by Nikki Logan
Three gazes practically burned into the back of Izzy’s head from the upstairs window.
‘I didn’t expect to see you—’ ever again ‘—back in London.’
‘I had to wind things up at Broadmore Natále and hand over to my replacement.’
Ironic since that was the lie she’d told to get into his house in Australia. She led him around the corner to a park playground on the next street.
‘I thought you’d have people to do that for you, now that you’re the big cheese. Or Skype or something.’
‘Some things you can’t outsource.’
She steered them into the park and turned to face him. To stare into those beautiful eyes. Just stare. He’d come to her. The next step had to be his.
He composed himself, visibly, and then started speaking. Formally, as if he’d been practising on the plane. Turmoil boiled behind his eyes. But it coalesced into a kind of certainty.
And she knew he was finally going to be honest.
‘Just over five years ago, my father paid someone a fortune to bring a heap of old family documents into Broadmore’s content management system, and a letter about me was misfiled as being to me. It showed that my school captaincy—an honour I believed I’d earned—was in return for spanking new science-lab equipment my father donated. The more I dug, the more coincidental donations I discovered. My academic achievements. Jiu-jitsu awards…’
Five years. Right about when he changed his name and left Australia for Britain.
‘Every girlfriend I had growing up was with me for the lifestyle that a rich young kid could provide. I picked girls who were friends with my sisters because I assumed they’d be less dazzled by the money. But it turns out many of their parents were encouraging them to befriend my sisters as a way to get closer to the future CEO of Broadmore Consolidated. But when they eventually went their way—and they always did—it wounded me and whatever sister they’d used to get to me. And I realised I was hurting my sisters.
‘So I changed my approach as soon as I hit uni. I stuck to women where we both knew the score. No betrayals, no innocent façades. I spent on them generously and publicly. They were openly in it for the reward and…I guess so was I.’
‘Those must have been cynical, lonely years,’ she murmured, hating the idea of anyone touching him before her.
He shrugged. ‘It was safer and it kept my family out of it. And if I felt myself growing connected to one of the women, all I had to do was tighten the flow of money and I’d get an instant reminder of why they were really there.’
‘None of them cared for you? At all?’
What was wrong with Australian women? How could they know him and not love him?
‘They all delighted in having a healthy young man to break in. But that wasn’t why they were there. And I can’t blame them. I set the rules. But it wasn’t enough. I needed to know who I was…on my own.’
‘So you became Harry Mitchell.’
‘And I got an entry-level job in my father’s company without him knowing and then worked my way up. He eventually cottoned on. It amused him to watch my progress, at first, but then he saw how settled I was getting here and so he turned on the screws, reminding me of my obligations, and me staying became conditional on us both considering it in-house training.
‘I got another promotion and I really started to wonder whether he was orchestrating those, as well. So I began testing people. Seeing if I could get away with murder. Seeing who’d just wear it.’
‘And who did?’
‘One or two. But not a bolshy, blonde finance officer who was assigned to me fourteen months ago. She gave me no quarter at all.’
‘That explains your management approach, then…’
‘Izzy, everything I’ve ever achieved has been because of my name, my family, the bank balance that would some day be mine,’ he started. ‘I wanted to see what I could achieve without any of those things behind me.’
He shuffled around, more face-on. ‘And I achieved you, Iz. Quirky, high-maintenance and left-of-centre you. This gorgeous woman who I’d lusted after for a year, who came to be interested in a snarky finance manager whose only redeeming quality was his circus skills in the sack. And I was really happy with that. Because you’d chosen Harry Mitchell. On his own merits, not because of a name.
‘But then you thought I hadn’t.’
‘I didn’t want to know how long you’d known my secret, because I was scared of the answer. Scared of hearing you say it. But I should have known, I should have believed you. Or done just about anything other than shouting at you and leaving the country before you could defend yourself. My head was just so…compressed with memories and images, which all looked totally different through a darker filter.’
‘It was a rough time—’
‘I was raised to push through rough times. And I knew my old man was too much of a control freak to actually die.’ He shook his head. ‘I have no excuse for the conclusions I jumped to. At least I didn’t think I did. But then you turned up at my house.’
He said that as if it were the most audacious and awe-inspiring thing he’d ever heard of. As if no one ever just turned up.
‘You fronted me on my own turf, and you stood there all beautiful and fresh and honest and, after you’d gone, that impression wouldn’t leave me. And all those memories and images started to replay again through a different filter. A blindingly bright one.’
He took her hand.
‘They were completely changed, Iz. Genuine. Unpolluted. The way I’d experienced them the first time. I realised, then, that I’d fixated on the fact that you’d known rather than on the fact that you were one of two people in the world I could have trusted with the information. That I should have.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
He slumped down onto the playground seesaw and straddled it. She stepped quietly around to its opposite. When it had completely stilled from its bouncy adjustment, he resumed speaking.
‘My mother wasn’t even twenty when she started working at Broadmore’s Melbourne office and met my father. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t sought a job there purely to meet him. She was pretty motivated. I don’t know what she did to hypnotise him or whether the realities of marriage were just too mundane but, the moment the ink was dry on their nuptial agreement, all that allure just fell away. And all they were left with was the husk of a not very deep, not very long, not very good relationship.’
Izzy frowned. ‘They brought four kids into that family.’
‘Part of the agreement. He wanted an heir.’
‘Oh, Harry…’
‘It hurts kids to grow up like that, Iz,’ he breathed. ‘My sisters are as messed up as I am in their own ways. But I sat there and sucked in the veiled looks through osmosis; the snarky comments, the telephone conversations to friends and lovers they probably thought I couldn’t hear or understand. I watched my father—a man I wanted to love and respect—paying the lifetime price for his weakness about this woman, and I watched her enjoy a string of relationships with people other than my father, loving them, and then brushing them off when they ended, and finding someone new.
‘But, as I grew, I realised her love for them was virtually indistinguishable from her love for me,’ he said. ‘And she told the world she loved my father but really she can barely tolerate him. So how could our love be any realer?’
The pain in her chest—the one that had finally eased off following her return from Australia—surged back now, angry and tight.
Her fingers itched to find his.
So this was why he protected his heart?
‘And so I grew up believing that love was just a thing you said for effect or put on for show, like the flash entry hall of my house. It was where you stood your sculptures or hung your expensive art or custom-woven drapes. It was a trapping of success. It didn’t have to be real.
‘But I hadn’t realised until I was standing in my doorway shouting at your pale, devastated face wha
t that had done to me. What it had made me.’
He leaned forward and snared her gaze with his.
‘I’m here for two reasons and the first is to beg your forgiveness, Izzy, for the way I spoke to you. Here and in Australia.’
‘Do you believe I wasn’t faking it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Do you trust me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You paused.’
He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘It doesn’t come naturally, Izzy. It’s going to take a little work.’
The future tense had her breath coiling up all over again in her chest. ‘Why couldn’t you tell me your secrets?’
‘I was so smitten with you. So distracted and glassy-eyed. We went tumbling past the point at which telling you would have been natural.’
Tumbling into bed, knowing them.
‘And then I’d left it too long. It got harder every day I left it.’
Just like her parents.
‘But you’d been so great about it, so relaxed and undemanding, and I treasured that after the women I’d had in my life.’
‘I was waiting stoically for you to tell me,’ she murmured.
He forked his fingers through his hair. ‘I recognise that now.’
‘Long way to fly to apologise.’
‘In my message on the day of Dad’s heart attack, I said there was something I wanted to tell you. This was it. I was going to tell you everything—all of it. Back then.’
Until she’d gone tearing over like a banshee with all her support and kindness.
‘That’s not all you said.’
‘No.’ He stood slowly so that her end of the see-saw didn’t dump her off. Then he drew her back to her feet, too. ‘And it killed me that the first time I said it was in a voice mail. That’s not how I’d imagined saying those words.’
She tried to smile, but suspected she wasn’t pulling it off. ‘Not really how I’d imagined hearing them.’
‘In my message I also said I had something to give you. I had it on me that day. I’ve kept it with me since we last saw each other.’
He rummaged in the pocket of his long coat and presented her with a small, soft toy.
She stared at it. ‘A platypus?’
‘It was the closest I could find to an otter at Melbourne airport. I’ve been clutching that since Australia. Had to fight a four-year-old for it.’
She blinked back at him.
‘Turn it over, Izzy.’
She did, and he looked pointedly at the suspiciously pouch-like recess at its fluffy belly.
Something glinted back at her from deep inside.
She lifted her eyes to Harry’s, all breath suspended, and half whispered, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Something I should have done back when I first bought it.’
Back…?
‘And when was that?’ she asked, carefully.
‘The morning of my father’s heart attack.’
Every part of her wanted to weep. For the loss, if it was true. For the cruelty of saying it, if it was not. But she wiggled the ring free of its furry prison and turned it over gently in her fingers, her heart pounding.
White gold. Simple and unpretentious.
The squeeze morphed into an almost unbearable ache. ‘And you think an expensive parting gift is going to make things right between us?’
Case in point, really. Their whole dysfunctional relationship in a single painful, pricey gesture.
‘It’s not a parting gift.’ His lips twisted. ‘And it wasn’t that expensive.’
She ignored the first part on pure self-defence grounds.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I bought you a ring, Izzy?’
No. Because her wounded heart was already in fibrillation. How much more could she expect it to take? She shook her head—barely.
‘I wanted something to celebrate our thirtieth date. I wanted something to celebrate the crazy connection we had and the fact we’d spent every night for four weeks together. I got it because as I stood there holding that bloody ring, I could practically feel it on your fingers as they curled in mine and it just felt…so right.’
His eyes moistened a hint. ‘I got it for you, Izzy.’
‘Thirty dates?’
‘That’s what I told myself when I went in the store.’
‘And when you came out?’
‘Look at it. It’s hardly a friendship ring, is it?’
Staring down at it only highlighted how badly her hands were shaking. She curled them around the ring.
‘I’d planned to propose, Izzy.’
Rip.
There it went. Her heart’s last defences. Pain washed along every artery and vein in her body.
‘In case I hadn’t already realised how much I’d lost?’ she choked. ‘That’s why you’re telling me now?’
He stepped right up to her. Curled his hands over hers.
‘I’m telling you because I overreacted, Iz. Because I let my screwed-up idea of what love is grow like a tumour, and I put that before everything else. I came home from buying that for you to an urgent call from my sister and spent all afternoon on the phone long distance to an uncommunicative hospital, and the whole time, instead of worrying about my family, all I could feel was this crushing sensation, squeezing in from outside.’ He stepped closer. ‘That I’d have to go home. That I’d have to leave you.
‘I thought my life was over in that moment, Iz. And in that same moment I realised that what you and I had together had become my life. Everything I needed. All I wanted. And I immediately started thinking about how I could have both. Desperate, anxious thinking. I’m sure you heard it in my voice on the message.’
Had she? All she’d heard was someone desperate to get off the phone. Or maybe she’d had her own dark filter on.
Her eyes trailed all over his face. Every anxious line, every pinched nerve. And something compelled her to keep this unexpected line of honesty between them open.
‘You can’t have both.’
‘I can. I will.’
‘Then what will happen with the company?’
‘I’m going to run it.’
‘A massive commitment.’
‘Fortunately for me I’m not quite as much of a dinosaur as my father,’ he said. ‘I have an extremely talented and extremely willing older sister who has been proving herself for twenty years now. Carla was more than happy to take over our operations in Australasia.’
The turn screws holding her lungs in place cranked around a few times more and her breath struggled for passage. ‘And what about you?’
‘I’ll handle Europe and North America.’
Every bit of saliva decamped from her mouth. ‘Where will you be based?’
His whole face softened on a smile. ‘Our London offices.’
She took three long, deep breaths. ‘So you’re back until…?’
Finishing the sentence herself was just too risky. Her voice was going to crack.
‘Until you tell me to leave.’
Every part of her wanted to dance around the park. Even though she didn’t yet have a right to.
‘And this ring is…?’
‘The ring is yours, if you’ll take it.’
She clutched the little platypus in one hand and Harry’s ring in the other. Then she handed it back to him.
‘I feel like I barely know you again.’
His face fell. ‘You don’t want it?’
‘Taking it doesn’t seem right. After everything we’ve been through. Not now.’
Blue eyes bled the loss. ‘Have I wrecked everything, Iz?’
Had he? Technically he hadn’t proposed but he’d meant to, before everything went so badly wrong. And would she have said yes? Maybe. Except that everything she’d discovered, everything she’d seen in Australia, made it clear just how different their worlds were.
‘I’m not interested in your money, Harry.’
Confusion stained his gaze. ‘I know.’
‘I’m actually quite intimidated by it. You said yourself that I might not even fit in your world. What if that’s true?’
‘Then we’ll create our own world. Our own place, our own rules. Whatever we want it to be.’
‘I’m not really CEO-wife material.’ The old doubt demons danced around her heart.
‘Then don’t marry Harrison Broadmore. Marry Harry Mitchell.’
He took both her hands in his and Izzy realised how desperately she’d been wanting to touch him. She curled her fingers into his and held on.
‘How about this…?’
His eyes flicked around as he desperately thought something through, and they fell on the platypus-that-should-have-been-an-otter. ‘Let’s redo the first thirty dates. Thirty dates based on nothing less than full and total disclosure. And during that time the ring stays in the otter-pus.’
He took the ring and tucked it safely back into the toy pouch and then curled her hands over it.
‘And thirty dates from now we sit down in our living room, in front of all of London, and I’m going to give you this ring again. Properly, on bended knee and everything, and only then will I accept a no from you, Isadora Dean. Because, despite what an abomination I made of this whole thing, I can’t breathe when I think about how long and empty my life will be without you in it. Easily as miserable as my parents’.’
He shuffled in closer and framed her face. ‘You were right, Izzy. I do need you, desperately. Who else will give me grief and keep me humble when the rest of the world is sucking up? I don’t need or want anyone else by my side, in my bed or in my head. Only you.’
She swallowed past the words that had tumbled and fallen in a heap in her airway.
‘I love you, Isadora Dean. And thirty dates’ worth of patience is nothing compared to the lifetime I want to have with you.’
Maybe there was still some life in her poor heart yet. It lurched back to regular rhythm and then fluttered up to a breath-stealing gallop. She met Harry’s mouth halfway down to her and locked her lonely, wasted lips on his, and knew that was where they belonged.
They always had.
He tasted and smelled and felt exactly the same.
Like home.