by Kate Walker
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALEX was gone when she woke up. Not just from the bed but from the apartment. She found a note propped next to the kettle telling her he’d decided to let her sleep and that he would try to come home early.
Although his concern was touching, Katrina was disappointed. Now that she’d decided to tell Alex how she felt about him, she could hardly wait to get on with it. But it looked like she had no choice but to wait until he came home.
Mid-morning, Katrina was playing with Samantha on the carpet in the lounge when the phone rang.
She lifted the hands-free receiver to her ear. ‘Hello?’
‘Could I speak to Alex Webber, please?’ an efficient female voice asked.
‘I’m afraid he’s not here. Can I take a message?’
There was a momentary pause. ‘Is that you, Katrina?’
Katrina frowned. She didn’t recognise the voice. ‘Yes. Who is this?’
‘It’s Tracey from Dr Kershew’s office. How are you? And how is Samantha? We were sorry to hear she’d been in hospital.’
Katrina smiled. ‘Yes, it’s me, Tracey. I’m fine, and so is Sam. Thank goodness!’
‘That’s great. Anyway, on to the reason for my call.’
‘Certainly. You wanted me to pass on a message to Alex?’
‘Yes, please. I was just calling to tell him we’ve arranged for him to have his vasectomy redone, as he requested. The appointment is scheduled for eleven a.m. on the twenty-eighth of next month at the Royal North Shore Hospital.’
Katrina pressed a hand to her chest.
‘Katrina, did you hear me?’
She drew in a deep breath. ‘Yes, I heard you; I’m just looking for a piece of paper and a pen so I can write the date down. I’m not sure Alex will be able to make it then.’
By the time she finished with him, he probably wouldn’t need the procedure—she might very well take care of it herself with the bluntest instrument she could find!
‘If he can’t, that’s OK. Just get back to me and I’ll change the appointment.’
‘Fine.’
Katrina didn’t say any more. She couldn’t. She pressed the button to end the call before the phone dropped from her nerveless fingers.
A vasectomy. She couldn’t believe it.
Jumping to her feet, she scooped up her daughter and began to pace, her mind spinning. Thoughts tumbled one over the other like a piece of paper caught in a force-ten gale.
She’d decided to tell Alex that she loved him, but what was the point now?
The answer came back with soul-stripping speed: there was none. She’d told Alex she wanted more children. If he’d been even the teeniest, tiniest bit in love with her, then he wouldn’t have arranged to have his vasectomy redone.
The question now was, could she stay?
She felt as if her heart had been ripped to shreds and then dunked in a vat of acid. Years of feeling like that would be intolerable. But what was the alternative? If she didn’t stay it meant taking Samantha away from her father.
The bond between father and daughter was as strong as between mother and daughter.
Samantha would miss Alex.
And Alex…
She put trembling fingers to her lips. Alex might not have fallen in love with her but he had fallen in love with his daughter. Separating them now would be cruel.
Katrina sank down on the carpet as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
How long she remained there, she didn’t know.
It could have been minutes or it could have been hours. Her mind was so numb that time didn’t seem to have meaning any more.
It was only when Samantha began to cry that she finally moved. Choking back a sob, Katrina raced through to the bedroom. Placing Samantha carefully in the middle of the king-sized bed, she put two pillows on either side of her so the baby couldn’t roll off, then went into her old bedroom and pulled her suitcase out of the closet.
Blinking back tears, she returned to the master bedroom and began flinging her clothes willy-nilly into the open suitcase.
The future seemed untenable.
She’d told Alex once that she wasn’t good mistressmaterial. It appeared she wasn’t good unloved-wife material either.
Alex frowned as he closed the front door behind him.
The apartment felt different. How, he wasn’t quite sure, but it did.
Maybe it was because Katrina wasn’t in the lounge as she usually was when he came home.
‘Katrina?’ he called.
There was no answer. His voice seemed to echo off the walls. A frisson of unease slid down his spine.
A quick search of the apartment showed no sign of either Katrina or Samantha.
They could, of course, have gone for a walk. But somehow Alex didn’t think so.
Gut instinct warned him that something else was going on here.
He went back to the bedroom. This time he looked more closely. The frisson of unease settled uncomfortably at the base of his spine and remained there, pricking at him.
The clothes he’d bought Katrina were hanging in the closet, but her toiletries and her own clothes were missing.
He hurried through to the nursery.
Here the difference was even more noticeable. Nappies, wipes, powder—all gone.
But it was the absence of Samantha’s pink teddy bear that was the real clincher. Samantha loved that bear; it slept beside her every night.
Alex sank down on a chair.
Only then did he notice the envelope sitting on top of the chest of drawers with his name on it.
He jumped to his feet and tore it open.
The envelope contained a single sheet of paper covered with Katrina’s neat hand writing.
Dear Alex,
I’m sorry to spring this on you, but I knew if I told you face to face you’d try and talk me out of it or insist that I leave Sam with you. You’ve commented several times about how much Sam’s illness has changed things for you. Well, it’s changed things for me too. Although we’re both agreed that giving Sam a proper family is the right thing to do, I just don’t know whether I can do it. You said you weren’t prepared to sign up for a life of celibacy. Well, I’m not sure I can sign up for a loveless marriage. Please don’t worry about Sam. I will take good care of her. I will be in contact soon.
Katrina.
Alex crumpled the note in his clenched fist.
They’d gone. Disappeared. Katrina had packed up their belongings and left. His heart started pounding until he could feel the blood pumping at his temples.
The smell of baby powder lingering in the room seemed to mock him. So too did the yellow rubber-duck that Alex was now such an expert at making quacking noises for.
Where had they gone?
And how on earth was he going to find her?
He’d told Royce to cancel the man tailing Katrina weeks ago. It hadn’t seemed necessary any more.
He hoped it wasn’t a decision he was going to live to regret.
Katrina had disappeared once before. He remembered her telling him that she wasn’t a fan of credit cards; it was her use of cash that had made it so difficult to track her down last time.
If she did the same this time…
Pulling out his mobile phone, he called the agency and filled Royce in. ‘I don’t care how much it costs. Find them.’
As he hung up, his insides turned to ice. Ice that seemed to saturate every particle of his being until it felt as though he’d never be warm again.
Fear sliced through him until it felt as if he was being skinned alive.
One thought ran through his head, clearer than any other, chilling him to the bone.
What if he never found them?
Two days later Alex was in the middle of his monthly board meeting. He was trying and failing to concentrate on the various presentations.
All he could think about was Katrina and Samantha—and the action he’d taken overnight to flush them out of
wherever it was they were hiding.
Suddenly, the double doors to the boardroom were thrown forcefully open. The handles hit the wall with a crash, the sound so loud he stopped speaking mid sentence.
All eyes, including his, turned in that direction.
Katrina was standing in the open doorway, caramel hair swirling around her shoulders.
She looked magnificent.
She also looked angry.
Her cat-like green eyes were spitting emerald fire, fury striping her razor-sharp cheekbones a bright, burning red. Alex suspected one look would be enough to set the long boardroom table on fire.
‘Out!’ she instructed, her eyes never leaving Alex’s face.
The board looked in his direction for guidance. From the look on their faces, they clearly expected him to tell Katrina to wait outside until the meeting was over. They knew he allowed nothing to interfere with these monthly gatherings.
What they didn’t realise was that the Webber Investment Bank was no longer the most important thing in Alex’s life.
His girls were.
His two special girls.
They were the centre of his world. The epicentre of his existence.
‘Please leave,’ he told the board. His voice was calm but he was anything but inside; tension was tying his muscles into such tight knots it felt as though he’d swallowed a ships anchor. ‘I’ll let you know when we’ll reconvene.’
With much shuffling of paper and curious looks, the five men and two women picked up their belongings and made their way to the door.
As soon as they were alone, Alex rose to his feet and stalked across the room to Katrina. To give her her due, she didn’t back away from him.
He stopped in front of her, so close they were almost touching. He could smell the scent of her perfume and could see the little specks of golden-brown in cat-like green eyes that were focussed challengingly on him.
‘Where have you been?’ he demanded, resisting the urge to shake her until her teeth rattled.
Her chin angled upwards. ‘Away.’
His hands clenched into fists. ‘Away where?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Fury strung his flesh tightly together. ‘It matters one hell of a damned lot when you take my daughter away without my permission and without telling me where you were going!’
She tossed her head, sending an invisible cloud of her scent into the air. ‘I left you a note.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘That’s not good enough. Not by a long shot. Where is she?’
‘She’s right outside. Justine is looking after her.’
Relief washed through him, unravelling the tension that had hardened his insides.
‘I could kill you for taking her,’ he said.
‘Is that why you announced to the world that Sam and I were missing?’ she demanded, her eyes spitting chips of cold, green ice at him. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw our photos plastered all over the TV and newspapers.’
‘Yes,’ Alex hissed. ‘You seem to be an expert at disappearing. I wasn’t going to take the chance I’d never see my daughter again.’
She frowned. ‘I told you in my note that I’d be in contact soon.’
‘Forgive me, but soon just wasn’t good enough. Going to the press guaranteed me a result. The Royce Agency has already received floods of phone calls with possible sightings. If you hadn’t turned up here this morning, it would only have been a matter of time before I tracked you down.’
She tossed her head again. ‘Well, it worked. I came back. So, what do we do now?’
It was a good question.
Alex knew exactly what he wanted.
He just wasn’t sure of his chances of getting it.
‘That’s entirely up to you. You either come back to me so that we provide Sam with the family she deserves, or we sort this out in court. Your choice.’
Alex imbued every word with as much determination as he could muster.
Samantha was Katrina’s weak point. The threat of taking her daughter away from her had worked before. He was counting on it working again.
He could barely breathe as he waited for her answer.
Tension drew his shoulders up towards his ears and shrunk his stomach until it felt as though it had turned inside out.
The anger seemed to drain out of her. The eyes she turned on him were sad and filled with pain. ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it. I can’t sign up to a loveless relationship for the rest of my life.’
Her words were like an arrow piercing his heart. Although he was bleeding inside, Alex tried not to show it.
His mind grappled to find a solution, but there wasn’t one.
If there was a way to make Katrina love him, then he didn’t know what it was. He wasn’t a magician; he couldn’t conjure something up out of thin air.
‘I can’t help you with that.’ Alex could barely get the words out. ‘You can’t force feelings that just aren’t there.’
Katrina flinched. Then she seemed to shrink in front of his eyes. Her shoulders sagged. Her head dropped. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry. My lawyer will be in contact with you to arrange joint custody. Goodbye, Alex.’
She turned on her heel and stalked to the door.
Something inside him twisted tight, so tight he expected it to snap.
‘You can’t leave,’ he said in a voice he hardly recognised as his own.
But it was already too late. She’d gone.
Alex stared after her.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even blink as her words penetrated deep into his soul.
An invisible hand gripped his heart.
His chest felt so tight he half-expected to hear his ribs crack under the pressure.
It couldn’t be too late. It just couldn’t. He wouldn’t accept that it was over.
He loved her.
He’d been forced to admit the truth when he’d found her gone.
Gone. Katrina.
The words finally connected in his numbed brain.
She’d run out on him again!
With a curse, Alex sprang towards the door, yanked it open and began sprinting down the corridor towards the lift. Stabbing the down button, he barely contained his impatience until the door opened.
Every time the lift attempted to stop he pressed the closed button.
On the ground floor, Alex headed directly for David. He was only halfway across the vast foyer when the security guard spotted him and pointed upstairs.
Alex stopped then completed the distance more slowly, not sure if he was reading the guard’s unspoken message correctly.
‘She went back upstairs,’ David said with a beaming smile. ‘She got halfway across the foyer and then seemed to change her mind about leaving. Turned around and got straight back in the lift.’
His heart turned over, then did it again.
When she’d left he’d feared she’d given up.
On him. And them. And a future together.
Her return upstairs gave him a sliver of hope.
Alex thumped David on the back and grinned. ‘Remind me to invite you to the wedding!’
‘What do you mean, he’s not here?’ Katrina demanded. ‘He was here two minutes ago.’
Justine nodded. ‘I know. I think he went chasing after you.’
Her heart turned over in her chest. ‘He did?’
Again, Justine nodded. ‘Well, he ran out of here as if the building was on fire only a couple of minutes after you left.’
‘Oh.’
Her heart flipped again. When Alex had let her walk away, she’d thought he’d given up.
On himself. On her. And on the possibility of them having a future together.
Surely the fact he’d gone chasing after her meant he hadn’t given up?
The thought made her legs give way beneath her and she sank down on the visitor’s chair on the opposite side of Justine’s desk.
At that particular moment the door t
o Justine’s office flew open. Without looking, Katrina knew who it was. She could sense Alex. It was as if his presence somehow changed the air particles between them, creating an invisible string that joined them together.
Katrina turned her head. Although she moved at normal speed, it felt as if she were moving in slow motion.
Alex stood in the doorway, staring at her with an odd look on his face.
Katrina stared back.
Neither said anything.
She sensed rather than saw Justine looking back and forth between them. After a moment, the other woman rose to her feet and cleared her throat. ‘I think I’ll give you guys some privacy.’
Katrina heard her but barely registered a word she said.
‘You came back,’ Alex breathed when the door closed.
Katrina nodded, hands clenched tightly together in her lap. ‘I should never have left in the first place.’
She’d been halfway across the foyer before she’d realised that.
She’d been convinced that she couldn’t live with Alex knowing that he didn’t love her.
But saying goodbye had almost killed her.
She’d stopped in the middle of the vast foyer with tears stinging the back of her eyes.
And as she’d stood there she’d realised there was something worse—much, much worse—than living with the knowledge that Alex didn’t love her. And that was being without him altogether.
She needed him whether he loved her or not.
His face was all planes and angles. ‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s time I told you the truth.’
‘And what truth is that?’
Katrina dragged in a deep breath for courage and flattened her spine against the back of the chair. Then she stared him straight in the eye. ‘I love you.’
Alex gasped. ‘Say that again.’ His voice was strangled; his eyes locked on her face.
Undecided whether his reaction was good or bad, Katrina said it again.
Pleasure swept through him, bright and sweet.
Accepting Samantha into his life had enabled him to put the past behind him. As a result, he’d achieved the sort of peace he hadn’t known existed. But the joy he felt now lifted his spirit, his soul, to another dimension.