In the moment before Chloe or Vicky noticed his presence, he drank in the sight of the woman he had so wanted to believe in but who had hurt him beyond bearing. She glanced round then, shock and guilt in her expressive eyes when her gaze met his.
‘Oliver! I—’
‘Vicky, Lauren is waiting for you downstairs,’ he interrupted, somehow managing to force the words past the tightness in his throat.
‘Oops! Didn’t see you there.’ With an irritating giggle, Vicky slid off the edge of Chloe’s desk. ‘Thanks. I’ll see you later.’
A tense silence followed her departure. Feeling as if the floor had been pulled out from under him, he thrust his hands in his pockets and forced himself to look at Chloe. ‘Nick offered me a permanent job in Penhally.’
He watched as her face lost colour and renewed shock widened moss-green eyes. Clearly this wasn’t the pleasant surprise he’d wanted it to be and she’d meant what she’d said to Vicky—she didn’t love him, had never expected more than a few nights in his bed before he moved on.
‘You’re thinking of staying here?’
‘Of course, that doesn’t fit in with your plans, does it, babe?’ Hurt brought a sarcastic edge to his voice. ‘You and Vicky had it all figured out. I was a not entirely repulsive stud you thought you could use to satisfy your curiosity about sex for a night or two because it wouldn’t matter to me.’
Chloe stared at Oliver in horror. The icy chill of his voice was matched by the expression in his eyes, eyes devoid of their normal life and warmth.
‘That’s not—’
‘I heard what you said.’
‘Oliver!’ Hazel’s urgent call from the direction of the landing prevented Chloe making a rebuttal. ‘We have an emergency outside. Can you come?’
‘Of course.’ He cast Chloe one searing look before turning away. ‘I’m done here.’
The finality of the words cut Chloe to the quick. ‘But—’
Chloe watched through a film of tears as Oliver strode away, his footsteps retreating down the stairs as he followed Hazel. Slumping against her desk, her whole body shaking in reaction, Chloe wrapped her arms around herself. Damn Vicky. Just how much of their conversation had Oliver heard? It must have sounded bad. And on top of that, instead of responding with the joy and hope she felt at the thought of Oliver staying, the shock and confusion of the last moments had made her reaction slow and lukewarm.
What was she going to do? So inexperienced at this kind of thing, she had made a mess of everything. Because of her past, she hadn’t believed she could be happy, that what she felt for Oliver was real, that it could work. Had not believed he could love her. But his pain had been obvious. She would never forget the look in his eyes. The knowledge that he now believed she had used him stung.
‘Chloe, what the hell is going on?’ Lauren demanded, rushing into the room and closing the door behind her.
Tears trickled down her cheeks and her voice shook. ‘Oliver’s gone. It’s over.’
‘Vicky told me what happened. She’s an idiot.’ Lauren handed her a tissue and slid an arm around her shoulder. ‘So will you be if you let Oliver go. Damn it, Chloe! You have to go after him.’
‘No.’ A sob escaped. She thought she had known what pain was like but this was worse, much worse. ‘I can’t. He’d never believe me now.’
Lauren cursed. ‘I was there when he followed Hazel downstairs. He was devastated. I’ve never seen anyone look so broken. You love him, Chloe, I know you do. Don’t let it end like this. It’s too important, for both of you. He doesn’t know what Vicky is like, he didn’t understand you were trying to protect him from gossip. He’s not a mind-reader. You have to explain.’
‘I’ve been too scared to tell him I love him.’ Chloe’s throat closed and her chest crushed with hurt. ‘Now it’s too late. I let him down.’
‘Tell him.’
‘What if he won’t talk to me?’ she whispered through her tears, scared she had driven Oliver away for good.
‘You won’t know until you try. Make him listen,’ Lauren advised. ‘He’s hurting now because he loves you. You love him. What have you got to lose?’
Nothing, Chloe realised as her friend left her alone to think. She had already lost everything that mattered to her. A fierce mix of need and hurt and anger swirled inside her. She was angry with herself for handling things so badly, angry with Vicky for interfering, angry and disappointed that Oliver hadn’t given her the chance to explain. It hurt that he hadn’t believed in her enough. But why should he? She’d never told him how she felt, had taken everything he had given her these last weeks but had still doubted. After what he had overheard, followed by her reaction, what else was he to think?
Lauren was right. She was the only one who could change that. Oliver was worth fighting for. She gathered up her things and hurried down the stairs, upset to discover that Oliver had left. The emergency had been a suspected heart attack and he had gone along in the ambulance to St Piran with the critically ill patient. No one could tell when he might be back.
Unwilling to hang around the surgery, she went home to shower and change her clothes. After feeding the cats, she paced her small living room. Several times she phoned Oliver’s flat but there was no reply, and his mobile was switched off. When her phone rang, she jumped and rushed to answer, hoping it was Oliver, swallowing her disappointment when she discovered it was not. It was Kate.
‘Are you all right, Chloe? What’s going on with you and Oliver?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice trembled with tears. ‘He overheard me talking to Vicky this afternoon. She can be so persistent and thoughtless. I told her a few fibs. I was trying to stop her gossiping, but now Oliver thinks I have just been using him. It isn’t true!’
‘I know that, my love. So will Oliver when he’s calmed down,’ Kate reassured her, but Chloe knew it wasn’t that simple.
‘He told me that Nick had offered him a permanent post. Oh, Kate, I was so shocked, so stunned to discover he had heard me and Vicky, that I reacted badly. I didn’t get the chance to explain, and now he believes there’s nothing between us, that I don’t care. And that’s my fault, too, because I was too scared to tell him.’
A heartfelt sigh from Kate increased her anxiety. ‘He’s going, Chloe. I was here at the surgery when he came back from the hospital fifteen minutes ago. He told Nick he didn’t want the job, that there was nothing for him to stay for.’
‘No!’
‘Go to him, my love. It doesn’t matter who is more at fault, you are both hurting and you need each other. If you don’t talk to him, you will always regret it,’ Kate counselled, reinforcing Lauren’s advice. ‘Make it right, Chloe…before it’s too late.’
Knowing there was a wealth of meaning behind Kate’s words, empathising with her friend’s difficult situation with Nick, the man she had loved for so long, Chloe made her decision.
Oliver tossed clothes into his bags, trying to use anger to mask the bitter lance of terrible pain. How could he have been so stupid? Chloe wasn’t different at all. Like everyone else, she had seen the outer package, the reputation, and not the man inside. His gut ached at the knowledge she had used him as some kind of sex tutor. And he would never forget the look of shock on her face when he had told her he was staying. Clearly she didn’t want him. He had read everything wrong and now there was nothing for him in Penhally Bay.
A furious pounding on the door had his head snapping up. He hesitated. He wasn’t on duty. Indeed, he had a few days off to decide if he even wanted to see out his contract here. But what if someone was in trouble? Hell. He ran a hand through his hair and stalked towards the door. Throwing it open, he froze when he saw who waited outside. Chloe. Her hand, raised to knock again, fell to her side. Before he could react, she pushed past him.
‘What do you want, Chloe, another quick tumble in bed before the playboy leaves town?’ He hated himself for the words and tried to close his mind to the hurt clouding her green eyes.
<
br /> ‘No. That wouldn’t be enough.’ She folded her arms across her chest and fixed him with a glare. ‘I’m here because you didn’t give me a chance to explain and I’m not going to let you judge me and leave without me saying my piece.’
Unwanted amusement and affection welled inside him at her bravado. He’d never seen her so riled before. It was cute. No, he—Before he could formulate his thoughts and raise his defences again, she launched into her attack.
‘Do you seriously think, with my background and having waited until the age of twenty-seven, that I would suddenly turn into some kind of sexpot who is going to sleep with anyone for the sake of it? Yes, Vicky made some stupid comment when she found out you were interested in me that I should go for it. But that’s Vicky. She doesn’t know about my past. She certainly doesn’t know me if she thought I could ever do such a thing.’ She paused a moment, dragging in a lungful of air. ‘And neither can you if you believe it, even for a moment. I didn’t come on to you, chase you. You courted me. And it was only when I came to know you, to like you, to trust you, that I began to wonder if maybe you were someone special, someone who made it worth my while to confront things that terrified me and open myself up to experiences I had shut out of my life because I was so scared. You think I would have just jumped into bed with anyone?’
She was shaking with rage and hurt. All the fight went out of him as every word she said hit home and he acknowledged how badly he had behaved, how horribly he had treated her. Yes, he did know her better. He just hadn’t allowed himself to believe it could be true that he had found his perfect soulmate, that she could ever come to love him back, that there could be a happy ever after. Just when it had all been falling into place, everything had been shaken up and he had allowed his own insecurities to get the better of him, to believe the worst of her.
‘Chloe…’ He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat and find his voice. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’
Tears shimmered on long sooty lashes as he closed the gap between them. ‘I was so dumb.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Can you forgive me, babe? Please?’
‘Oliver—’
He rested the fingers of one hand over her lips, not wanting her to reject him as he deserved, needing to say his own piece while he had the chance. ‘I should never have paid heed to what I heard. I was just so stunned, so hurt when you told Vicky you didn’t love me.’
‘Vicky means well, but she’s the biggest gossip in Penhally, Oliver, and she has zero tact. I didn’t want her telling all and sundry our private business. I was angry with her for judging you, for being so shallow, but I knew she would never listen, never understand, so I let her ramble on. No way was I going to tell Vicky, of all people, about my feelings—not when I hadn’t even had the courage to tell you.’
‘Chloe,’ he murmured, stepping closer, a glimmer of hope challenging the darkness inside him. ‘When I came back to Cornwall, I was jaded, fed up with people using me because of the family name, the money, my so-called playboy lifestyle. Sure, I liked to have a good time, to enjoy myself, but no one saw me. The person inside. Not until you. I was drawn to you from the first and the more I came to know you, the more I knew you were special, and I dared to allow myself to believe.’ He cupped her face, breathing in her fresh apple scent. ‘Nick sprang the junior partnership on me and immediately I had all these plans and wanted to share them with you. But I had no idea how you felt. When I heard you talking and it seemed to have all been some grand scheme for a fling between us, I let the hurt and fear get in the way of my common sense and all I knew about you. I was scared because I thought I had been a fool to think someone like you could possibly care about someone like me.’
‘Someone like you?’ she challenged, her own hands lifting to grasp his wrists. ‘A fantastic, caring doctor, adored by his patients, young and old, male and female? Someone like you, who is good and kind, funny and intelligent, selfless and giving? Someone like you who saw me when no one else had, and who cared enough to wait, to gain my trust, to spend so much time getting me through the scary moments and awakening me to all I was missing by not setting the past behind me where it belongs? Someone like you, who changed my life…who made me really feel alive for the first time? That someone like you?’
‘Yeah.’ Love and desire glowed inside him at the sincerity of her words.
‘Oliver, I don’t care about your bank balance. I don’t care about Fawkner Yachts. It wouldn’t matter to me who your family were as long as they loved you and were proud of you. I’m proud of you. And I love you. I should have told you before, but I was scared, too. Scared you would leave soon and I’d never see you again. Scared none of this meant to you what it did to me. You stole my heart, you made me believe in romance and love and for ever. You even made me like sex,’ she added with a shy laugh, a blush staining her cheeks.
‘Chloe…’
Her eyes full of vulnerability, she stepped back a couple of paces and pulled the tie holding the fabric of her floaty dress together. She let it drop, revealing barely-there silk and lace bra and panties. Every part of him sprang to attention. OK. Any moment now he would remember how to breathe. That or pass out. Dear God…
‘I’ve never seduced a man before.’
He filled his lungs on a ragged gasp. ‘You’re doing one hell of a good job,’ he managed, his voice hoarse with love and admiration and desire.
‘Am I?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Given how hard he was and how close to embarrassing himself. ‘Don’t move.’
He reached for the phone, his fingers shaking as he felt for the keys and dialled a number, his gaze never leaving Chloe’s.
‘Nick? It’s Oliver Fawkner. If the offer for the junior partnership still stands, I’d like to accept. Thank you. Yes, I’m sorry about that, it was a misunderstanding. I’ve just discovered that I have everything to stay for. All I’ll ever need is right here in Penhally Bay.’
As he replaced the receiver, he saw joy dance in Chloe’s beautiful green eyes, along with a whole host of feelings that mirrored his own. To think he had been so foolish to risk throwing this away. ‘Now, you said something about seducing me.’
‘Yes. That.’
‘Don’t let me stop you,’ he invited, his fingertips brushing across the rounded swell of her breasts over the top edges of her bra, enjoying the tremor that rippled through her.
‘I was kind of hoping you might take over at this point.’
‘I don’t know. You’re doing so well.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t you know you had me on my knees from the moment we met?’
She shook her head, looking shy yet bold, sexy yet uncertain as her fingers began to undo the buttons of his shirt. ‘I only know you didn’t give up on me, didn’t let my past and my fears chase you away.’
He moaned as she freed his shirt, leaned forward and closed her mouth over one sensitive nipple. Not wanting to be left out, he deftly unhooked her bra and tossed it away, filling his palms with her firm, full, soft flesh.
‘How about we do the seducing together?’ he suggested hoarsely.
‘Good idea.’
‘We’ll do everything together, Chloe, for the rest of our lives. I’ll do all I can to make you happy and I’ll love you for ever. If you’ll let me.’
‘Yes.’ She whimpered as his thumbs brushed over taut nipples. ‘I will. If you’ll let me love you for ever, too.’
‘I think I can manage that.’
Her fingers fumbled with the fastening of his jeans. ‘Starting now?’
‘Hell, yes!’ He kissed her, long and hard and deep. ‘What say we shock Vicky and make it another wedding for Penhally before the year is out?’
‘Lauren is right. There definitely must be something in the water!’
He nipped her earlobe. ‘Is that a yes?’
‘Of course it’s a yes!’
‘I already have a present for you,’ he told her with a t
easing smile, thinking of the jet-ski he’d ordered.
Green eyes sparkled with mischief as she looked at him. ‘Funny. I have a present for you, too. It’s at home. I hid it in the spare room. It’s for your birthday, but I was going to give it to you if you left…to remember me by.’
‘As if I could ever forget you.’ He groaned, pulling her close. ‘And I’m never leaving, babe.’ As curious as he was about what she had bought him, amazed and touched that she had done such a thing, he had other things on his mind right now. ‘Presents can wait until later.’
‘Whatever did you have in mind?’
Laughing, he swung her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom. He set her back on her feet, grimacing when he saw her pained expression as she looked at his half-packed luggage.
‘Like I said, I was dumb.’
‘You can still pack.’
He froze at her words. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your lease here runs out any day.’ Shy invitation shone in her eyes. ‘I was thinking…Maybe you’d care to move in with me?’
‘I’d love to. And down the line, when we decide about a family, we can find a new home together that we can grow into. With the cats, of course.’
‘Perfect.’
‘No. You’re perfect.’ He tipped her on to the bed and stripped off the rest of his clothes. ‘Do you think, knowing you—and your background—that I ever would have embarked on a relationship with you if all I had wanted was a quick, meaningless tumble before I moved on again? You’re not a quick tumble kind of woman, Chloe. If I’d only wanted one night, I would never have touched you. I would have walked away. But I came here to settle down, to meet the right woman for me, and I soon knew you were the one. You are a forever kind of woman. My forever woman. It’s happened quickly, but I love you. And I’ve never said that to anyone before. I know this is all new to you. If you need time to be sure, that’s fine, I understand. But I’m only going to love you more each day.’
Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 2 Page 64