A Bed of Broken Promises

by Clare Connelly

  “Nah. You can tell just be spending time with Maxie, seeing what a great kid he is, that it’s all down to you.” The accusation hung heavy in the air and so he spoke it aloud. “And obviously not his dropkick father.”

  She flashed him a tense smile. “Another time, another place, Roberto might have been a great dad. We were young, virtually kids.”

  “Mmm.” He growled disapprovingly. “But you were the kid that got left holding the baby, literally.”

  “And now I’m the parent who gets all the joy. Maxie is a great kid. I can’t imagine my life without him.”

  “So you think you’ll stay here? In Wadeford?”

  Katie immediately saw where the line of questioning was going and her heart soared, before she had a chance to restrain it. Could it be that he was still trying to instigate a more serious relationship? She bit down on her lip before admitting, slowly, “This is our home.”

  “But what about photography? Isn’t that something you still want to pursue?” And now, with Maxie puttering out into the cove, and no one else around, he took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together tightly. The small gesture made her smile.

  “Yes. But I have to do what’s best for Maxie.”

  “You’ve never thought about selling the Bed and Breakfast and moving somewhere else? So that you can pursue your dreams?” He hated himself for asking, given that he was the one trying to buy her house from her and she had no idea about it. But overridingly, he was genuinely interested in what made her feet so stuck in the mud when it came to his more than generous purchase offer.

  “I’ve thought about it,” she said honestly. “I actually received an approach a little while back, from someone interested in buying my place. I thought about it long and hard, and decided it just wouldn’t be right for us.”

  He frowned, pushing aside the guilt at his own duplicity. “Why not?”

  When she shrugged her slender shoulders, her dark hair rippled in response. “This is the only home Maxie’s ever known. He has no one but me, and my mum – who he hardly ever sees. No brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, uncles, and no dad. But he has great friends in Wadeford, and I think it would be too great a wrench to rip him out of all that.”

  Marcus felt the strength of her argument. He’d never sacrificed anything he wanted for another human being though, so it was difficult to fully relate to it.

  “He’s a good kid. He’d be happy anywhere you were happy.”

  “I know. Maybe it’s that I’m happy here, too. This was my aunt’s business, and I feel like I’m doing her proud by working so hard to make it a success.”

  David understood the pressures of self-motivation. He had driven himself so hard through his twenties that he’d had no time for anything else. “Can I be honest with you?”

  “After what I said to you yesterday? I think you owe me.” She titled a wry smile at him and was rewarded with a beaming grin.

  “I know you inherited Wadeford House. And you’re doing a great job. But some inheritances can be albatrosses around your neck.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that instead of being financially enabled to raise Maxie and pursue your dreams, you’ve been shackled with a big old building that requires constant maintenance and sucks all your energy. If you could write your life, is this what you’d be doing?”

  She looked out toward the horizon, thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

  Marcus watched the play of emotions across her face. He would have never suggested it except that he truly believed she had bitten off more than she could – or needed to – chew. His desire to purchase the property was irrelevant. At that point, he didn’t even care if she sold to him or not. But he wanted her to be happy, and living her dream. Her photographs hung on the walls in the accommodation. She was truly talented. He didn’t doubt she could make a success of herself if she were at liberty to give it the time required. Maybe there was even some way he could help her?

  Her laugh was self-mocking. “I just concentrated so hard on building the business that I never really thought about alternatives.”

  “You said you received an offer?”

  She nodded. “The idea of selling, not knowing what to do with my life, makes me jumpy. Uneasy.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “When Maxie was little, the B&B was the perfect job. I could work around his naps, and always have him with me. But now that he’s at school, I guess I do have some more options.”

  “It would be a waste of your talent to not even try.”

  “I need to give it some more thought,” she said with a shrug and Marcus let it go, not wanting to seem too invested in the outcome.

  “I guess not having kids has left you free to follow whatever dreams you want. Like travel.”

  The cold ache spread through his chest, as always, and for the first time, he heard himself tell someone what had happened. “Veronica was pregnant once.”

  “Your ex-wife?” She whipped her head around to look up at him, but his face was carefully blanked of any expression. “What happened?”

  Even now, he found it difficult to admit. “She had an abortion. Once she started to gain pregnancy weight, she flipped out. Booked an abortion. She didn’t tell me until afterwards. Until after it was done. When I asked her why, she said it was because she didn’t want to get fat.”

  Katie couldn’t help the sharp inhalation of breath. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Deadly.”

  “Oh, David. That’s just about the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I’m so sorry. When was this?”

  “Years ago now. Our baby would have been Maxie’s age, or close to.”

  Katie felt her heart twist in pain for this complex man. “That’s awful. You must have felt so powerless.”

  “Powerless, betrayed, enraged. You name it, I felt it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I walked out of our home and straight to my lawyer’s office. And I filed for divorce that day. How could I ever look at her again?”

  Katie shook her head sadly. “You couldn’t. To not have discussed it with you first… it’s so callous.”

  “That was Veronica. I didn’t see it at the time. I was too busy working around the clock. Really got her measure when she did that, though.”

  Katie nodded, then tipped her head to one side. “What do you mean, ‘working around the clock’? I would have thought your hours as a teacher were pretty standard? I always thought that was the best thing about the job.”

  He turned away from her, annoyed he’d yet again dropped the ball with his false identity. “I wasn’t teaching then.”

  “It’s funny. I can’t imagine you doing anything other than teaching now that I know you.”

  “That is funny,” he said, thinking it was anything but. If she knew he was the CEO and owner of a billion dollar company – one that was trying to buy her property, no less - she’d feel pretty bloody unamused.

  “What about family? Do you have any?” Katie probed further.

  “Everyone has family, don’t they?”

  “Not necessarily,” she shrugged. She only had her mum, and Maxie. Not such a big group of people surrounding her.

  “I do. Both my parents are in the states, and I have a brother, who is married, and expecting a baby in a few months time.”

  It must be unbearable for him to see his brother’s wife’s belly swell with new life. She looked up at him, trying to keep the pity out of her face. Though she’d only known him a week, she wasn’t sure she’d ever known anyone so well, and she knew with fierce certainty that pity was not an emotion he would appreciate.

  “Come here.” She said, tugging on his hand and changing their course, back towards the sheer rock faces that bounded the little cove.

  “Where to?” He asked, allowing her to lead him nearer the cliffs.

  “Here.” She slid in between two rocks, and he saw there was a narrow path between enormou
s boulders, overgrown with moss and lichen. He peered as far as his eyes could see, which wasn’t far. The rocks seemed to edge close and closer together, making it darken to black only a few meters ahead.

  “You sure you know where you’re going?” He asked skeptically.

  “Been here a hundred times. Come on. Don’t tell me a big, strong man who’s travelled the four corners of the globe is scared of a little Cornish adventure?”

  Actually, Marcus was terrified. Trying to calm his racing heart, he followed Katie’s confident tread, until the pathway gave way to a large hole in the cliff.

  “What is this place?”

  “A smugglers’ cave,” she whispered in awe. She used the light on her mobile phone to show him the walls of the cave. “The whole coast is riddled with them, from when pirates used to stow their treasure here.” She ran her hand over the uneven wall, imagining what secrets must have been witnessed by this hole in the land.

  Even with the light of her phone, it was so dark it felt oppressive, like a cement weight on his chest, pressing down and making it hard to breathe. There was an overwhelming smell of the ocean and damp rocks, and he felt the walls closing in on him. “Katie, I have to get out of here.”

  “Scared of the dark?” She teased.

  “I mean it, Katie. Now.”

  His voice was tense and her humor instantly evaporated. “Of course. Here.” She held her hand out until she felt his, and pulled him back towards the entrance. They skirted their way back to the cove and, once they’d burst into the sunlight again, she saw he was as white as a ghost.

  “David! What is it? Sit down, now, before you pass out.”

  He grimaced, but did as she said. “Claustrophobia.”

  She narrowed her eyes, feeling instinctively certain that there was more to it than that. “I didn’t realize.”

  “Why would you? It’s not something I scream from the rooftops, and it hasn’t come up.” It was also a relatively recent affliction. Since being chained up in a stinking basement in Iraq, with no windows and no fresh air, and hardly any light.

  She sat down beside him on the sand, looking towards the horizon. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have taken you into the caves.”

  He turned to look at her, and because he couldn’t resist, tucked her dark hair behind her ear. “I know.” His voice was low, and deep.

  She sneaked him a sidelong glance. “You look much better.”

  His face had regained its usual tan, his eyes were dark with an emotion she didn’t compute, and his lips were parted. His hand lingered on her ear, and with her gaze, she tried to communicate to him how much he had come to mean to her. How much she wanted him to stay in her life. Words she could never speak, because they’d set out the rules for their relationship early on, and she’d forced them both to stick to them.

  “And you look as perfect as ever.”

  He lowered his head and kissed her with all his hunger. A whole day and night without her had been hell. A niggling doubt about how he’d feel leaving her for good in just over a week was an unpleasant downer, and he pushed it aside determinedly.

  Her mouth was soft and pliant beneath his lips, and he felt his body instantly respond to hers with a longing greater than he’d ever known. He was tempted to take things further here, not caring who saw, but he held on to a modicum of self control and broke off the kiss, pulling away from her with a feeling of intense frustration.

  “We should… go back home…” She suggested huskily, nibbling on her lower lip.

  “My thoughts exactly. Let’s go.”

  They almost ran the whole way back to the bed and breakfast. Katie briefly worried about what she must have looked like to anyone who drove past them, but she didn’t care. Maxie wouldn’t be out much longer and she was overcome with a total, all-consuming need for this man. Her arms were reaching for him before she’d even opened the door. She pulled him to her, and kissed him, ran her hands underneath his jacket to the warm flesh of his rock hard chest.

  He groaned and backed her up, pushing her against the front door, effectively trapping her with his strong legs.

  “Keys?” He said against her lips, not breaking their kiss.

  She nodded, her mind cloudy. “Handbag.”

  He reached inside the front pocket, where he’d seen her stash them before, relieved when his fingers landed on them instantly. He inserted the keys into the lock and pushed the door open. She laced her fingers through his and he pulled her towards the stairs, moving brusquely towards the privacy of her room.

  “I’ve missed you,” he murmured, once inside the cozy bedroom, pulling her back into the circle of his arms and wondering how the hell he was ever going to get this woman out of his mind.

  She nodded in agreement, pushing his jacket off and digging her fingernails into the satin skin of his back. She wanted him now, immediately, all of him. She felt a primal desire to control and be controlled, and it was swamping any other thought from her brain. Except one. If one day away from David Trent could cause this chasm of need, what would an endless absence arouse?

  His possession of her was complete. He watched as physical release engulfed her, feeling his chest swell. He could spend his whole life giving this woman pleasure, he realized out of nowhere, and for the first time, the thought of forever after didn’t scare the hell out of him. And that realization, in and of itself, was just the wake up he needed.

  “I think I should sell the house,” she said out of nowhere, once her breathing had returned to normal. She propped up on her elbow so that the crisp white sheet slid down and exposed one perfect breast. He fought the temptation to take it in his fingers and strum her nipple.

  “That seems…sudden,” he reacted slowly, his dark eyes assessing her face for emotion.

  She shrugged. “Not really. I’ve been toying with the idea for a month or so. I mean, I told the developer ‘no’, but you’re right. I’m stagnating here. Situations all flared up at once and running Wadeford House used to make sense. It felt like my only option, but now, with Maxie in school, there’s so much more I could do.” She thought of the email she’d received that morning. It had contained a renewed offer that had increased the already inflated purchase price by a substantial amount. “And the offer is so generous, I know I’d never get a better price, even if I finished the renovations and listed it publicly.”

  He nodded, but his mind was spinning on a separate track. She was going to sell the house. To him. And if she ever knew who he was, she would think their affair had boiled down to a cold, premeditated property grab. The idea made his skin crawl.

  But it shouldn’t, he thought, hours later, when Katie had popped into the village to pick up supplies and drop Maxie off at a friend’s for a sleepover party. What Katie thought of him wasn’t really his business. He’d never been the kind of guy who believed in the fairy tale, and what they’d shared was already paradigm shifting for him.

  What had started as purely a physical connection had quickly evolved into something completely new to Marcus. He had thought he loved Veronica, but now, he realized that he had just wanted her, on a physical level. He had thought her beautiful, intelligent, and she had great connections, but really, she’d been a supermodel and he’d like the cachet being married to her brought. He was ashamed of himself now for such a superficial motivation.

  What he felt for Katie Collins was so much more complex. He frowned as he tried to define just precisely what he felt for Katie. There was no way could he love her. True, he had no point of reference, but he believed true love took time to form, and was based on friendship and trust, two things totally lacking here. They had a lot in common, and they seemed to be able to talk non-stop. Their sexual appetite for each other was insatiable. And he trusted her completely, even if everything she knew about him was based on a lie.

  So if he didn’t love her, and she didn’t love him, why could he think of nothing else except her? And it hit him then, like a ton of bricks. The solution. This wasn’t
going to get any easier. Spending another week with Katie wasn’t the option. He had to go, and soon.

  * * *

  Angela squinted her green eyes thoughtfully, blowing a wisp of bright red hair away from her face. “I don’t care what you say, Kitty, something’s going on with you.”

  Katie felt herself blush all over, and she dipped her head, feigning far greater interest in her coffee than it warranted. “Oh, Angela, stop it!” She couldn’t help the smile that danced around her lips, though.

  “Ah! I knew it! Tell me all, darling. Who is it?”

  “What makes you think it’s a who?” Katie fixed her friend with an interested gaze. Angela Morris’s nose for news was renowned. If there was a story to be shared, or a scandal to keep hidden, she could smell it a mile off.

  “Oh, heavens, you know me better than that. Come on, tell me everything.”

  Katie bit down on her lip, stirring her coffee, and let her mind wander to David Trent. What harm could it do, telling her closest friend that, yes, there was indeed a special someone in her life? She took a sip on her cappuccino, knowing the silence was killing Angela. She chuckled at her friend’s impatient expression.

  “Okay, yes, there is a man in my life at long last.”

  “Hallelujah! Who is this paragon of manliness, so fortunate as to have tempted you away from the nunnery?”

  Katie couldn’t help her smile. “I wasn’t that tragic, was I?”

  “Oh, you were one more month of celibacy away from sainthood.”

  “Fair enough.” Katie pushed her coffee aside and leaned in conspiratorially. The old pub they were in was warm and toasty, but she felt suddenly boiling hot, thanks to the way her body was conjuring up memories of this morning’s love making. “His name is David, and he’s a guest at the B&B.”

  “Oh, how fabulous. So you’re being very hands on, then, I imagine.” Angela said, tongue in cheek.

  “I’m not going to kiss and tell.” Her smile lit up her whole face. “But he’s amazing.”

  “In bed?”

  Katie laughed. “Stop! I mean in general.”