by Jill Mansell
“Ross will live. Of course he’s in shock, but he’ll come through it. And you really didn’t need to apologize to him earlier, you know,” he added with a brief smile. “He doesn’t hold you responsible.”
Holly, her gaze fixed on his hand clasping her own, was finding it difficult to concentrate. It was the first time Max had ever voluntarily touched her. It was typical, she thought, that after years of expensive manicures and literally hundreds of bottles of nail polish, he should have held her hand on the one day when her nails were bare.
But the warmth of his touch, his gentle strength, the reassuring intimacy of the gesture, was nevertheless as exhilarating as she had always imagined. She wanted to kiss his tanned fingers and press them to her cheek. She wanted to press his whole body against her whole body…
“…can’t stand the way people keep looking over at us,” Max was saying. Guiltily, Holly thrust her fantasies to the back of her mind and assumed an attentive expression. For a moment, two Max Monahans swam before her like formation dancers.
“Sorry?”
“Why does everyone think we know why Tessa disappeared?” he said, glaring across at a group of whispering middle-aged women and hauling an unsuspecting Holly to her feet. “Come on, I feel like something in a zoo down here. Let’s go.”
“Go where?” whispered Holly, clinging on to him for support as he veered between the tables. Gosh, she hadn’t felt this dizzy when she’d been sitting down. But Max was being so wonderfully masterful that if he’d said Siberia she would have happily agreed. “Upstairs,” he said casually, then glanced down at her. “That is,” he added with a wry grin, “if you think you can manage them.”
Max’s rooms smelled unmistakably of Max. Holly would have recognized the scent of that particular, unusual aftershave anywhere. Sinking down into the depths of the butter-soft beige leather sofa, she realized belatedly that she still hadn’t let go of Max’s hand. When he sat down beside her she heard her own heart racing. She only wished she could remember whether she’d put on a clean bra this morning.
“You smell nice,” she said dreamily, edging closer gradually so that he wouldn’t notice she was doing it. “Have I ever told you that? You always smell…wonderful.”
If she didn’t stop sidling along the sofa she was going to end up on his lap, thought Max, but somehow the thought was no longer a terrifying one. Holly, devoted and uncomplaining, was simply someone he had never taken seriously before, but right now he felt he deserved a little devotion. And since Francine was no doubt enjoying herself with Armand—or Giorgio, or Kurt—he didn’t see much point in saving himself for the moment when she might actually deign to enjoy herself with him. Besides, if he closed his eyes he could almost imagine that Holly was Francine; their voluptuous figures weren’t at all dissimilar.
Holly’s eyes were already closed. All that alcohol on a completely empty stomach had knocked her for six, and although she was vaguely aware that this was the happiest, most glorious moment of her life, the culmination of every fantasy she had ever…well, fantasized, she was nevertheless finding it extraordinarily difficult to remain sitting upright. Feeling Max’s arm sliding across her shoulder she attempted to turn toward him, but she was no longer quite sure where he was. Because her eyes were still shut of course, she scolded herself. This was silly, she had to open them in order to get her bearings…but darling Max was murmuring her name from a great distance, and now she felt as if she were in a tunnel, slipping helplessly away from him.
“Max,” she called weakly, holding out her arms and realizing that the room was spinning, gathering speed, and that at any moment she might topple right over onto the floor. “Max, please… Hang on to me… Don’t let go… Max, I do love you…”
Chapter 38
“You look like the little match girl,” observed Dominic, opening the front door and disguising his surprise with typical flippancy. “Only wetter.”
Then without another word he took Olivia—asleep in her car seat—and drew Tessa into the large, incredibly untidy living room. Within moments, her rain-soaked pale-pink shirt was on the floor and he was pulling one of his own sweaters—black lamb’s wool with cadmium-yellow paint staining one sleeve—over her damp head.
“Now sit,” he said, pointing to the rug in front of the gas fire and throwing her a towel. “Dry your hair. What do you want, coffee or a drink?”
“C-coffee,” said Tessa, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. “P-please.”
“And Olivia? What would she like? Beaujolais Nouveau? Cognac?”
To his relief, Tessa managed a faint, barely-there smile. “I’ll take care of Olivia when she wakes up, thanks.”
Having planned on driving up to Bath for the wedding the following morning, Dominic hadn’t bothered to buy any milk, so he got out the cognac anyway and splashed some into Tessa’s black coffee by way of recompense. Then he sat back and waited for her to drink it, and for her teeth to stop chattering, before he spoke again.
“I know I’m supposed to tell you that you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he began, flipping the ring pull on his own can of lager and pausing for a second to take a swallow. “But I’m not that polite. So tell me why you’re here and not there.”
His matter-of-fact tone was exactly what she needed. At the first sign of sympathy Tessa knew she would break down in tears. Gratefully following his lead, she said, “The old, sordid story, I’m afraid. He’s been seeing another woman, and I was the last to know. Luckily, I found out before it was too late.”
Dominic thought for a moment. “Antonia.”
She nodded.
“Christ, he must be mad.”
“Yes, well…the thing is, could you put up with a couple of roommates for a while, just until I get something else organized?” She shrugged, dragging her fingers through the wet tangle of her hair. “We don’t have any references, and one of us is incontinent and can be pretty noisy at times, but we’ll try not to be a nuisance, and we promise not to throw all-night parties more than twice a week.”
“Incontinent roommates are my favorite kind,” he declared expansively. “And you can stay as long as you like, so don’t worry about looking for somewhere else. Now, why don’t you give me the keys and I’ll get your cases from the car.”
Tessa, who was still toweling her hair, sighed and said, “How do you suppose I got so wet? The car belongs to Ross, for heaven’s sake. I drove to the railway station in Bath and left it parked outside on double yellows. It’s probably been towed away by now. And I haven’t brought anything with me, so until I can get out to the shops I’m afraid you’re going to have to do without this rather expensive sweater.”
She had, however, had the presence of mind to remember the pink raffia knapsack stuffed with disposable diapers, clean clothes, and other baby essentials.
When Olivia had been fed and changed and put down for the night in the spare room, Dominic and Tessa settled down before the fire once more with a bottle of Spanish red wine. She was still unnaturally calm about the traumatic events of the day and Dominic, realizing that the time had now come for the emotions to surface, said gently, “Tell me exactly what happened, sweetheart. Come on, you need to get it out of your system.” Tessa, however, remained pale but composed. The wine was warming her, and she was lucky enough to have a friend like Dominic; she was simply glad to be here in Cornwall, with him.
“It was my own fault really,” she said, her tone calm, her arms hugging her bent knees. “I knew what Ross was like—you knew I knew what he was like!—but I was silly enough to think he’d changed, whereas what I should have done was stuck to my original decision and steered well clear of him.”
“The papers will be full of it when word gets out,” remarked Dominic. She was too calm. Now he found himself almost deliberately trying to provoke the inevitable outburst—anything was better than all this frozen acceptance. �
��What will you say when they ask you for your side of it?”
“Nothing.” Tessa smiled. “I’m staying here, and Ross thinks I’m in Scotland. Look, are you hungry? Why don’t I make us something to eat?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tess,” he exploded, gesturing frustratedly at his shirtfront. “Here’s my shoulder! You’re supposed to cry on it. It’s the night before your wedding and you’ve run away… You should be weeping and wailing, and instead, you’re offering to cook me a bloody meal!”
Leaning over, laughing now, she kissed his tanned cheek. “I was gullible; I trusted someone and he let me down. Of course I’m sad, but how can I regret knowing Ross when if it weren’t for him, Olivia wouldn’t even exist? Having a daughter means far more to me than having a husband. And don’t flatter yourself,” she added, rising to her feet and heading toward the kitchen, “I wasn’t going to cook you a meal anyway. What I had in mind was peanut butter sandwiches…”
• • •
The change in the weather had been dramatic; after weeks of unrelenting sunshine and soaring temperatures, the storm had broken in spectacular fashion at around two o’clock that afternoon. The sound of unaccustomed rain hammering mercilessly against the windows had seemed quite strange, alien to the ears after such a prolonged dry spell. Dominic, finding himself suddenly and unexpectedly awake at four thirty in the morning, lay in the darkness and sleepily assumed that it was this noise that had disturbed him.
But a moment later he heard the quieter rustle of paper and some sixth sense made him realize what was happening. Sliding noiselessly out of bed and dragging on the nearest pair of jeans to cover his nakedness, he made his way across the hallway and pushed open the door to the sitting room.
Tessa was kneeling on the floor, her blond head tilted away from him, her slender shoulders heaving. Before her lay the discarded scarlet-and-white-striped paper in which his wedding present—flamboyantly addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Monahan—had been wrapped.
Dominic, justifiably proud of the small, simply constructed sculpture he had worked on for almost three full days, wished now that he had bought them an electric kettle instead. The two entwined figures, male and female locked in a tender embrace and demonstrating with aching clarity the love and trust that bound them, lay in Tessa’s lap, and as he watched, ashamed by his thoughtlessness but at the same time relieved, a single tear splashed down onto the ivory-glazed figures, and Tessa’s sobbing finally became audible.
Crouching down beside her, he pulled her gently into his arms. “I’m sorry, I should have put it away.”
He had had plenty of experience in his time with the vagaries of female emotion; as he had expected, the gesture of comfort had a cathartic effect upon her tears. All he had to do now was hold her and wait patiently for her to finish. She would feel far better as soon as this first outpouring of grief was out of her system.
Chapter 39
It had been, decided Holly morbidly, the most hideous day of her entire life. As she crawled into bed at the ridiculously early hour of ten o’clock, she shuddered afresh at the memory of the moment when she had woken up in Max’s bed. The hangover alone had been pretty unbearable but mingled with the scent of that aftershave it had finished her off completely. Thank goodness Max hadn’t been there to see her sitting up in bed retching helplessly into the nearest flower vase.
And then, when she had finally managed to locate her shoes and stagger from the bedroom to the sitting room, he had been there, showered and dressed and concentrating rigidly on the screen of the laptop at which he sat. Fumbling like an idiot for her handbag, which was squashed halfway down the back of the sofa, she had tried to smile at him and received a brief, less than reassuring, stare in return. The relaxed intimacy of the previous evening was clearly no longer on the agenda. She felt dreadful and probably looked it. Max, no doubt, was thanking his lucky stars right now that she had passed out before he could do anything he would certainly have regretted later. Cinderella had had her chance, and she’d blown it. And if she didn’t get out of here fast she was in very real danger of being sick again, all over his beautiful leather upholstery. Bitterly ashamed of herself—how, after all, could she ever have really imagined that she stood a chance with Max in clothes like these and no makeup?—she gave up on the smile. Her teeth hurt too much anyway, along with the rest of her hideous body.
“I’ll be off then,” she said as Max typed a few words, swore beneath his breath, and irritably deleted them.
“Mmm.”
“And…I’m sorry about last night.”
He was still concentrating on the screen. “Mmm.”
The pig, he hadn’t even had the decency to glance up at her. Not that she would have wanted him to, but still…
And the horrors of the morning hadn’t finished showing their hand. Spending the night in Max’s bed had been a long-cherished ambition, but she wouldn’t cherish this memory. Nor that of those endless ghastly seconds when she descended the main staircase and had to walk the length of reception in order to reach the front doors. Sylvie Nash, bursting with curiosity and disbelief and as tactless as ever, exclaimed, “Holly, you look terrible! What on earth have you been up to?” Then, raising her voice instead of lowering it, she added archly, “And who on earth were you with?”
By this time, of course, everyone had turned to look at her. Holly, barefaced in every respect, said, “Mel Gibson,” and didn’t stop walking until she reached the blissful sanctuary of her car.
Except that there had been no real sanctuary. By the time she realized that the filthy dark-blue Rolls-Royce was actually following her, it was too late. Wearily, she drew up outside her apartment and watched in her rearview mirror as Adam Perry parked behind her.
“I’m tired, I’m not in the mood for jokes, I just want to go to bed,” she announced, and because it was only Adam she wasn’t even ashamed of her derelict appearance.
For once, however, he wasn’t smiling. To her astonishment he didn’t even pick up on her unintentional double entendre. Seizing her keys from her shaky grasp, he put one strong arm around her shoulders and led her up the steps to her front door. “I know, sweetheart. You look done in. What a rotten time you’ve had.”
The warmth and sympathy in his voice was so unexpected that Holly found herself unable to speak. Almost before she knew what was happening, she found herself lying on her unmade bed with a mug of creamy coffee in her hands and a plateful of hot, buttered crumpets on her lap.
“Thank you,” she said at last, glancing across to the window as the first spattering drops of rain began to fall outside. Like tears, she thought. “I wonder where Tessa is now?”
“She’s a sensible girl,” Adam reassured her. “Wherever she is, she’ll be in touch with you before long. You’re her closest friend.”
“She must be feeling awful. And the worst part of it is, nobody has any idea why she should have done it. If I’m so close to her, why don’t I know?”
“Shhh.” Breaking off a butter-soaked wedge of crumpet, he held it to her mouth. “Come on, eat. And you mustn’t feel guilty, because whatever has happened is between Tessa and Ross.” He paused, then said slowly, “It did occur to me that it might have something to do with Antonia Seymour-Smith.”
Holly chewed and swallowed, thankful that the nausea had receded. The acetaminophen Adam had wordlessly handed to her along with her coffee also seemed to be working. Her headache was less severe; all she had to cope with now was her own shame. She had made the most appalling fool of herself, and Max would probably never want to speak to her again.
“Ross wondered the same thing,” she admitted, dragging her thoughts back to the conversation currently in progress. “He spoke to her on the phone yesterday, but she didn’t appear to know anything. Besides, Tessa isn’t the kind of person who would be put off by wicked gossip; she knows perfectly well that Ross adores her, and we all know that he hasn
’t done anything wrong. He ended his affair with Antonia ages ago, and he hasn’t even looked at another woman since he’s been with Tessa.”
She pushed the plate away, unable to eat any more. Adam, finishing his own coffee, said, “You still look absolutely wiped out. I’ll leave now and let you get some sleep. But look, you’ll be feeling better by this evening—how about a quiet dinner somewhere? I could pick you up at around eight.”
He had been kind, but Holly wasn’t about to fall into the gratitude trap. Furthermore, she knew that she wouldn’t want to go out. She had a great deal of thinking to do, and she needed time alone to come to terms with her disastrous experience with Max. Wounded and humiliated, she craved solitude…
“It’s nice of you to invite me, but I don’t think so,” she replied. “I want to be here in case Tessa tries to get in touch.”
“I could bring some food over…?”
“No, Adam.” Speaking more firmly, she shook her aching head. A lecherous male was the last thing she needed right now, even if he was revealing a new and unexpectedly compassionate side to his nature. “I just want to be alone, really.”
“OK, sweetheart. Well, I’ll be off then.” He tucked the duvet around her before moving toward the door. “But if you change your mind, give me a ring. I’m in the book, OK?”
• • •
Despising herself for her weakness, Holly gave in at around seven o’clock that evening. Six hours of much-needed recuperative sleep had worked wonders, and by the time she stepped out of a long, blissfully hot bubble bath, she found herself restored. Her ghastly hangover, as hangovers have a way of doing, had vanished without a trace, and even the nightmare of last night seemed less threatening now. Maybe a quiet, companionable dinner with Adam wasn’t such a terrible idea after all. And it would be nice to be able to talk to someone who knew Tessa, who shared her concern for her…