by Nikki Ashton
At the mention of Michael’s name, I heard a noise come from Roman, and his body tensed up next to mine. Caroline looked at him and her eyes went cold.
‘All this because of an accident,’ I said quietly.
‘He was my life,’ she replied on a sob. ‘And he took him away from me.’
I looked up at Roman, and there were tears in his eyes. He’d punished himself enough, and now Caroline was doing it all over again. I knew she must be in pain with her grief, but Roman didn’t deserve any retribution for what had happened in the ring.
‘You selfish bitch,” I snapped. ‘How dare you blame all this on Roman and what happened to Michael!”
Caroline’s eyes widened. ‘What the hell has it got to do with you? You didn’t even know Michael.’
‘No I didn’t, but I’m sure if he was half the man I think he was, he’d be disgusted with you. It was an accident. He knew the risks.’ I took a step closer to Caroline, pointing my finger at her. ‘How could you do this to Roman, knowing how he’s hated himself for what happened?. In fact how could you do it to Maisie?’
‘What the hell does my daughter have to do with it?’ .
‘She has everything to do with it.’ I cried, swallowing around the lump of emotion brought on by the thought of Maisie having such awful parents.
‘You are so lucky to have her, yet you’ve been so blinded by bitterness and the need to get at Roman that you’ve not even considered what effect all this will have on her. ’
‘You know nothing,’ Caroline scoffed.
‘I know your twisted plan took her away from the only father she’s known, simply to feed your own twisted sense of justice. To be honest, as parents, you’re both shit.’
Caroline’s gaze followed mine to Jack.
‘Poor Maisie, having you two as role models. What the hell would Michael think?’
Caroline’s bottom lip trembled as she stared at me and guilt shadowed her face. The mention of Michael had tipped her over the edge.
‘This is all your fault,’ she screamed, at Jack. ‘You promised me that we’d be away and free. That he’d never know we took the money. You made me take the laptop and the other stuff to make it look like a burglary. He made me do it, Roman. I swear.’
Roman stiffened at my side. ‘What else did you take?’ he demanded.
‘Shut up!’ Jack snarled. ‘You’re lying to save your own skin. She’s lying.’
His cheeks were pinking, and you didn’t need a body-language expert to tell you that he was the one who was lying.
‘I think we perhaps need to take this down to the station,’ the older officer said, ‘and get things cleared up.’
‘I’m not going,’ Jack said, shaking his head vehemently. ‘You’ve got nothing on me.’
He was clearly rattled, and started to back away from us. The young officer moved to stand behind him, gently placing a hand on the small of his back.
‘I think you should come with us, sir,’ he said.
‘No, no way.’
Caroline was sobbing now, as she and Jack started berating and pointing at each other.
‘Ask him about Alfie,’ Roman said just loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘Go on.’
‘We’ll talk about everything down at the station, sir.’
‘Please just ask him about the near beating to death of Alfie Chambers. Go on.’ Roman’s voice was hard and adamant.
The older policeman studied Roman, and then started to talk on his radio, while the younger one kept a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
Jack struggled against his touch, but the policeman’s grip tightened; with his other hand he gripped Jack’s arm and pulled it behind his back.
‘Get off me,’ Jack shouted, attracting a few passers-by.
‘Okay, roger that,’ the older officer said into the radio. ‘Sir, we’d like you to come down to the station with us. Voluntarily, if possible.’ He indicated towards Jack. ‘Get him cuffed, and we’ll take him down to the station.’ The younger man nodded in response.
‘You can’t take me,’ Jack cried. ‘You have no damn proof. We’re booked on a ferry tonight for France.’
‘What did you do to Alfie?’ Roman asked, his jaw twitching. ‘Tell us, Jack.’
‘Yes, tell them all about how you paid Alfie Chambers, Jack,’ Caroline added bitterly.
Jack looked at her and then the police officers and his shoulders dropped in defeat.
‘He’s a fucking idiot.’
I thought he was talking about Roman, but then he spat everything out.
‘He got me the information I wanted. Stroke of luck that she,’ he pointed a finger at me, ‘was typing up the quote when he went in to see her. He said she made it so easy, leaving him alone in the office.’
My heart sank as I remembered that day. It had been my fault after all. Sensing my guilt, Roman kissed the top of my head, and wrapped his arm around me.
Jack, in the meantime, continued to rant.
‘But Alfie got damn greedy; he wanted more money from me, otherwise he’d tell him what he’d done. I gave him three grand, but he wanted more—’
‘My mum and dad’s money!’ I gasped.
‘Ooh you horrible man,’ Emma hissed.
‘Yeah, your sister was good for one thing at least,’ Jack snarled. ‘I needed that damn job, I couldn’t let Hepburn get it back. Have you tried keeping a woman like Caroline in fucking shoes.’
‘Okay, let’s go.’
The next thing Jack was being read his rights, had handcuffs on his wrists and was being led to the squad car by the older officer. The younger one stayed and read Caroline her rights before guiding her towards the squad car.
‘This is not my fault.’ Caroline shouted, trying to drag herself away from the officer’s grip. ‘I told you it was all Jack. He made me do it. I’m not going anywhere. I need to see Maisie.”
‘Pity you didn’t think of that before,’ I said.
Caroline looked at me and her resolve disappeared as she started to cry.
‘But my daughter is with my parents,’ she pleaded. ‘Please let me go home to tell them, and to ask my dad to get me a solicitor. I’m begging you.’
‘You’ll get your phone call, don’t worry,’ the officer replied, leading Caroline away.
Roman turned away from her and shook his head. ‘Well, at least it means that poor Maisie has someone she can rely on; they’re really good people.’
‘Sir.’
The young policeman returned after putting Caroline in the back of the car with Jack. ‘I think you’d better come down to the station too, sir. We need a statement from you about the damage you’ve caused.’
‘He hasn’t done anything wrong,’ I protested.
‘Summer, it’s fine. I’m happy to go.’ Roman turned to the officer. ‘When can I get my money and stuff back?’
‘We’ve got a tow truck coming for the car. It’ll be searched as soon as the detectives get here,’ he replied. ‘We’ll look after it until then, but as I said we’d like to see you down at the station.’
Roman agreed before leading me to his truck, with Emma and Henry close behind us.
‘Thanks, you two,’ Roman said, slapping a hand on Henry’s back, and then hugging Emma.
‘Oh I thoroughly enjoyed myself. We should do this more often, Henry.’
Henry led Emma back to her car, laughing all the way.
As Roman went to move, I took his hand, pulling him to me. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. I wanted to kill him when he made a move towards you, but I’m okay.’
Roman stooped down and kissed me gently.
It was almost a month after the nightmare with Caroline and Jack, and Roman and I were sitting in his lounge with both sets of our parents and siblings. We were finally getting back to some normality: if having both families around for drinks and food at Roman’s house could be called normality. Nevertheless, things were good
Once Jack Abbott had been questioned,
he told the police everything, or to use the criminal vernacular, he’d ‘sung like a canary’.
As his own business had been failing, he’d paid Alfie to get him information on the Cromwell job: our conversation in the pub alerting him to it and giving him the idea. Apparently, he and Alfie drank in the same pub, and realised that they both knew Roman. Alfie, always out for some easy money, had been more than happy to take Jack up on the offer. It was then that Caroline came up with the idea of being evicted and moving in with Roman. Apparently, their break-up wasn’t real, but they’d come up with the plan to pretend they had, so that they could swindle Roman.
Unfortunately for Pippa, Jack conveniently forgot that that fact.
What made me even madder was the little thought Caroline had given to Maisie, separating her from the only father she’d ever known, even if he was a shit.
Moving in with Roman was supposed to give Caroline the chance to find out anything they could use to steal jobs from him. Her main aim: to ruin the man who’d killed the love of her life. When she hadn’t managed that, Jack planted the video camera in Roman’s study and got the bonus of seeing Roman use the safe.
On the same day that Alfie managed to get the information Jack needed, we bumped into Jack at Ziggy’s. That was when he decided to make the play for Pippa. He told Caroline it was to get information, not letting on that he already had what he needed. According to Caroline’s statement, Jack said he was simply taking her out and getting her drunk, getting little pieces of information each time.
As if my sister would be privy to Roman’s business details, or moreover his safe combination. Personally, I felt that for someone who had the brains to know a damn good shoe when she saw one, Caroline was a little stupid to believe that Jack Abbott was merely taking my sister on dates.
Also, in her statement to the police, Caroline said that she had no idea that Pippa had left home to live with Jack. To be fair to Jack, he hadn’t asked her to, Pippa just decided. That was why he moved them out to the cottage, so that Caroline wouldn’t find out. Lies within lies.
As for Alfie, well, he was still in a bad way from being beaten up by a thug that Jack had hired. He was now conscious and still in hospital, but was going to be all right, albeit missing a couple of teeth and having a crack in his skull.
This family get-together should have been a happy occasion: Roman hadn’t been charged with any criminal damage and all the money and items stolen by the ‘Gruesome Twosome’ had been recovered. However, if I could wrench my own teeth out with pliers, I would have felt more relaxed.
On the surface everyone was getting along fairly well, but I could see lots of different scenarios playing out. Every time Pete called Twinkle ‘Twinkle’, my mum gave a girlish giggle. Dad kept throwing sly glances at Roman—Roman was having sex with his daughter and that’s what dads did. Pete kept making dirty jokes that had Pippa snorting with laughter and Roman groaning with despair.
Finally, my brother, Dylan, was also getting right on my knockers with the cheeky innuendos that he kept throwing Tiffany’s way. Tiffany was not in the slightest way interested in my brother, which, in turn, was stressing him out, but slightly improving my mood.
‘Is she a lesbian?’ Dylan had whispered to me in all seriousness.
I didn’t even deign to give the egotistical idiot an answer. It was a surprise, though, that she wasn’t affected by him, as most women were. Even Twinkle giggled coquettishly every time he looked at her. Then again, Twinkle wasn’t most women.
‘You’re a dick, you know that,’ I hissed out of the corner of my mouth to Dylan. He’d just winked at Tiffany and huffed when she simply smiled back and then carried on her conversation with Pippa about the best bits of Magic Mike: namely Channing Tatum, which I wholeheartedly agreed with.
Giving Roman a smile, I pushed up from the sofa to go and check on dinner. I was cooking, which was a little scary seeing as I rarely cooked. I lived at home with my mother, why would I ever cook? So I’d opted for something easy which Roman had loved when I’d made it once before: chicken curry.
‘You okay?’ Roman asked, catching hold of my hand.
‘Yeah, just going to check on the curry.’ I leaned down and dropped a kiss on his lips.
‘Need any help?’
‘No, you stay here. I’ll only be a minute.’
I went into the kitchen and moved to the cooker hob to check on the food. Lifting the lid of the huge stainless steel pot, I gave it a stir, and inhaled the gorgeous aroma of garlic and spices.
‘Can I do anything?’ Tiffany’s voice came from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder at her. ‘No, everything is under control.’
I flashed her a smile. We’d started to get closer, and I’d really grown to care a lot about her, especially because I knew how much she loved her brother; something that we had in common.
‘So,’ Tiff said, sidling up to me. ‘Your brother?’
‘Ugh,’ I groaned. ‘I’m so sorry about him and his ego. He actually asked me if you were gay because you weren’t interested in him. He’s not used to it.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Tiff gasped. ‘He’s bloody gorgeous. He looks just like a lighter-haired Micah Truitt, and he saves animals.’
The disappointment that Tiffany had been hypnotised by my brother hit me like a train.
‘Not you too?’ I moaned, banging my forehead against the extractor-fan hood. ‘Tiiiiffff, no.’
‘What?’ she laughed. ‘He’s really hot.’
‘But not you, I thought that you were immune to him. Please don’t tell him, it’s so much more fun that he thinks you don’t fancy him.’
Tiffany looked horrified. ‘Oh my God, no way would I let on. No matter how fit he is, I would not go there. I know he’s your brother, Summer, but I get the impression he’s only into one-night stands, and that’s not what I want.’
I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank the Lord above for that.’ The thought of getting caught in the after-burn of a hook-up between Dylan and Tiffany was not something I would relish. ‘Do me a favour though, Tiff.’
‘Yeah, what’s that?’ she asked opening the fridge for another bottle of wine.
‘Please, please, please, ignore him as much as possible. He needs bringing down a notch or two, and you not falling for his charms would do that perfectly.’
‘Consider it done.’ Tiffany grinned at me. ‘This is going to be so much fun.’
Dinner had gone surprisingly well, with Pete and Dad having thirds—thank God I’d made enough to feed half the town. My mum had even suggested that I make it at home one evening, to give her a night off from cooking. Roman sat with an arm around me, his thumb gently rubbing circles on my shoulder as he gazed at me proudly. Everyone thought that my blushes were because of the praise that they were all heaping on me, but it was actually because Roman’s touch was starting a fire in the pit of my stomach.
‘Well, now you know she can cook, son,’ Pete said taking a bite of a poppadum, ‘maybe you should think about marrying her.’
I gasped and quickly looked at Roman. This was not the conversation that I wanted to have. Not now, not here. Yes, I wanted to believe that someday we’d get married, have a future together, but I didn’t want Roman to feel pressurised into saying something that he didn’t want to.
‘Oh Pete,’ Twinkle said, ‘shut up and leave them alone.’
‘Says you, who keeps telling me she’s his destiny.’
‘Dad,’ Roman said, getting his father’s attention, ‘shut up, hey?’
Roman’s face was hard as he stared at his dad, daring him to speak. It was blatantly obvious that marriage to me was definitely not in his life plan.
I forced out a laugh, and stood to collect the empty plates.
‘I take it everyone wants dessert?’ I asked and left the dining room.
Once I was in the kitchen, I let out a long breath and cursed Pete for ruining my fantasy.
‘Summer.’
I h
eard the door click shut and then felt Roman’s arms wrap around my upper body before he dragged me back against his hard chest.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered against my ear. ‘My dad is an absolute space cadet. He’s totally unaware of other people’s feelings at times.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, trying to sound light. ‘He was only joking.’
I laid my head back against Roman’s shoulder and grabbed hold of his arms as they enveloped me. The comfort that being in his embrace brought to me was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I hadn’t even felt this safe and loved as a child when my parents had held me. At the time, I had never thought that anyone would mean as much to me as my mum and dad did, no one would ever be that important. But Roman was: he was my world.
‘He still shouldn’t be saying those sort of things. Joke or not,’ Roman replied. ‘Something like that is between us. As if I’d discuss it with him, in front of everyone, anyway.’
‘Don’t be mad at him.’ I turned in Roman’s arms and snaked my arms around his waist. ‘He was just being your dad.’
‘Yeah, a total dick.’
Roman brushed hair away from my forehead and studied my face for a few seconds.
‘I love you so fucking much,’ he finally said on a shaky breath. ‘You’ve totally changed my life, and I can’t imagine one moment without you in it. The thought of you not being here petrifies me. Life would be dark and drab without you.’
‘Oh Roman,’ I whimpered and sucked back the tears of emotion that were threatening. ‘You don’t ever have to think about it, because it’s never going to happen. You’re stuck with me.’
‘You swear?’ he asked earnestly. ‘You promise that you’re not going to get some ridiculous notion into your head that I should be with someone else?’
I knew what he was getting at, and I thought back to the night in the club, when I’d tried to end things. I knew that night that I really cared about Roman, but it was only a fraction of what I felt now. The thought that he could have agreed made nausea roll deep in the pit of my stomach.