by Kate Hardy
Life would carry on and it did. On the surface, Rose functioned as she always had. Competent and reliable at work, sociable enough with her circle of friends.
Breaking out of the mould was well and truly abandoned. The only surprise was her sister’s reaction. Lily was disproportionately upset at the turn of events and that touched Rose.
‘You’ll get over it, Lily,’ she laughed wryly down the phone. ‘And so will I. In a year’s time, we’ll both see this as just another experience in the great adventure that is life.’ She couldn’t stand the thought that the damage done was irreparable. Surely not. Broken hearts mended, didn’t they? Every magazine assured her of that.
But six weeks down the road, and Rose still found it hard to find a way through the dense fog of misery. She felt like a robot, going through the motions while underneath everything wilted and shrivelled away and died.
She had no idea what Nick was doing and she avoided buying any tabloids just in case she was tempted to open up those scurrilous gossip pages where she might see a picture of him cavorting with another redhead, mark two. Mark one might have been a distraction, but mark two would certainly have been the truly-narrow-escape replacement.
In the midst of this never-ending battle with her torn emotions and the sheer effort needed to carry on going to work, socialising with friends and pretending that all was well in the world of Rose Taylor, the dawning realisation that something else was very wrong took a little while to filter through.
When it did, the fragile glue that was binding her daily life together dissolved like wax in a flame and the truly sickening question reared its ugly head.
What on earth was she to do now?
CHAPTER TEN
ROSE was on her way up to see him. Right now. At three in the afternoon. Right here. In his office.
Nick had no idea what she wanted. It had been nearly two months since he had set eyes on her and he had daily told himself that her disappearance from his life was the best thing that could have happened. He told himself that he had offered her the unthinkable and she had turned him down, proving his theory that women, each and every one of them, were out to change the men they purported to care about.
He had replayed countless times in his head that moment when she had told him that she was in love with him. If she were in love with him, he thought, why couldn’t she have accepted what he had offered?
Because her aim had been to turn him into the domesticated animal that he was not and never would be.
It was a source of constant and relentless frustration that he still couldn’t dismiss her from his head, where she had taken up residence and refused to budge.
He knew that his work was being affected. Not his ability to work, which was part and parcel of the essence of him, but his demeanour at work.
More than once he had been tempted to call her, but he hadn’t and he never would. Pride would never allow him to pick up that phone and dial her number.
But, and this was the thought that haunted him late at night when there was nothing to distract him, he longed for her. He wanted her loving him. He missed her. And he didn’t know why.
Now his secretary had buzzed up that there was a certain Rose Taylor in reception, asking if she could come up and see him, and for the first time in weeks Nick felt a curious sense of peace. He immediately told his secretary that he was busy, that she might have to wait for half an hour while he wrapped up his conference call, but that he could squeeze her in after that.
Okay, it was childish of him, but she had always managed to turn him into a kid.
Then he sat back in his massive black leather chair, swivelled it to face the floor-to-ceiling plates of glass that overlooked the city of London, and turned his mind to what she wanted.
It could only be one thing. She had had ample time to think about his proposal and she had come to her senses. Nick contemplated the idea with intense satisfaction. He would even be tempted to say that he felt elated. He would have her back in his life, would have her sharp wit and clever mind and sexy body, and there would be no more talk about trying to infiltrate his life by putting a ring on his finger.
She loved him. Of course she would return. It was to be expected and Nick felt warm with the anticipation of having her back. Course, he would have to make it clear that his views hadn’t changed. That a mistress was a far cry from a wife and matrimony was not on the agenda, but he didn’t anticipate a problem.
After forty minutes, he buzzed through to his secretary to tell her that she could send Rose up now, and then he relaxed back, facing the heavy door to his office, and waited for her to enter.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ were his opening words as Rose cautiously entered his office and shut the door behind her.
She had prepared herself for this, but all her hours of preparation now flew out the window as she looked at him, despairingly aware that he still had as much of an effect on her now as he had the last time she had seen him. So much for time and its great healing properties.
Not wanting to leave the door because it represented her fastest route out, Rose remained hovering where she was, not quite sure how to answer his frowning observation, until he told her to have a seat. He actually stood up, pointed to the chair facing his and then proceeded to perch on the side of the desk so that she was forced to sidle forwards and sit at an awkward angle to avoid contact with his thigh.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Haven’t you been eating?’
‘I haven’t come here to talk about my diet, Nick,’ Rose answered irritably. She was aware that she was fiddling with the hem of her skirt and made herself stop. Nervous gesture. But she had a lot to be nervous about. In fact, she had spent the past two weeks in a state of near panic. Ever since she had clocked that she had missed a period. Ever since she had gone to the chemist’s and bought one of those home pregnancy kits that were virtually one-hundred-per-cent accurate, leaving no doubt that she was well and truly pregnant with Nick’s baby. That last time—no contraception. It had been wild and spontaneous and, unlike the very first time they had made love when they had omitted to use contraception, she hadn’t been in her safe period.
And, yes, she had lost weight. She hadn’t been eating properly and although, standing naked in front of the mirror, she could see that her stomach was more rounded, everywhere else was skinny in comparison to the curvy woman she had been. Who needed diets to lose weight? A healthy dose of misery worked a treat.
Not that she would look thinner for much longer.
She closed her eyes and felt suddenly dizzy. It was a good thing that she was sitting down. Collapsing on his office floor would have been a very disadvantageous way to begin proceedings.
‘What’s the matter?’ Nick frowned because for a minute there he had actually thought that she was going to faint. Something kicked hard inside him, some inarticulate fear that she was ill. He removed himself back to his chair and tried to get himself together, because once that thought had inserted itself in his head it began to eat away at his logic, burrowing away until he was consumed with the conviction that there was something ominous that she was keeping from him.
For the first time since she had been announced, Nick entertained the possibility that she might not have come to his office because she wanted to engineer a reconciliation.
He had been on a high, anticipating her stammering admission that she couldn’t keep away from him. He had even begun playing with thoughts of how the rest of his day would pan out. At his place. Uninterrupted sex. Touching her, feeling her, enjoying the things she could do to his body and all the myriad things he could do to hers.
But, now she was sitting in front of him, he could see that she was pale. This was not the demeanour of a woman looking forward to embarking on a heady and fulfilling sexual relationship with a man.
In fact, this was the demeanour of a woman who was nervous about blurting out an uncomfortable truth. Nick, astute when it came to reading other people, felt something shift
inside him. He was scared, terrified in fact.
Everything seemed to slow down and he became uncomfortably aware that he had broken out in nervous perspiration. He could barely ask the question he knew he had to.
‘Would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee? I could ask my secretary to bring you some…’
Just the thought of tea or coffee made Rose feel nauseous. She went a couple of shades paler and shook her head.
‘I won’t be long, Nick,’ she said, clearing her throat and making an effort not to be pathetic.
‘No rush. Mind if I have a cup of coffee?’ He buzzed through to his secretary to bring him in a cappuccino and Rose smiled wanly at him.
‘Since when do you ask permission for anything, Nick?’
Since he wanted to buy some time before he heard what she had to say?
He was increasingly convinced that there was something seriously wrong with her. She looked terrible. As white as a sheet. And not because she was nervous, even though she clearly was. No, there was something underlyingly wrong, and as something close to terror continued to eat away at him Nick realised, in a moment of truth, what he had been missing all along.
He had let his own stubborn pride dictate his life. Nick Papaeliou, the man who could have any woman he desired, who had lived his life taking his pick and telling himself that his freedom was the most important thing he possessed, had clung to his vow never to commit like an idiot clinging to a lifebelt in a bath. No woman had ever been able to tempt him out of his conviction that bachelordom was the only way to go and so, when Rose had come along, he had steadfastly ignored all the glaring signs that had gradually begun to clutter his life.
He had mistaken his missing her when she wasn’t around as missing her body. He had longed for her and explained it away as just a normal red-blooded-male reaction to craving a woman who turned him on. And when he had offered her the epitome of commitment as far as he was concerned, the chance to share his house with him, he had blithely assumed that the gesture signified no more than a desire to have what he wanted on tap until he became bored, until they both became bored.
Women had always eventually bored him and the fact that Rose was not included in that category had been so obvious from the start and yet so easy to ignore.
He could have kicked himself.
She had told him that she loved him and what had he done? Asked her to prove it by doing the one thing she didn’t want to do: move in with him.
And now here she was and it sure as hell wasn’t to set that particular little situation right.
She was here to tell him…what?
That she was ill. Thinking about that possibility made him feel instantly sick when his cappuccino was brought in and placed on the desk in front of him.
She was trying hard to be brave and meet his eyes, but she physically couldn’t. He could see that and it terrified him.
‘I can’t have this conversation with you in my office,’ he told her abruptly, and that, at least, made her raise her eyes and look at him.
‘But you don’t know what I’m going to say.’
‘I know it’s serious, whatever it is.’ He pushed the coffee away from him and stood up.
Rose failed to follow suit. Instead she watched as he slung on his jacket, her fists pressed into her lap.
‘I don’t want to go anywhere, Nick. I want to say what I have to say here. Where it’s impersonal…’
Nick shot her a brooding, sideways glance and hesitated before removing his jacket and carefully replacing it on its hanger. Then he walked towards the window and stared down at the city streets below, trying to get his thoughts in order, filled with a cold, clawing panic and the painful knowledge that he had to say what he had to say before she unleashed whatever truth it was she had come to impart to him.
He could feel her eyes on him and, sure enough, he turned around to find her watching him.
‘Look,’ he began, ‘I’m…I don’t know how to say this…’ He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head, suddenly restless and uncomfortable. ‘I’ve never said this to anyone before…’
Rose, having screwed up every ounce of courage she possessed to tell him what she had to and as quickly as possible, breathed a silent sigh of relief that he was doing the talking. Okay, it was just a case of putting off the inevitable and it was cowardly, but she relaxed just a tiny bit.
She was also curious, even though she didn’t want to be. She hadn’t come to his office expecting to have a conversation, or at least not until she had told him about the pregnancy and then conversation probably wouldn’t quite describe what she imagined would follow. Recriminations, accusation, bitterness—nothing that she would classify as conversation.
‘Said what?’ she asked, bewildered.
Even more bewildering was the expression on his face. Gone was the easy self-assurance she associated with him. In its place was uncertainty and hesitation, which was as perplexing as the dark flush that stained his cheeks.
She almost forgot what she had come to say when he walked towards her and dragged his chair round so that he could position himself right next to her, on her level.
‘I…’ he began. ‘I…I’m glad you’re here…’
He didn’t look glad. In fact, he didn’t look anything, at least not anything she could identify. And if he really was glad, then she was pretty sure that it wasn’t a sentiment he would be harbouring for very long.
‘I…the past few weeks, Rose…’ He once again ran his fingers through his hair and looked away from her. ‘Not good.’
In a flash, she knew where he was going. He had probably assumed that she had come to his office with a view to taking him up on his offer for her to live with him and was now, against the dictates of his pride, going to repeat the offer because he still wanted her. Want, want, want! The most distasteful and egotistical word in the universe.
She closed her mind off to her memories of him. It gave her strength to think that this man, whatever he said, hadn’t wanted her enough to take their relationship that one important step further. She had declared her love and that, psychologically, must have led him to assume that she would return, grateful for the crumbs he could throw her.
‘I’m not here to talk about that,’ she interjected quickly.
‘You don’t understand, Rose. I need to talk about it. I need to talk about what a fool I’ve been.’ He reached out and took hold of her fingers, idly playing with them, obviously, she thought, unaware of what that simple, inoffensive gesture was doing to her insides. She stared, fascinated and dry-mouthed, at his long brown fingers as they fiddled with hers, and gulped.
It was amazing that he couldn’t guess the reason for her visit. Astute as he was, his mind was obviously not programmed to think the unthinkable.
‘I let you go,’ he said quietly, looking directly at her. ‘I let the woman who loved me go.’
Rose didn’t want to be reminded of that. ‘I’m not here to blame you, Nick. You did what you had to do and there are no hard feelings. I haven’t come to discuss the past.’ She made an effort to slide her hand out of his grasp but his fingers tightened on hers, clasping them into submission.
‘I’ve always thought that love was a complication, something of which I had no need. I enjoyed women but I didn’t want them clambering into my private life and interfering with it. My goals were set and there was no place for cosy nights in and joint holidays in Italy with the eventual two point two.’
Which snapped Rose back to the present like a bucket of cold water.
‘No. I gathered,’ she said coolly.
‘I was…mistaken…’
It took a couple of seconds for his words to sink in, then her thoughts were adrift, bobbing about in confusion as she tried to assimilate that telling, wrenched remark.
‘I…beg your pardon?’
‘I was mistaken,’ Nick said simply. He felt a weight lift off his chest. Whatever dire news she had come to break, then she would know h
ow he felt and it was something he should have said a long time ago. Courage, he was discovering, was something he had measured using all the wrong tools. Courage was this. Telling the only woman he had ever loved that he loved her.
Rose wasn’t sure what she was hearing. She knew what she wanted to hear.
‘You’re playing games,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Please.’ This time she succeeded in withdrawing her hand, which she held up because, riveting though his disclosures were, she couldn’t trust herself not to start believing them, and hadn’t he already made it perfectly clear that he was not in the business of love? What would he do to get her back into his bed? she wondered. Seduce her with words he knew she wanted to hear?
No. She would say what she had come to say and watch him fall back in horror. Better that than to be lulled into a false sense of security that would be snatched away the minute she broke her news.
‘Just listen to me and stop…confusing me.’
Nick had the cold feeling that he had left things too late. The horse had bolted and, not only had he failed to realise what a treasure he possessed, but he had closed the stable door and returned to the house whistling a merry tune. He deserved to have her walk out on him and never look back. His punishment would be to spend the rest of his life living with his mistake.
‘I…’ Now it was her turn to stammer. She took a deep breath and said in one quick rush, closing her eyes to block him out, ‘I’m pregnant. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it has. You don’t have to feel responsible. You don’t have to feel anything. I came here because I felt you ought to know, not because I wanted anything from you. You’re telling me now about mistakes, but I know you for who you are. I don’t want money from you; I don’t want time from you. I just thought…you should know…’
In a minute she would do the brave thing and open her eyes. The silence lengthened around them and into it she read an assortment of reactions. Eventually, though, she peeped at him and then opened her eyes fully when she realised that he hadn’t drawn back in horror.