by Melissa Hill
Yet Dan blamed her. He blamed her for everything. She couldn’t remember the last time they talked about it, if ever; the last time he had taken her in his arms and told her he loved her. It was as if the old Dan had been abducted by aliens, and a new more morose Dan had been left in his place. He never laughed any more.
He never even cried. Not once.
Nicola had cried and cried for days afterwards. She still cried sometimes.
If it weren’t for those pills the doctor had given her who knows what she might have done, how she would have coped? The medication helped her get through it, helped her sleep at night and admittedly, sometimes during the day, thank goodness. And because of those pills, Nicola had been able to let it go, to come to terms with it all – eventually.
But Dan wouldn’t let it go. He couldn’t come to terms with it. Instead, he worked all hours of the day and often long into the evening.
“The practice is still in its infancy,” he had said. “I need to put the hours in.”
Yet the practice had been going well long before any of it had happened. Work had been important, sure, but never as important as their relationship had been. Dan didn’t need to work late – at least not for the sake of the practice. Dan needed to work late because he couldn’t face her. He couldn’t bear to see, hear, or speak to her – that Nicola knew well.
But what could she do? How could she help? Then again, maybe she couldn’t do anything. Maybe Dan couldn’t be helped, didn’t want to be helped.
She knew he was spending a lot more time with Shannon Fogarty these days. Nicola could smell the woman’s Camel cigarettes on Dan’s clothes every time he walked into a room.
Maybe Shannon was helping him.
Work was her only refuge, and Nicola spent as much time at the leisure centre as possible, albeit in a world of her own, until one day her manager had taken her up on her bad humour and unhappy disposition.
“Nikki, what’s wrong?” Ken asked, his face full of concern. Nicola wouldn’t meet his eyes. Ken was the only one who ever called her Nikki and normally she hated it. This time though, it sounded reassuringly familiar.
She wiped her nose with a tissue. “It’s nothing, Ken. I have a bit of a cold and I’m just feeling under the weather, that’s all.”
“Don’t give me that.” He looked sceptical. “I know you, and you haven’t been the same since . . . well you haven’t been your usual bubbly self for a while.”
“Sorry.” She looked away.
“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that!” Ken put an arm around her and led her away from reception towards his office. It felt good – strong and comforting. When he let her go in order to close the door behind them, Nicola was sorry the contact was broken.
“Look, I’m not having a go at you,” he said, motioning her towards a seat. “We’re friends. And friends look out for each other, don’t they?”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“So are you going tell me what the matter is, then?”
“It’s Dan,” she said flatly. “Our marriage is over.”
“What? You can’t be serious!”
She nodded again and blew into a tissue. “He’s having an affair.” There – it was out. She had finally said it, finally admitted it out loud.
“What?” Ken exclaimed again. “Dan is having an affair! With whom, for goodness sake?” Without waiting for an answer he went on. “How do you know? Did you catch him? Did he confess?”
She shook her head.
“Well, what then?”
“I just know,” Nicola wailed.
“Oh, for Chrissake.” Ken gave her a look conveying that he would simply never, as long as he lived, be able to understand women.
Nicola sniffed and looked up. “He doesn’t have to confess, Ken. All the signs are there.”
“What kind of signs?”
“You know, avoiding me, supposedly working late, all those things.”
“Nikki,” Ken walked around his desk and knelt beside her chair, “you and Dan have been through a lot lately, what with the baby and everything.”
Nicola looked at his kind face and noticed for the very first time how attractive Ken was. His eyes were like pools of melted chocolate. And his eyelashes were so long, feminine almost.
“Maybe you’re just jumping to conclusions. Dan adores you. He wouldn’t cheat on you.”
Nicola sniffed again. “Don’t be so sure.”
“Well, tell me what happened to make you so sure.”
“He’s been out – drinking late into the night with a woman colleague, his so-called friend.” Nicola wanted to slap the silly bitch’s face. How dare she? How dare Shannon throw herself at her husband, trying to take advantage of their misery!
“She’s been after him for years,” she told Ken bitterly.
“So, why hasn’t anything happened before now, then?”
“Because . . . because things were going well between us. We loved one another. He didn’t blame me.”
“Blame you for what – the miscarriage?” Ken put a hand on hers. “OK, I don’t know Dan that well, but I do know that he loves you. Everyone knows that. And he knows as well as I do that nobody is to blame for what happened. It’s just one of those things.”
Nicola said nothing.
“Has he ever actually told you that he blames you?” Ken asked.
“He doesn’t need to. He keeps avoiding me. He doesn’t touch me. Ken, he can’t even look at me. Jesus, my husband hates me so much that he can’t even look at me!” The tears were flowing freely now, and Ken put an arm around Nicola and held her close.
“I hate to see you like this,” he said. “Look, go home early, get some rest and then talk to him – tonight. You two need to get some things out in the open.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course, you can. Nicola, you and Dan are the happiest couple I have ever come across – and you guys are married!” he added. “It’s almost weird!”
She smiled a half-smile.
“OK, so you’re going through a rough patch at the moment, but the only way to get through that is to talk about it. Chances are he doesn’t have any clue that you’re feeling this way, so tell him. Tell Dan how isolated, worried and lonely you feel.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“It’s obvious that you’ve been very unhappy lately, and with good reason. But you need to sort it out before it gets too late.”
Nicola nestled comfortably in the crook of his arm. It felt good. Good to be comforted, to be cherished. She and the rest of the staff at Metamorph had always joked that their hard-nosed manager was like the Tin-Man in The Wizard of Oz – no heart. But today Nicola had discovered that beneath that tough, businesslike exterior, Ken Harris’s heart was not made of tin, but of solid gold.
“Thanks, Ken,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “I feel a little embarrassed now, to be honest.”
Ken smiled. “There’s no need. I can’t say I know what you’re going through, but I can imagine how tough it must be . . .” He trailed off, his dark eyes full of concern and compassion.
Nicola looked at him. “I had no idea you were the sensitive, in-touch-with-your-feelings type,” she said jokingly, beginning to feel better.
Ken looked at her meaningfully. “You’d be surprised.”
Nicola couldn’t pinpoint why, but at that exact moment the atmosphere in the room transformed. All of a sudden, her nerve-endings were sharp as knives and her stomach began to tremble. Ken was still holding her and, when she looked up at him, she saw his expression had changed too. She watched the attractive curve of his mouth, the faint beginnings of dark stubble on his chin.
He had a very sexy mouth, dangerously sexy, even. At that very moment and for some strange reason, Nicola very badly wanted to feel that mouth on hers. She imagined him planting tiny kisses on her neck, then moving down towards her collarbone, then her breasts, then . . .
Suddenly, she didn’t have to imagine any more. Suddenly, Ke
n’s mouth was on hers, kissing her, his tongue probing and teasing and then they were both standing, clinging to one another, desperate for one another.
Nicola pressed herself tightly against him and with a single swift movement, Ken lifted her up onto the desk and Nicola wrapped her legs around him, not wanting to break the contact, not even for a second. They gasped. He kissed her again, pulling her body even closer.
Neither of them heard the slight rap on the glass, nor the sound of the office door opening.
“Ken? Do you know where Nicola Hunt is supposed to be today? Oh! Oh, shit!”
The voice brought Nicola back to reality, and the two of them looked towards the doorway, to see Lisa, the gym attendant, staring wide-eyed and embarrassed at them.
Followed by a white-faced, stunned, and utterly horrified-looking Dan.
* * *
Nicola shook her head at the memory. She recalled Dan’s face, the look of sheer dismay, the horror and disappointment in his eyes.
It was only when Lisa burst in on top of them that Nicola had realised what she had been doing. And Ken, poor old Ken, he had realised it too. It was as if someone had cast some weird lustful spell on the two of them, because before then there had never been an attraction. Dan had looked from Ken to Nicola, and then had – wordlessly – spun on his heel and walked out.
Ken, full of remorse, had rushed out after him. What had happened, or what had been said between the two men then, Nicola had never known. All she had known for sure at that very moment was that she truly wanted to die.
She remembered sitting there on the desk, stunned, immobile, unable to think straight while the gym attendant stood there watching her, mortified. Lisa was new at the centre and Nicola barely knew the girl.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Lisa said. “I had no idea. Believe me if I had any idea there was no way I would have come in here. I knocked but,” she looked away, embarrassed, “but obviously Ken didn’t hear me.”
Nicola had been unable to do anything other than nod.
“Your husband –” Lisa swallowed nervously, “came in looking for you at reception and I told him I hadn’t seen you around for a while. I thought you’d gone home early, what with your cold and everything, so I said I’d just pop in here and ask Ken and he followed me and . . . well, you know the rest.”
Nicola put her head in her hands. “What in God’s name was I doing? Lisa, you must believe me. There has never been anything going on between Ken and me. It was just a spur of the moment thing, I – I don’t even know how it happened – one minute we were talking, I was upset and Ken was being tender and . . . oh God!”
Mortification burned through her all over again as Nicola heard herself speak. Why would Lisa believe that, why would anyone believe it? It had been nothing like a tender moment. She remember the ferocity of their kissing, the animalistic lust they had displayed.
“What are you going to do?” Lisa asked, her voice so full of sympathy that Nicola wanted to cry.
“I have no idea,” she answered with a slow shake of her head. “I have absolutely no idea.”
How could she go home and face him now? Dan wouldn’t want anything to do with her. Unless, and the thought hit her like a speeding car, unless he had something to confess too, unless he decided to come clean about Shannon.
Nicola then experienced a moment of sudden clarity, and realised the damage she had caused to her marriage these past few weeks. She had been totally selfish and self-indulgent after the miscarriage. Instead of sitting down and talking to Dan about how she was feeling, about how they were both feeling about it, she had instead pushed him away and distanced him from her, trying to put the blame on him, to punish him. It made the pain easier to control if she had something to hate. And she had hated Dan. Yes, she had tried to turn it around, and make herself feel as though he was the one doing the blaming, but inevitably she had been the one at fault. She had been the one to drive him to despair, and possibly into someone else’s arms. But even if it hadn’t, even if Dan hadn’t gone that far, then she, through her own self-absorption and childishness had. She had gone too far. So, she resolved to sort things out.
* * *
The extension buzzed again, startling Nicola out of her reverie.
“Nicola, what’s going on. I phoned you about ten minutes ago!” Ken’s exasperated tones drifted through the air.
“Shit – Ken!” She had completely forgotten about him.
She hurried to the elevator and was in his office within minutes.
“Sorry,” Nicola said with a mischievous smile, “I got waylaid by a client.”
Ken grinned. That was normally the excuse they used on the other Motiv8 staff when they wanted to steal a moment together. They were either ‘seeing a client’ or ‘phoning a client’. “Oh, was he worth it?”
“Not as good as some.” Nicola was surprised to see him smile.
Ken shuffled through a number of print-outs on his desk, picked one up and without a word, handed it across the table to her.
Nicola’s heart thumped as she began to read it. She was silent for a moment Then her eyes widened and she looked up, delighted. “I don’t believe it!” she exclaimed. “The figures for July/August are sky high!”
It was simply incredible. Membership uptake was always at its slowest throughout the mid-summer months. People out and about in the fine weather saw little need for pounding on a treadmill when they could enjoy the exercise much more in the park or on the beach. But the report Nicola held for the summer read as well as the one for January! She couldn’t believe it.
“That article was an absolute godsend, Nikki,” Ken smiled. “Those figures should carry us through for the rest of the year. The accountant will be happy, as will the partners so I’m confident of getting a capital top-up for next year. Should free us up to spend a bit more on this place. Well done!” He winked at her. “I always knew you were the right person for this job, you know.”
Nicola smiled at this. Initially, she had her reservations about coming back to Ireland and taking up Ken’s job offer, unsure as to whether she would be able for it – unsure if coming back home was a good thing. She had also been quite touchy about it, suspecting that Ken had suggested her for the job simply because of her situation and because he was feeling sorry for her. But Ken had been insistent that she would be perfect for Motiv8 and, as it turned out, he was right. She loved this job and within months had dispelled any of her own qualms about Ken’s ulterior motives for offering her the manager’s post. She was good at this, and she knew it.
Soon she realised that Ken had offered her the job because he understood her need for independence and a chance to regain some normality – and also because he cared deeply about her.
Nicola hadn’t known it at the time, hadn’t known it that day in his office when Dan walked in, hadn’t known it for a long time after they began working together at Motiv8. But when she eventually did find out, she didn’t care about Ken’s original intentions, because by then she had fallen in love with him too.
She had been very lucky, she thought, studying Ken who looked as pleased as Punch with himself as he reread the figures. She had been very lucky in finding a man like him; maybe she should put more of an effort into making sure he knew it.
And, she thought cheerfully, recalling her recent musings about Dan and the problems in her first marriage, she really had been worrying for nothing. Dan could continue phoning her all he liked, but she and Ken were happier than ever. Whatever Dan Hunt’s intentions might be, there was little he could do to change that.
Chapter 24
NICOLA HAD HAD the affair. Oh, God no. Chloe hadn’t expected that. Why hadn’t John O’Leary said anything about it? Shit! Shit! Shit!
Chloe started up the Jeep and headed towards Lynne’s house. She needed to talk to someone about this, get someone else’s opinion on it.
What a bitch! And a silly cow. What woman in her right mind would cheat on someone like Dan Hunt?
Then a thought struck Chloe. Nicola hadn’t been in her right mind though, had she? She had been full sure that Dan was carrying on with Shannon. Chloe had thought so too, with the way the way the story was going. After all, Nicola had rejected him and kept pushing him away, refusing to let him share her grief.
But Shannon hadn’t a hope, because obviously Dan was too much in love with Nicola, too much in love with their marriage.
Still, that gave Nicola no excuse to start having it off with her boss!
And Dan had actually caught them at it too! No wonder he didn’t want to talk about it! Now Chloe understood. No man likes to admit they’ve been cheated on, least of all a man like Dan.
But if Dan and Nicola’s marriage ended because of her fling, then goodness only knows how he felt about her now. Maybe he was still in love with her. Chloe remembered what John had said before about Dan having to ‘get over her’. Maybe Dan had got over Nicola, but meeting her again had brought all the old feelings back.
Nicola had broken Dan’s heart, and their marriage had ended because of her affair. But now she was back. Chloe’s heart sank.
What in God’s name was she going to do?
Chapter 25
LAURA CAREFULLY EASED the dress over her shoulders, and pulled the skirt down over her hips. She hoped that the false tan she’d applied earlier had fully dried; otherwise she would have some orange go-fast stripes down each side of her wedding dress. Lovely.
She turned sideways and struggled to view her rear in the mirror, hoping that it wouldn’t be obvious to all and sundry that she had had to wear industrial-strength knickers under the dress.
She giggled as she put on her garter. The lace garter combined with those knickers didn’t exactly make for sexy viewing. But she didn’t think Neil would mind. In fairness, by the time they got to bed tonight she might as well be wearing knickers made of steel for all the interest he would have in them. A few pints and Neil could barely stand up, let alone anything else. Laura smiled. She and Neil wouldn’t be the first or last couple that didn’t consummate their marriage on their wedding night.