Despite that, both Jill and Angela had fallen for wealthy men, and if that difference in financial status had bothered them, it hadn’t stopped them pursuing the relationship. Jill was now married to Finn who owned a lucrative software company, and Angela would marry Jack as soon as her divorce was final, becoming wife to the heir of Daven Downs, the eighth largest cattle station in Australia.
From what they’d told me, neither had grappled with any issues around money, so naturally I wondered about my own reservations—was it simply that with Nicholas the roles were reversed? Was I that much of a sexist that I could imagine it was fine for a woman to marry wealth, but not for a man to do so?
Maybe it didn’t matter at all…
“You’re thinking about him again.” Fritha poked me in the shoulder.
I took the receipt from the shop assistant who’d agreed to courier our previous clothes and shoes to our hotel. Then I turned to Fritha. “Manicure?”
She slipped her sunglasses down onto her nose and said, “Feed me first, daahling,” and sashayed out the door.
The shop assistant clapped in delight and I shook my head, awed as always by Fritha’s ability to fit in. Whether she was barefoot and buying organic mung beans at a muddy farmers’ market in Belandera or trying on Rolex in Rome, she was simply Fritha, and there was something to learn from that.
So we set off down a narrow cobbled lane, dodging dog poo which Fritha was indecently fascinated by—It’s Rome! Why don’t they clean it up? Then we dined on Italian clam chowder at an upmarket local trattoria, during which Fritha drank way too much limoncello.
“I love this stuff,” she said, downing her fourth glass, then she leant forward across the table to frown at me. Her sunglasses fell off her forehead into her biscotti, sending pistachios flying.
I picked up the oversize tortoiseshell frames and put them to one side. “More coffee?” She hadn’t drunk her first one.
“No. We need to talk.” She tucked a fallen down curl back behind her ear in an uncoordinated gesture, and then slapped the hand down on the table. “About Nick.”
My first instinct was to say, Let’s not, or Let’s wait until we get back to the hotel. But that was habitual behavior, and some new, rebellious Louella inside me suddenly cared less what the other chattering diners around us thought. I loved Fritha, and if she was going to embarrass herself, and embarrass me, then so be it. I’d never see these people again. Why should I care what they think?
Besides, once Fritha was on a roll there was no stopping her. If I halted the conversation for an afternoon siesta, she’d just start right back up where she’d left off when she woke up. She was determined that way. Better to get it out now and clear the air.
So I pushed my biscotti to one side and said, “Sure. Let’s talk about Nicholas. You first.”
That might have thrown a lesser person, but Fritha, as previously mentioned, was eminently adaptable. So she straightened on her solid timber chair and said, “He came to see us. After the funeral.”
Habitual Louella kicked in then to save the day, holding my expression immobile and allowing me to continue breathing as I weathered that shock. It was all I could do to nod.
“He met with Ange and Jill and I alone, to tell us that he’s well and truly in love with you, but that he did something bad and you ditched him.”
I nodded again, and said faintly, “Did he say what it was?”
She shook her head, and I realized I hadn’t needed to ask that. I already knew Nicholas had more discretion than that.
“Jill told him off anyway.” Fritha went on. “She said, If you hurt her, then you should fuck off. But Angela papered over that with some shit about love being hard or whatever.”
I forced myself to nod, as if I cared nothing about the conversation, when in fact, my heart was thudding inside my chest. “What did you say?”
She gazed across at me drunkenly. “I asked him to tell us something we didn’t know about you.”
It was a very astute question, and something I might have asked Jack or Finn, to find out if they really knew the woman they wanted to marry. So it was with some hesitation that I asked, “What did he say?”
Fritha brought a hand up under her chin, as if her head was suddenly too heavy to stay up on its own, then she said, “He told us, She’s never loved anyone as much as she loves you three. Don’t you ever let her push you away, because that would destroy her.”
I shook my head, trying to assimilate the perception in what he’d said, but I was distracted by Fritha’s lips trembling. “Is that true?” she asked. “Do you love us that much?” She blinked, and two fat tears crested her eyelashes.
My breath fell out and I suddenly couldn’t stay in my seat. I got up and went around to crouch beside her and she clung to me and blubbered like a five-year-old. “Of course I love you that much,” I said against her hair, not caring a damn what the other diners thought. “You don’t think I buy Rolex watches for every hippy I meet?”
“But that’s just money,” she wailed, and pulled back to show me mascara running down her freckled cheeks. “Money isn’t love.”
“What is love?” I asked, having to blink back tears of my own.
Her lips were still trembling. “It’s Nicky telling us to love you, because you won’t let him in. That’s love.”
Dear God.
I had no hope then. I just clung to her while we both cried, and amazingly the Italians around us kept eating, kept chattering and laughing, as if tears were an everyday part of life and nothing to remark on.
But Fritha had shifted my world. Nick’s declaration of love in the hospital and then later at the safe house, hadn’t really touched me. I’d been surprised, but I hadn’t understood. Not really. My concept of love had been shaped by my parents who had created a united front against ‘outsiders’, and I’d recreated that with Marcus. Our home and our lives had been a safe haven where entry was barred to all but our chosen ‘family’: his sister, my friends, selected business associates.
With Marcus there had been fondness and affection, but nothing of passion, and no individual sacrifice. I’d never wondered what might be troubling him if he was unusually quiet, or even inquired about his internal life. I’d just assumed that, like me, he wanted to retain the privacy of his thoughts and emotions, even within the bounds of our marriage. That had seemed sensible and practical, and the messy alternative of emotional outbursts had felt highly distasteful in comparison.
Nicholas had a controlled bodyguard persona, but I’d known from the moment he’d revealed his attraction that things would be different with him. I’d felt different. Less in control. Less sure of my actions. While at the same time, some purely feminine core inside of me soared with elation at the sure knowledge that he desired me, and not just as a passing fling. He couldn’t have been more clear that the chemistry between us was special. He’d never felt this way before. He wanted it to last.
I, on the other hand, had thought nothing of the future, or of love, because my feelings toward him had been all about the thrill of desire. What Fritha had just described, however, was completely selfless, and it went far beyond sex.
He knew we’d never be together. He knew me. There had been a boundary and he’d crossed it. He would have realized I’d never give him the chance to cross it again, but despite that, he’d done something to ensure I would continue to be loved. It was so much more than what I could ever have expected from him, it made me feel humbled.
And in the end, that settled my tears.
Finally, Fritha too had sobbed enough and she pushed me back. “I wanna sleep now.” She sniffed, again like a five-year-old.
I nodded, and resumed my seat, grabbed some tissues for us both and had wiped my face before the waiter arrived with a kindly smile and the bill, which I was happy to pay quickly with cash. Then he pointed outside and said, “Taxi?”
I nodded, and ten minutes later we were back in our suite at The Burrows and I was tucking Fritha into
bed. She grinned up at me with that dopey Fritha grin and said, “You love me.”
I leant down and kissed her forehead. “I absolutely do. To the moon and back.” I wasn’t sure in that moment if I’d ever told Jill or Angela that I loved them, but I was going to remedy that. Fritha snuggled happily into her cloud pillow and I tucked the quilt in around her and left her in her room.
Then, stripped to my underwear and lying in my own bed, I found there was no sleep, just the vision of Nicholas facing off against Jill, who was daunting in protective-mode, not to mention Angela and Fritha ganging up on him. How hard would that have been, especially after he’d told me that he loved me and I’d shut him out completely because of a single incident?
A week later, I could see that my anger at Nicholas for his opportunistic seduction had actually resulted in a benefit—halting my grief about Marcus in its tracks. Anger had also allowed me a clear head to deal more effectively with Adele, and though I had cried a few times since, particularly at the funeral where hundreds of Marcus’s business associates had gathered to pay him tribute, I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the changes in my life.
I’d allowed the panic room incident to be the worst thing, and everything else had fitted in around it as lesser emotional issues. Marcus’s twenty-million-dollar debt was paid, and I’d even received a written apology for the mouse incident, and a refund check of ten thousand dollars for ‘psychological damages’.
Adele had stepped in as beneficiary to take over Marcus’s financial affairs with surprising acumen, so there was nothing for me to do there. Lizzie was happy with Sieu and if anything went wrong there while I was overseas, Angela was Jill’s temporary back-up. Jill’s bratty sister Brittany was currently sulking about being cut off from her ready supply of guilt-money, so she wasn’t causing problems at the moment either.
Which left my mind all-too-free to dwell on Nicholas, and what the hell he could have been thinking in those minutes after he’d received notification that Marcus was dead. What possible motivation could have suggested sex with me, when Adele was on the way and he knew very well that as soon as I found out Marcus was dead, I’d be horrified at what we’d done?
Did he have some premonition that our relationship was about to end? Had he been trying to convince me, with his body, that I shouldn’t walk away? I simply didn’t understand. The last things we’d discussed, apart from food, had been me wanting to explore our friendship and our intimate relationship further. I’d been willing. He’d commented on that himself.
So the sex itself was inexplicable, but to then gather my girls and tell them that he loved me, when he’d sabotaged our potential relationship. I didn’t understand any of it.
Of course, I could ring Angela or Jill to get a different perspective on the puzzle, because I’d certainly been there for them when they’d needed to talk. When Angela had been furious with Jack, I’d come to her and clarified what she wanted—a father for the children she longed for, and to sing. Jack had appeared perfect in every way, except that she hadn’t anticipated a passionate, satisfying sex life as part of the package.
She’d come to terms with that, just as Jill had come to terms with the idea that she could love a man deeply and trust that he wouldn’t run off on her—as her father had when we were all children. Both my girls had been pushing away the man that was perfect for them, because of their emotional baggage. Was it possible that I was doing the same thing?
I rolled over restlessly, then realized I wanted to get up, so I pulled back the sheets and wrapped a silk dressing gown over my bra and panties. There was notepaper on my desk, so I pulled back the heavy brocade drapes and let the soft European light filter through the gauze backing drape. Then I sat and picked up a pen.
At the top of the paper I wrote Emotional Baggage
Underneath that I put: Golden Fur (babies), Guilt about sadism (unresolved anger at Marcus) and after quite some consideration, Fear of romantic love.
I had nothing to put in brackets after that, because I didn’t understand it. I could love the girls with all my heart, and I trusted them implicitly to love me back. Lord only knew, I’d been prickly with them in the past, holding onto a snit far longer than I should have. But I’d always known they’d love me anyway. Something had been forged between us, growing up in Dakaroo, and whatever that something was, it felt impenetrable.
Romance, however…
I’d probably convinced myself that I loved Marcus when I married him, but I hadn’t. When he’d died, most of my grief had been for a life cut short too young, because there had been nothing binding us, even before we separated. Sex had been awkward and unpleasant for us both, our friendship had been shallow—never tested by the highs and lows I’d suffered with my girls—and we’d lived separate lives, both socially and financially.
I’d focused on my charities, supporting women who were going through troubled times and who may not have had girlfriends to help them. Marcus had been charming on my arm but uninvolved in that, and I’d found his business interests equally boring.
Then Marcus had left and Nicholas had walked into my life, well recommended and with all the right references. I couldn’t recall thinking anything about his physical appearance, other than that he seemed slightly less professional than I was used to with bared arms and a tattoo, although he’d explained that the intent had been to appear ‘capable’—clearly of violence, if required.
There had been no attraction. That had been the last thing I’d wanted, or needed, at that point in my life. What I’d demanded from Nicholas was the ability to continue my life as if any threats against me had ceased to exist.
But my life hadn’t continued in the same boring and comfortable manner as it always had. The security he provided had allowed me to unleash my anger against Marcus at The Rocks Spa—which I still felt guilty about—and to confront my anguish about accidentally rolling on a kitten as a child. He’d also helped me uncover a sexual side of myself I’d never dreamt of.
In his arms, I’d felt like the most responsive and desirable version of myself—a woman who could not only enjoy the tactile beauty and sensuality of rich fabrics, elegant furniture and soaring music, but also a woman who could enjoy her own body—and his—with the same pleasure.
That had been a revelation.
And while I could file the whole experience into a wistful ‘wasn’t that lovely’ box in my mind, I couldn’t stop myself remembering him sitting beside me in the hospital waiting room, holding both my hands, his dark eyebrows drawn together earnestly as he said, I feel like I’m taking an oyster knife and slitting myself up the belly, but I have to say this. I have to tell you. I’m…in love with you. And I have been for some time.
While I’d felt justified in my self-righteous anger about the panic room sex, I’d conveniently forgotten about his hopes, his dreams. I knew they included me, and he clearly hadn’t been ready to give them up when he met with my girls. But now? Had he moved on?
Should I care?
I frowned down at the paper and beside Fear of romantic love I wrote (do I feel undeserving?) then I put down the pen. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to write, because from a materialistic perspective I had a sense of entitlement as wide as the outback we’d grown up in. There was no frock, shoe, bag, or coat that I wouldn’t buy myself if I liked the look of it, and if I would wear it. I had no time for outfits in the closet that were never used.
But romantic love?
I shook my head. After my separation from Marcus I’d been asked out by several high-profile Sydney businessmen who’d expected me to be instantly ‘on the market’ but I’d said no to all of them, because I hadn’t wanted to get into another sexual relationship. I’d felt far too traumatized by my marriage.
Then along had come Nicholas with his mesmerizing biceps and his backside in those jeans… He’d derailed my plans completely, and now, how should I go forward when the only person I felt safe to have sex with had undermined my trust? The holiday with Fritha
was simply buying time, because when I went home, I had no idea what I should do.
The idea of being a single woman for the rest of my life had no appeal, but at the same time, I didn’t want a marriage of convenience. There was no honesty in that, and above all, I wanted to try and live honestly. Nicholas had taught me that much. He’d never shied away from what he’d done, and I could admire that, even as I was stunned that he could be so opportunistic.
I wasn’t sure what to think, but as I put away the piece of paper, I decided to make the most of my ‘adventures’ with Fritha. I was determined to change my usual European pattern of art galleries and shopping, so I rang the concierge about a street map we could use to sightsee on foot.
When Fritha woke, we dressed and went downstairs. I left her in the restaurant ordering us a reviving coffee before we set off, and went to the concierge’s desk to collect the map. Unfortunately, when I returned and sat beside her, I glanced down at her hands and saw that the text she was sending began with, Dearest Nickypoo.
“Fritha!”
Anyone else would have had reacted guiltily, but she just pouted and said, “I can text him if I want to.”
“What are you texting about?”
A distinguished couple at a nearby table glanced over, frowning.
“You,” Fritha said, and glanced up at me, as if that should have been self-evident.
I was so stunned in that moment, I couldn’t work out quickly who was to blame, Fritha or Nicholas.
But before I could say anything, she went on with, “I’ve been sending him photos of us having fun so he doesn’t feel sad. So he knows you’re okay. He was worried about you.”
It would all make complete sense, to a five-year-old. But Fritha was thirty years older than that. She should have realized. “I thought I said to you girls that no discussion would be entered into regarding Nicholas.”
Husband Heel (Husband Series Book 3) Page 21