She would cross that bridge when she came to it.
She dialed Elizabeth’s number, adding the requisite digits to reach her on the other side of the world. The phone rang. And rang. And rang. She shut her eyes and willed Elizabeth to pick up, aware of her stomach churning sickly. If she didn’t do this now, she wasn’t sure she would have the courage to do it later. The phone switched to voicemail. Violet listened to her friend’s cool, cultured voice.
Belatedly it occurred to her that she had no idea what Elizabeth was dealing with over in Australia. Had she made contact with her father yet? And Martin seemed convinced there was another man on the scene. Clearly, Elizabeth’s plate was full. The last thing Elizabeth needed was to have Violet dump this mess on top of her, too, because Violet craved her friend’s forgiveness and absolution.
That was what this phone call was about, after all. Making herself feel better. Purging her guilt through confession.
About as self-serving as a person could get, really.
When the beep sounded, she ended the call without saying a word. Then she forced herself to simply sit and experience all the messy, ugly thoughts and emotions surging through her body. It was the least she could do. The absolute least.
Chapter Five
Martin walked blindly down the street, barely registering the cold, every cell in his body vibrating with shock.
He’d just had sex with Violet Sutcliffe. No, that was too dry a word for what they’d just done. They’d fucked. Desperately. Urgently. As though their lives depended on it. As though they’d been waiting for that exact moment for far, far too long.
He couldn’t get his head around it. He didn’t even like her—yet sliding into her body had felt like coming home. Every word out of her mouth made him want to grind his teeth—yet her moans and urgings and pleadings had blown his mind.
He didn’t understand. Better yet, he didn’t want to understand. She was reckless and impulsive, she drank too much, she dressed too provocatively. She was a mess. A disaster waiting to happen.
He stopped on a street corner, registering for the first time that he’d walked in the exact opposite direction of where he needed to be.
He was both sober and drunk enough to appreciate the symbolism of his unconscious action. The whole past hour of his life had been one big, long walk in the wrong direction. A wild, amazing, wet, tight, breathless walk, granted, but there was no denying the stupidity of what he’d just done.
So why had he done it? For revenge? Because Elizabeth had handed his heart back to him and told him she had no use for it? Because he’d wanted to prove something to himself?
How about because you always, always, always wondered. Even when you shouldn’t have. Even when you loved Elizabeth. You always wondered...
His breath rushed out in a cloud of steam, but there was no denying the truth.
He had always wondered about Violet, down in some deep, testosterone-driven part of his psyche. He’d wondered what her breasts looked like. How they’d taste. If her ass was as firm and round as it looked in her provocative little dresses. If she really did like sex as much as she appeared to.
And now he knew. God, did he know.
He felt himself growing hard again as he relived those moments on her couch. The way she’d yanked her top over her head, then gripped his cock so boldly. The way she’d urged him higher, harder, faster.
A double-decker bus rushed past, so close it made his coat flap. He took a step back from the curb. Blinked. Looked around again.
He needed to find his way home. Better yet, he needed to forget what had happened tonight. It had been a moment of craziness. A stupid, impetuous act, driven by ego and peach schnapps and undeniable curiosity. But he’d satisfied that curiosity now. It was time to consign Violet to the past, along with Elizabeth.
Feeling suddenly very, very sober, he turned on his heel and started walking.
The flowers arrived mid-morning, delivered by a plump middle-aged man with a cheery smile.
“Someone’s keen,” he said, offering Violet a wink as he handed over a full, heavy bouquet of pink and yellow striped carnations and pale pink roses.
Violet felt all the color drain from her face. “Thank you.”
She waited until the bell over the door signaled his departure before opening the small white envelope tucked inside the bouquet.
I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.
Martin St Clair.
A small, sharp laugh huffed out her mouth. He’d included his last name, just in case she had trouble working out who he was. As if she would ever forget him. As if.
A part of her wanted to dump the flowers in the bin, an absolute rejection of what had happened last night. They were too beautiful to destroy, however. The florist had misted the bouquet before sending it out into the world and the full, plump rose petals glistened with moisture. She lifted the flowers to her nose and inhaled deeply. The peppery scent of carnations mingled with the sentimental sweetness of roses and she remembered something from her long lost teen years.
She’d been obsessed with Victorian-era everything back then. The social mores, the fashion, the language. She’d devoted a whole month to exploring floriography, the secret language of flowers the Victorians had once used to convey sentiments they couldn’t express in any other way. Carnations had many meanings, but striped carnations signaled rejection.
Appropriate enough.
Pale pink roses, however, symbolized desire and passion.
Ironic that Martin—or the florist—had chosen those two flowers to dominate the bouquet.
Ironic, but ultimately unimportant. As she’d decided the previous evening, the only thing that counted in any of this was Elizabeth.
Taking the flowers into the back room, she stuck them in a jug of water and set them next to the sink. She might not be able to throw them out, but she wasn’t about to spend all day staring at them and inhaling their fragrance, either. The phone started ringing as she returned to the shop floor. Caller ID told her it was Elizabeth. Her stomach bottomed out and she sat down with a thump.
Okay. Do this. Get it over and done with.
“E. How are you?” she said as she took the call.
“Vi. God. It’s so good to hear your voice. You have no idea how much I have needed you over the past few days...”
Elizabeth sounded strange. Not herself. It took Violet a few seconds to recognize that the odd note running beneath her voice was excitement.
“What’s going on?” she asked, frowning.
“It’s so complicated. But the nut-shell version is that I met this man. This infuriating, stubborn, outrageous man...” Elizabeth’s sigh sounded down the line. “I feel as though I’ve been walking around in a fog half my life, Vi. The things he does to me... The way he makes me feel...”
Violet closed her eyes. Martin had been right, then. There was someone else in the picture. Someone Elizabeth had only met a handful of days ago, yet was barely able to contain her excitement over when she talked about him.
“What’s his name?”
“Nathan. Nathan Jones.”
“What does he do?”
“At the moment, not much. He’s...He’s recovering from a car accident.”
For the first time there was a hesitation in her friend’s voice.
“How bad were his injuries?” Violet asked quietly, worried for her friend. Elizabeth was such a giver. Violet could imagine her getting sucked into taking on this Nathan person’s problems, making them her own.
“Nothing physical. His sister died in the same accident.”
Elizabeth didn’t say more, but a whole world of possibilities blossomed in Violet’s mind.
“Has there been any more news on your father?”
That was why Elizabeth had left everything she knew and loved behind, after all.
“I spoke to him on the phone. Only for a few minutes.”
Violet picked up on the flat note in her friend’s voice.
“He wasn’t pleased to hear from you?”
“Not really, no. He sounded...indifferent, if I’m being honest. Not exactly what I was hoping for. But he’ll be home after Christmas, so I guess I’ll know for sure then.”
“Christmas?”
Four weeks away. When E had jumped on a plane for Australia, Violet had never imagined she’d be staying there so long. An odd little shiver of premonition ran down her spine. As though her body understood something that her mind had yet to comprehend.
“What’s happening at your end? You must be so sick of hearing about all my stuff,” Elizabeth said.
Violet glanced guiltily over her shoulder. She could see Martin’s bouquet beside the sink in the back room, a floral rebuke.
“Not much. I, um, ran into Martin the other day.”
She winced. Of all the ways to lead in to what she needed to say...
“How was he? I felt so bad when he left here, Vi, but it was the best thing for both of us. He may not realise that yet, but it was. He deserves someone who loves him fully. Someone who wants him for who he is and not because he ticks all the right boxes.”
Violet pressed the phone so hard against her ear it hurt. “Listen, E, there’s something I need to tell you. Something happened with Martin the other night.”
“Let me guess—you had a fight. You two are absolutely hopeless, and utterly predictable. I hope neither of you left scars?”
Violet thought of the suck mark she’d found on her breast last night when she’d showered Martin’s scent from her skin. It wasn’t permanent, but the memory of Martin all but devouring her breasts would be with her to her dying day.
“Vi, you’re a sweetie, but you don’t have to fight my battles for me any more, okay?” Elizabeth said. “I’ve made my decision. And Martin is a good man. He really is. A lovely man.” Her friend’s voice broke with emotion.
Violet stared at the chipped black paint on the counter, feeling like ten different types of shit.
Say it. Get it over with.
But the words wouldn’t come. Elizabeth had always believed in her. No matter what. The thought of losing that unconditional love, that support, made her feel heartsick.
“I’ll remember that if I ever run across him again,” she said.
If she ever ran across Martin St Clair again, she was turning on her heel and heading in the opposite direction, post haste. Not that she was likely to have the opportunity—they hardly moved in the same circles. Far from it.
Talk returned to Nathan and Violet listened incredulously as Elizabeth admitted she’d pretty much moved in with him.
This was no holiday romance. Elizabeth didn’t work like that. A slew of warnings filled Violet’s head, but she didn’t utter a single one.
Elizabeth had been wrapped in cotton wool by her grandparents almost her entire life. She deserved the space to make her own mistakes and learn her own lessons. If this Nathan person hurt her—as he probably would if he was anything like most of the men Violet had known in her lifetime—Elizabeth would have the requisite crying jag, gnash her teeth, then pick herself up and dust herself off.
Violet settled for insisting that Elizabeth call her if she needed her, no matter what the time of day or night. She felt guilty and small when she ended the call, but also relieved. She’d tell Elizabeth everything when she was home again in a few weeks time. Sit her down, look her in the eye and confess. Much better than doing it over the phone.
Anyway, it sounded as though E had her hands full with Nathan the sex god. What Violet had done wasn’t going to get any better or worse in the intervening weeks before Elizabeth came home. There was no use-by date on betrayal, after all.
A self-serving argument, perhaps, but it was what Violet was going with. God help her.
The decision brought a new calm, which carried her through to lunch time. Then she went into the back room to grab her sandwich from the fridge and saw Martin’s flowers and it all came rushing back.
His body beneath her hands. The feel of him inside her. The wave of convulsive pleasure that had taken over her body.
This time she didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the flowers, walked out into the street and dumped them in the nearest public trash can.
If only it was as easy to erase him from her thoughts.
Every time she thought she’d succeeded, going a full day or two without a single Martin St Clair-oriented thought, he snuck back in under her guard.
Anything triggered it. The set of a man’s shoulders on the Tube. The sound of a male voice over the phone. The elusive whiff of aftershave that was almost-but-not-quite the same as his.
Sometimes there was no discernible reason at all—he was simply there, in her head, making her body hot and wet with memories, filling her with guilt and regret.
It took almost a month for her to get to the point where he was nothing but a painful, uncomfortable passing thought that she could easily dismiss. A month during which she had several more phone calls from Elizabeth further cementing the growing belief in her heart that her friend had fallen hard for her Australian lover. It eased her guilt somewhat to know that Elizabeth had well and truly moved on, but not enough.
Then she turned up at Bronwyn and Perry’s anniversary dinner on a cold, windy Saturday night a week before Christmas and looked across the room and saw Martin standing there, dark and forbidding in a charcoal suit. She froze in the act of shedding her coat, one arm in, the other out. The stony, tight expression on Martin’s face told her that he’d had no idea that she’d be there, either.
Which made them both rather foolish, in hindsight. Bronwyn was one of several friends that Violet and Elizabeth shared, and Martin and Perry were both lawyers, common ground that had fueled a close friendship over the years. If Violet had stopped to think about it, she would have guessed he might be there. Just as he might have guessed that she would be, too, because of her friendship with Bronwyn.
She quickly averted her eyes, laughing gaily at something that Bronwyn said as she handed over her coat. She made a bee-line for the tray of cocktails that Perry was passing around and only risked a second glance at Martin when the first fiery mouthful of vodka martini was burning its way down her throat to her belly.
He stood in profile to her near the window, talking to Melissa and Lewis, two of Bronwyn and Perry’s many married friends. His hair was longer than when she’d last seen him. She waited for him to glance her way, but he didn’t, steadfastly keeping his attention on whatever Melissa was saying.
Not such a huge surprise. After all, she’d promised herself that if she ever ran into him again she’d sprint in the opposite direction. Clearly he felt the same way, but it wasn’t exactly a viable option tonight, for either of them—unless she was prepared to fake an appendicitis attack.
She thought wistfully of Elizabeth, thousands of miles away. E could always be relied upon to come up with a fool-proof, iron clad gracious excuse for any occasion.
But tonight, Violet was on her own.
She toyed with the idea of approaching Martin and engaging him in polite conversation, simply to get that first awkward moment over and done with. After all, she could hardly avoid him all night. There were only a dozen people in the room, including their hosts. They were bound to come face to face eventually and be forced to deal with one another.
The next hour proved her entirely wrong. Despite the fact that she was on tenterhooks the whole time, waiting for Martin to acknowledge her presence with a look or a word or a gesture, he steadfastly ignored her. Wherever she was, he wasn’t, always circling in the opposite direction, his back or profile always turned to her. Twice he walked away when she was drawn into a conversation he was sharing with some of Bronwyn and Perry’s friends. Both times she felt heat rush into her face, sure that someone must notice his behavior, but no one so much as raised an eyebrow.
She nursed her second martini and brooded on his behavior, becoming increasingly angry as he continued to blank her.
No doubt he’d somehow reconfigured what had happened between them in his mind, casting her as a shameless slut who’d plied him with liquor and then lured him to her boudoir. No doubt he lay the blame for every breathless second they’d spent together squarely at her door. He’d never made a secret of how he viewed her, after all. It would be so, so easy to make her the scarlet-lettered villain of the piece.
She’d built up a powerful head of resentful steam by the time Bronwyn announced dinner was ready and they all filed into the dining room. She dutifully sat in the seat that had been allocated to her, only registering that Martin was taking the seat opposite at the last second.
Naturally, they’d placed her opposite Martin. They were the only two singles in the room. Where else would they be seated? She waited for him to meet her gaze—finally—but he directed his attention to Bronwyn, who was seated to his right. Violet blinked, incredulous.
Surely he didn’t mean to ignore her all through dinner, too?
The caterer began serving starters. Violet fixed her gaze on Martin, teeth gritted, daring him to keep denying her existence. Her outrage grew with every second that ticked by.
How dare he? Who did he think he was? Better yet, who did he think she was? If he thought she was simply going to sit here and accept such shabby, immature, pathetic behavior, he had another think coming.
By the time their soup plates were being taken away, she was ready to kick him in the shin.
Let’s see him ignore me then.
Lewis kept trying to make conversation with her on her left but Violet couldn’t keep track of the topic. All she could think about was Martin, and how much she wanted to hurt him in a deeply primitive, physical way. They had had sex. He had been inside her body. The least he bloody well owed her was eye contact. The very least.
The urge to strike out at him was so visceral, so powerful that she could feel her calf muscles tensing in preparation for a really good, solid kick. She had her pointy-toed Louboutin stilettos on. If she landed a good blow, she might even leave a scar.
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