by Lexie James
“I love you to Jake, forever and ever.”
“To the moon and back?”
Sarah laughed softly. “Even further.”
Feeling as if his insides had been ripped out Nicholas walked away from the table, he couldn’t think and all he could hear was Chloe crying, he swung round on her with his fists raised as he shouted at her.
“For God’s sake Chloe will you just shut up with the crying!”
Jonathan moved swiftly between them.
“Nick, it’s not her fault. She wasn’t even going to tell us except the package was delivered here to the office and I found her crying after she had opened it. No-one wants to hurt you. Well apart from Sarah it seems. I find this as hard to believe as you do, she’s been phoning me every few days trying to find out if I could bring you home earlier. These pictures, the tape, I mean really, none of it makes any sense.”
There was absolute silence in the room only punctuated, every now and then, by a stifled sob as Chloe tried nearly successfully to control her emotions.
Finally Nicolas looked up at Jonathan and spoke.
“Well that’s that then.”
Jonathan stared at Nick uncertainly, not sure what to do next but determined that this time he would try and protect his brother from the agony of a relationship breakdown.
“What do you want to do?”
Nick’s tormented voice answered him. “It’s over isn’t? Just like before with Maggie.” He swallowed convulsively. “I can’t do it. I can’t face another cheating woman not after what happened before.”
He slumped into a chair covering his face with his hands. “Help me Jonathan; I don’t know what to do.”
Jonathan moved to stand beside him placing his hands on his shoulders trying to infuse some sort of hope into the situation even though he knew that there none. The evidence in front of them was so conclusive that he wanted to wring Sarah’s neck for breaking his brother’s heart.
“Shall I go and see Sarah for you, ask her to leave?”
He felt Nick’s shoulders shudder as he acknowledged what Jonathan said yet even now his voice shook in disbelief as he swung his eyes round to stare at Jonathan.
“I still can’t believe it, I spoke to her not fifteen minutes ago. She told me how happy she was that I was home, that she had something to tell me.”
Chloe moved to the other side of him, also touching his shoulder, trying to offer him some measure of comfort as she spoke softly.
“Nick, I’m so sorry somehow I feel that this is my fault. I thought I was helping, I thought it would prove to you how trustworthy Sarah was, how she was nothing like Maggie. I am so sorry I interfered.”
Nick straightened his back, glancing at her bleakly as if to acknowledge that he appreciated her sympathy.
“It’s alright, don’t blame yourself, the truth will always out itself in the end. It’s not your fault; it just seems to have been my bad luck to have chosen the wrong woman yet again.”
He stood up and began to pace around the room sighing deeply. Eventually he turned to Jonathan with a decision written all over his face.
“Will you go for me? Ask her to, no tell her to leave, tell her to leave tonight and take all of her belongings with her. I don’t want to have to go through getting rid of another person’s belongings ever again. Let me know when she’s gone, when everything’s gone, and then I’ll come back. Don’t let her be upset, please make sure she’s safe, please don’t let this be another Maggie.”
Jonathan glanced at Chloe. “I’m not sure I can stop her being hurt or upset, I mean she’s bound to be upset you know about her lover, but I won’t let her hurt herself. I promise. Do you want me to take these pictures to her, to show her we know the truth, even if she tries to deny it? ”
Nick shook his head, turning his back on them and moving towards the window, thinking.
Finally he swung his head towards Jonathan and replied.
“No leave the pictures, just take the tape. Then she’ll know categorically that she’s been caught out. There is absolutely no doubt that that is her voice.”
“Nick?” Chloe began tentatively; Nick raised his hand to silence her.
“Please both of you just go, leave me alone.”
And they had gone.
Jonathan had left first but Chloe had turned to the table to collect the pictures, he remembered silently, watching her as she was neatly tidying up the pictures that killed his life. Eventually the atmosphere still breaking him he remembered asking her, “What on earth do you think you are doing?”
She had gazed him blankly before replying nervously.
“I thought I would just take these away, out of your sight. After all you don’t want to keep looking at pictures of Sarah with another man do you?”
He had told her to leave the pictures and get out.
Slowly his mind returned to the present and he stared at the pictures that he had made Chloe leave on the table, pushing himself away from the window he walked towards the table until he could look down on the woman he had loved with so much of his soul. It tore him apart to see her looking at another man with the love she had sworn was for him.
He began to pick up each picture, feeling as he did so that he was trying to punish himself for the crime of believing he was lovable.
His Sarah, sitting with another man, heads together in such a comfortable familiar pose, a pose that spoke of their togetherness against the world. Another picture where they were laughing, she seemed so happy, as if she hadn’t got a care in the world, certainly no thought for the husband that she was cheating on.
He picked up another picture yet even as he did so he found his eye being drawn back to the picture where they were both laughing.
The more he looked the more he saw and gradually something began to nag at the periphery of his consciousness.
He picked the photograph up, moving it into a better light so that he could study it more carefully, there, it was there, he had known something was not quite right, his eyes darted backwards and forwards between the two faces as he finally recognised what he was looking at.
There, they both had turquoise eyes, how had he missed that? And the way they both held their heads the same tilt as they looked at each other, the shape of their heads, even their smiles were the same. The more he stared the more obvious it became to him that this wasn’t Sarah with a lover; this was Sarah with a member of her family.
But who was he? Was he a brother, or a cousin, why the hell didn’t he know.
Then he thought back over their short time together and realised with a sickening thud that he didn’t know who it was because he had never asked her anything about her family. In fact he knew nothing at all about her background, her growing up, but then he had been so determined to forget his own childhood that he had never even asked her about hers, worried in case she would expect him to reciprocate and tell her about his family life.
No not true, he did recall asking her once but he remembered that she had quickly changed the subject and somehow it had never come up again. It was ridiculous, it beggared belief, they had been married nearly three months yet he knew nothing of her past, as if she had only come into being at that exact moment when he had first found her.
He shuffled through all the pictures again, noting in each and every one that there was a strong family resemblance.
Now that he could see it he went over the conversation that had been on the tape. The other speaker was trying to persuade her to tell him about them, if not a lover then who? And to tell him what? About her family? Their family in fact. Why had she never told him?
What had she been so scared of that she couldn’t find the courage to tell him? His heart began to thump painfully as a dozen scenarios, all worse than the last, flashed across his mind, what had happened to her to make her so afraid? Why hadn’t he seen it?
As he tried to get his head around the fact that this was not a lover but a member of her family, his heart plummeted as he re
alised the enormity of the actions that he had initiated.
He had simply assumed the worst because of his first marriage, and because of all that had happened with Maggie he had chosen not to give Sarah the chance to defend herself to him but instead had sent Jonathan in his place. Jonathan was there as his judge and executioner, they had already condemned her and Jonathan was carrying out the sentence, no opportunity to explain just too callously tell her to leave.
Frantically he looked at the time on the face of his watch, 17:50, Jonathan would be with Sarah in ten minutes.
He had just ten minutes to stop him speaking to her, he had to sort this out; frantically he dialled Jonathan’s number but the phone went straight to voicemail. Cursing he rushed out of the office grabbing the pictures as he did and banged on the button to call the lift as he redialled Jonathan’s number.
Again it went to voicemail. Panic stricken he gave up waiting for the lift and began to run down the stairs, two at a time continually redialling Jonathan’s phone and replaying the scene in the office as he did so.
He tried Sarah’s number, if he could get her to wait somewhere else he could avoid the catastrophe but it too went to voicemail and with a curse he remembered he had told her that tonight that they would have no interruptions, no phones, why had she chosen today of all days to remember to turn off her phone?
Why, why had he assumed the worst? What had triggered him to believe what he saw? Was it Jonathan’s shock or Chloe’s tears? Now he thought about it Chloe had cried a great deal, why on earth would she do that?
He had so many questions to ask and if he didn’t get there soon Jonathan would have done his job and he would never get the chance to ask them.
He stumbled at the bottom of the stairs as a stray thought jumped out and tore into him, there had been photographs of Maggie too, delivered anonymously, it had to be coincidence didn’t it?
Even as he jumped into the car and started the engine he began to run the scene in the office in his head all over again searching for something, anything that would give him a clue about the hell that seemed to constitute his life.
CHAPTER TWO
Some crushes just never went away. They built instead into something
Permanent and all consuming
Maya Banks. Rush 2013
Chloe sucked in a deep breath as Nick dismissed her. This was not how it was meant to be. He was meant to look at the pictures once, read the scant notes about how many times they had met up, then let her take them away. But the pain on his face had been so evident that there was nothing she could do but let him wallow in his misery.
Quietly she had told him as she left, “I’m here if you need someone to talk.”
Then she had walked out of their offices, picking up her coat and bag as she did so, and entered the lift.
It wasn’t until she got into the lift that she let her frustration get the better of her and kicked the wall as she swore.
“Damn, damn, damn you Nick, they’re my pictures, not yours. I got them, I worked on them. You were only meant to look at them once. Just the once! How dare you keep them!”
The lift reached the ground floor and she stomped out, so wrapped up in her fury that she ignored the doorman holding the door open for her. Angrily she hailed a taxi. What was she going to do if he looked more closely at the pictures? The more he looked the more chance there was he would recognise what she knew and then she could be in trouble. If only that stupid investigator had taken pictures of Sarah with another man instead of her bloody brother! The tape was fine, it could have supported any pictures and would have damned her, but honestly, why couldn’t the little bitch have at least met one other man so that there were pictures of him instead of a blood relative. All the investigation had thrown up was that she was squeaky clean, well if you discounted the facts she had omitted to say, namely that she was a tutor at university, and owned prime London property making her fabulously wealthy, oh and her family business was diamonds.
She might be innocent of having an affair but she had certainly not told Nick anything about her life.
She settled back in the taxi and began to review her options, then her mouth tipped up as a self-satisfied smile cruelly made its appearance. Why was she worrying? After all Nick had been through this once before, she had made very sure of that, and believing he had been wronged by the first woman he had loved he would automatically assume the worst this time. Why would he look any closer? The ‘evidence’ was there in front of his eyes, and he had heard Sarah’s voice on the tape professing love to another man.
Unfortunately her investigator had been very thorough with all the information he had collected. She had expected no more than pictures of Sarah with art school friends, just enough to cast doubt in Nick and Jonathan’s eyes. But the man had produced so much information about Sarah, her family, her job, her pregnancy. Way more than she needed, she had only needed enough to show that Sarah was cheating.
Okay, obviously, the information she had been presented with showed that Sarah was totally innocent of any wrong doing but all it had needed was some manipulation on her part, removing all the background information and the tape, oh yes he had come up bull’s eyes with the tape.
Of course there was a world of difference between the tape he had given her and the tape she had finally put in the envelope. In fact there was precious little left of what the investigator had handed over to her which is why she had been thankful that everything had been delivered to her flat. It had taken her an hour or two to weed out all the relevant details, leaving what was left so that the evidence looked like an affair.
The hardest thing had been copying the tape so that only a small portion of the conversation could be heard, the part that, along with the pictures nailed it perfectly. Proof positive was there for all to see and hear that Sarah had been cheating on Nick.
She considered it a final stroke of genius to post it to the office so that Jonathan could see her open it with the morning post. No-one would be able to prove that she had done anything apart from hire an investigator, she was convinced her hands were crystal clean.
However if Nick looked too long at the photographs he might recognise similarities but she was confident that the tape had nailed it, with any luck, even if he began to waiver he would only need to listen to the tape again. And if he wanted to pursue the information any further then he would have to wait because she had already ensured that her source was gone, left for a long extended holiday.
She wouldn’t have to explain anything; she could plead innocence if he began to question the truth of it and with her investigator abroad and unreachable, she would look as white as snow.
The one fact that she was absolutely damn sure of was that by the time the truth finally came out it would be too late.
Sarah would never forgive him, how would any woman? And then there were her brothers, she had learnt enough about Sarah to know that her family would close a protective circle around her. Even if she did forgive him, once all the secrets that she had kept hidden from him came out, Nick would never forgive her. Not for keeping him in the dark and pretending she was something she wasn’t.
No neither of them would forgive the other and because of that, finally she, Chloe would win, just like she should have done four years ago.
The slight fly in the ointment was that she had now used the same plan twice, last time she had made sure the photographs had landed on his desk anonymously; this time she had hired someone else to do the deed, hopefully Nick was so insecure that he wouldn’t remember that both his wives supposed infidelity had been exposed in the same way.
Her plan would have worked the first time round if only Maggie hadn’t managed to get herself killed, the stupid woman! She hadn’t meant that to have happened but it had certainly gotten rid of her permanently. Unfortunately moving in on a man post a cheating wife was reasonably acceptable but a grieving widower, no, that was not quite so acceptable.
Obviously she had had to
hold herself back from instilling herself permanently in his life and by doing that and giving him time to come to terms with Maggie’s betrayal and death it had allowed this ridiculous marriage to take place.
Las Vegas was meant to be have been when he had finally seen how wonderful she was, how perfect she would be as his wife supporting his work and being his perfect hostess. It would have happened too if only that little tramp hadn’t batted her eyes at him.
But now, well now finally, everything was back on track, he was totally convinced that Sarah had betrayed him and Jonathan, also convinced, was doing the dirty deed for him, tossing Sarah out with the rubbish where she belonged.
And that would leave her the opportunity to step into the hole that Sarah’s dismissal would leave in Nick’s life.
Why he had never realised in the first place that it was she, Chloe, who was the person who was meant to be beside him, she had never understood. After all she had realised it from the moment she had stepped into their office for her interview.
He had stood up as she entered, the perfect gentleman, and she had been bowled away by her first sight of him. Deep blue eyes had crinkled as he smiled at her and when he shook her hand she had felt a tingle and was sure he had felt it too. He was as different from his brother as it was possible to be, Nick was as fair as Jonathan was dark and whereas Nick’s blue eyes had enticed her in Jonathan’s liquid brown eyes had left her feeling cold. In fact they had reminded her of a puppy she had once had.
But Nick, in that moment she had known, he was the love of her life, they were meant to be together, but like any man they needed to have it shown to them.
She had understood the need for Nick and Jonathan to build up their business and because she understood it had been she who had sacrificed all her hours to support them in their endeavours.
Had Maggie ever done that? Had she ever understood? No of course she hadn’t, she had whined instead that they were newlyweds and she had wanted to spend more time with him. It had been foolish in the extreme for Gregg to try and comfort her but his actions had played so perfectly into her hands.