone he cared about profoundly. She felt quite jealous that another woman had invoked such emotion in him.

  A sudden thought sprung to mind that it might have been written for Caggie, and the idea made her feel nauseous. “She must be quite a woman to have inspired such a song,” Layla said, trying to sound casual as she spoke the words, but sure he must have noticed the slight waver in her voice.

  Standing up, Evan moved from his desk, knelt beside her chair, and placed his hand over hers. “Yes, she is.”

  Layla tried to pull her hand away. “Evan, please don’t torment me with information like that,” she said abruptly, frustration written all over her face. “I know I’ve no right to be jealous, but I am!” She tried to move her chair backwards to get away, but Evan was too quick and stopped her, instead pulling her into his chest.

  Looking up at him blankly for a few moments, Layla began to feel rather stupid that such a straightforward thing could produce such a strong response in her. There was no reason why he shouldn’t have written the song for another woman, after all.

  “I’m sorry, Evan, for acting so pathetically. You owe me no explanation,” she said, her eyes smudged with tears.

  “Layla,” he replied, his voice level and patient; his expression soft with emotion. “It was about you, silly! You’ve always been my muse, and will continue to be so.” He reached over to kiss her tentatively, trying to offer reassurance.

  Layla allowed herself to kiss him back.

  “Go and put your glad rags on and I’ll take you out to dinner, so we can really start talking,” Evan said quite firmly. Straightening himself from his kneeling position, he closed the lid of her laptop before she could protest.

  She smiled at this course of action. “Okay.”

  Back in her room, Layla headed into the en-suite bathroom where she removed her riding outfit and stepped into the walk-in shower. She let the warm water run all over her body as she leaned against the cool tiles. Why was she acting like an emotional wreck in front of Evan? He had been nothing but kindness personified during the two outbursts she’d had so far. So much for impressing him as being the strong businesswoman who everyone else thinks I am. He always had a way of seeing right through any facade.

  Deep in thought, and with the noise of the water running in her ear, Layla did not notice the glass door open. Suddenly she became aware of pair of strong hands snaking down the sides of her body and a voice whispering in her ear, “Mind if I join you and save on water?”

  “Oh, my God, Evan, you scared me,” Layla exclaimed, almost jumping out of her skin, but she quickly turned to face him while remaining in the confines of his embrace.

  Pulling back for a second she drank in the delicious sight of his naked flesh, her eyes drifting to the taut abdominal muscles that shaped into a downward V where his magnificent appendage hung semi-erect. Her core clenched and quivered with desire at the thought of him, filling her completely with its hardness as he pounded her against the wall.

  Their lips met, shyly at first, but quickly deepening into old familiarity; his tongue daring to dart forward to tangle with hers as his hands rubbed against her softness, sending tingling sensations that jolted every nerve end in her body to life as the water rushed over them.

  Evan pinned her against the tiled wall with his upper body, whispering words of endearment against her ear before reclaiming her lips as he kissed her more frantically. All too soon, he pulled away, leaving her breath ragged with the exhilaration of the moment.

  Stepping out from under the water, Evan looked her straight in the eye and said, “Never doubt that I adore you and am done with pussyfooting around.” With that, he was gone, presumably to dress for their dinner reservation.

  Layla was left feeling overwhelmed by the interaction. Her skin was still warm from the man’s touch, her lips puffy and pulse racing. It took her quite a few minutes to peel herself off the ceiling. One word flashing through her mind: wow!

  Half an hour later, Evan knocked on her bedroom door and called out, “Are you ready or shall I go downstairs and wait?”

  “No, come in. I’ll be right with you,” she replied.

  Before stepping into the sitting-room area of her suite, where Evan was lingering, Layla checked her appearance in the full-length mirror one more time, eager to impress him with her dress.

  Evan was wearing a smartly tailored suit, which had been cut from an expensive-looking, navy pin-stripe material and brought out the azure gleam of his eyes. Layla’s heart swelled with pride at the man standing in front of her; he had surely earned the title of ‘One of the sexiest men in the world’ that had appeared in a recent magazine.

  Layla had chosen a one-shoulder, deep chocolate dress that ended at her ankles, emphasising her curves in all the right places while not being overly figure-hugging, and a pair of silver Louboutin high heels on her feet making her as tall as Evan.

  “You look stunning, Miss Keyes,” Evan stated, placing several kisses on the curve of her neck, which left her stomach doing cartwheels and made her knees weaken in anticipation. There was already a visible red mark on her neck from their shower scene earlier, as though he had marked his territory. She rewarded his compliment with a pearly white smile.

  Chapter Six

  Evan

  As Evan’s car emerged from behind the electric gate at the end of his driveway, and waited for an opportunity to join the moving traffic, a couple of photographers popped up out of nowhere and started snapping photos of the alarmed occupants. Swearing, Evan wanted to get out and make them delete the images, but Layla persuaded him to just drive on.

  “God damn it!” he swore again, pounding the steering wheel in frustration.

  “Why are you letting it bother you so much? You must get photographed all the time.”

  “I have my reasons,” he said tightly, and Layla did not ask anything further.

  Evan could not think of anything worse than having a photograph of Layla and him leaving Winster House together being sold to a national tabloid for tomorrow’s edition; not because he wasn’t proud to be seen with her, but he was wary of a particular person seeing it and being spurred on to make even more blackmail threats before he had a chance to tell Layla everything.

  He had chosen to take her to a popular oyster bar and seafood restaurant, which was a half-hour drive away to the east along the Lincolnshire seafront. A two-star Michelin chef ran it.

  When they pulled up outside the eatery, Evan sent Layla in ahead of him, excusing himself to make a quick phone call to his cousin, Adam Williams, who was his right-hand man. Titled Head of PR, Adam was much more than that when it came to the day-to-day responsibilities of Evan's company and personal life. He also got rid of any problems.

  “Adam, paps were outside the house, and managed to get some pics of Layla and me, as we were leaving in the same car. Can you see what you can do to get them buried?”

  “Layla..?”

  “Long story, short – she is staying at my house while Ava is in hospital.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, but no promises. A photo of you two is bound to be in high demand after all this time,” Adam replied. “I might not be able to persuade all avenues not to publish it.”

  “Just buy me a few days until I can put some damage limitation in place.” Hanging up and switching the phone to vibrate, Evan joined Layla inside the restaurant.

  Each of them ordered a starter of Evan’s favourite dish of oysters in a chill coriander dressing, with a main of her choosing, the king prawns and scallops. In between the courses, he could not stop touching her. Entwining his large finger
s around her slender ones had a way of calming all the lack of control he sometimes felt.

  With the dinner plates cleared away, and both of them having polished off half a bottle of red between them, Evan plucked up enough courage to see if a less-guarded Layla would give any answers to the least probing of his long list of questions.

  “So now you have stables, I hope you feel comfortable enough to take Pepper? She was a gift to you, after all,” he suggested while trying to assess her reaction to such an idea.

  Evan wondered whether Layla was truly over the repercussions of losing their child after falling from the horse. He still experienced a residual emptiness over it, even though he was now a father to a delightful one-year-old daughter, and it had hit them both hard at the time. Layla had already been in a spiral of misery over the death of her parents for several weeks before the accident, although discovering she was pregnant had drawn her out of her shell for a while. However, the consequent loss caused the black mood to resurface.

  Taking a sip from her wine, Layla replied without hesitation, “Of course. It was my error of judgement that led to the accident – it wasn’t the animal’s fault. And for the sentimental reason that she was my first gift from you,” she stated simply.

  “Do you ever ponder what might have been if there the child had survived?”

  Evan knew it was a precarious question to ask, but he had to start understanding her thoughts about what had ripped apart their idyllic relationship and turned it into a nightmare.

  Layla’s eyes flashed a dark ember as an emotional fire began to burn. She gulped nervously as she weighed up the options of whether to use this opportunity to tell him of the existence of his child. Would it be better in public or private? Would he make less of a scene in public? She didn’t feel brave enough to test out the theory yet.

  “For the first few months or so, I felt guilty every day for losing it. I did contemplate what it might be like to have a child at that point, and what he or she might have been like, but that was only after I had put the guilt aside. I believe what compounded the situation of the loss of our baby was the domino effect it had on our relationship,” she said slowly, her voice controlled. “But, I must confess that when Bennett came along it eased my pain over the loss of the first one, though not replacing it, of course.”