Falling for Alexander (Corkscrew Bay #2)

by Claire Robyns

  His hands landed on her shoulders and he waited until her eyes met his. “Come to dinner tonight, cara. I’m relieved to say Dora’s cooking.”

  Her eyes lit up. “You missed her!”

  “Look around you.” He chuckled, stepping back to wave a hand over the room. The shambles included the clothes they’d left in their wake on the way to bed last night and the remnants of curdled cream that had proved an interesting dessert. “Neither of us appears to be fully domesticated.”

  “Don’t blame me,” she shot back, following the trail to gather the rest of her discarded items before pushing past him into the bathroom. “I’ve only been here for two days.”

  Two days that felt like much, much longer. He’d never had any lover over to Darrock, much less stay the night, and yet Kate didn’t feel like an intrusion. She was a part of his heart and home. She belonged.

  He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, musing over her comment about a walk of shame while he made some effort to straighten the room.

  It wasn’t enough for him to feel that she belonged. She needed to feel it, too. The situation with Helena was difficult, but that was a separate issue and had nothing to do with him and Kate.

  When she came out of the bathroom, fully dressed in yesterday’s clothes, he took her by the hand, leading her to his wardrobe.

  “Alex, I told you I have to—” Her protest dried in her throat when he cleared a shelf in one scoop, a pile of T-shirts flying to the floor. Her gaze flitted to him.

  “You should keep a few things here, for the nights you stay over.”

  “Oh, okay…” She didn’t look happy. “Thanks.”

  “And I thought you might like to invite some friends over.” He searched her eyes for the problem. For once, they weren’t an open door to her soul.

  “Maybe Saturday, if the weather holds,” he pressed. “We’ll have a fish barbeque down by the lake.”

  “I’d love that, Alex.” She turned from him, perching on the edge of the bed to slip her shoes on. “But can we wait a little?” She glanced up at him, her cheeks flushed. “My best friend, Megan, returns from her honeymoon in three weeks and that would make a lovely welcome home for her.”

  “Sure.” He kept the scowl from reaching his brow, wondering what the hell was happening here.

  “Meanwhile,” she said softly, giving him a smile, “we could go to the Three Jugs on Friday night. Most of my crowd hangs out there and I’ll get Izzy to join us.”

  “I’d like that.”

  She stood, looking at him, mangling her lower lip for a long moment before speaking. “Can I ask you something?”

  “What is it?” He went to her, running his hands down her arms as he smiled at her. “What’s bothering you, cara?”

  “Everything’s happening so fast.”

  “Too fast?” Looking into her eyes, the torrent of emotions that had inspired his latest song narrowed into clear focus.

  I love you.

  The theme of most of his lyrics centred on love in so many of its incantations, but this time he hadn’t written a song about love. He’d written a song of love, his love for Kate.

  “I don’t want us to slow down,” she said after a short pause. “I’d just like everything else to catch up to us.”

  “Such as…?”

  “Your childhood. What was it like growing up in Italy? Did you resent being moved to the States? What school did you go to?” Her voice grew more and more breathless as the questions rushed from her lips. “Are you still in contact with your best friend from back then, when did you write your first song, what was the first instrument you learnt to play? How did your parents die? Did you struggle to adjust to living with your—”

  “That’s a lot of questions.”

  “I want to know everything.”

  “We are all products of our past, cara, but the past itself is irrelevant.” His arms dropped to his sides. “If you know me as I am now, then you know how the past shaped me and you already know everything.”

  She swallowed so hard, he saw the movement ripple along her throat. “How did your parents die, Alex?”

  “A car accident,” he returned roughly.

  “That’s it?”

  “Don’t you have to get to work?” He heard the caustic edge in his voice, but that couldn’t be helped. He’d put too much effort into burying his past for him to haul all those skeletons out for a viewing.

  The brilliant blue of her eyes dulled. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  He reached for her, pulling her close. “Kate, let me be enough. What I am now is all you get. Let that be enough, please.”

  “It is,” she whispered against chest.

  He couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t be enough, and yet something was still wrong. As the week passed, and then the next, Alexander felt a distance opening up between them that he couldn’t place.

  Kate spent most nights in his bed. Dora was delighted about their improved relations and beamed for twenty-four hours straight after the first morning Kate had shown up at the breakfast table.

  He met Kate’s friends, an Irish guy called Finn he’d liked at once and a local cop—no, a Chief Sergeant or something, whom Alexander was still undecided about. The guy had given him a couple of strange stares that night at the Three Jugs. Maybe it was a cop thing. Her other friend, Isobel, was either very reserved or maybe just not very friendly.

  Still, he caught the shadows in Kate’s eyes one too many times to know not everything was alright.

  He’d met her parents, a nice couple who’d welcomed him into their home and hadn’t made too many awkward noises about his intentions toward their daughter. That evening, Kate had developed a headache and insisted on going home alone.

  When she’d mentioned that Jazz Jade was one of her favourite singers, he took her up to London for two days. Jazz Jade was giving a few intimate performances in lounge bars as part of her frenetic European tour. The tiny venues had been booked out months in advance, but Jazz had been happy to arrange a special pass for him and Kate.

  Every day she pulled further and further away, he fell deeper and deeper in love. He wanted to tell her, intended to, when the perfect moment came along.

  He knew something was wrong, but he never once entertained the notion that it might break them.

  There were too many other times where everything was right.

  When Kate laughed with him.

  When she snuggled up to him on the sofa, or entwined her body so closely with his while she slept.

  When she dared him into joining her for a skinny dip in the lake.

  When she’d blatantly gloated for days even though they both knew he’d let her win the cycle race through the forest.

  He’d lived through enough rough patches in his life to anticipate the worst in human nature.

  And yet, when Kate came over on the Monday evening, he never saw it coming.

  He heard her greeting Dora as she passed through the kitchen, but she didn’t linger like she usually did. She met up with him in the passage as he was about to join them.

  “I have to show you something.” She didn’t wait for his response, leaving him to follow her into the sitting room.

  “Glass of wine?” He saw how pale her cheeks were and changed that to, “Whiskey?”

  She shook her head, holding up a folder he hadn’t noticed before. Her fingers shook so badly, the thick folder trembled in her grasp.

  “What is it?” He held out his hand for the folder.

  She clasped it to her breast. “Let’s sit.”

  “Kate, you’re worrying me, cara.” He tried to wrap an arm around her, but she slid away and sat down heavily on the far end of the sofa.

  She looked up at him. “You need to understand, Helena came to see me before she left. She said some things… I was so worried… I was stupid and petrified and… There’s no excuse but I didn’t mean…” Her voice shook as badly as her fingers, fading out before she could complete a sentence.<
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  Alexander heard his sister’s name and suddenly he needed to sit as well. He dropped beside her, not willing to believe, not strong enough to trust. “What did you do, Kate?”

  She shook her head, her eyes shimmering with tears as she looked at him. “I love you, Alex.”

  He heard her, but the words didn’t register. His heart was freezing over. What had she done to Helena? He held his hand out for the folder again. This time, he wasn’t asking.

  She placed it on the cushion between them. “I only wanted to know for us, Alex. I wanted to know if we had any kind of chance. I was confused and scared and so, so much in…”

  He blocked her voice out as he opened the folder, staring at the smiling faces of his parents. His fingers stiff, he flipped through the first couple of printouts. He didn’t need to see more.

  He knew the story.

  He’d lived it.

  His stare lifted across the sofa. “Congratulations, Kate.” He didn’t recognise his voice. It was a stranger’s voice, belonging to another man, a man who’d never be this foolish, a man who would have seen this coming. “You got your story.”

  “No!” She scrambled closer.

  He jumped up. Suddenly, everything in the room was so still. The air didn’t move. Sound didn’t travel. Time didn’t progress forward. He couldn’t hear or feel his heart beating. “Get out.”

  “Alex, don’t do—”

  “Get out.” He didn’t wait for his command to be obeyed. He strode out the room, not even aware he was still clutching the folder until he entered his bedroom.

  He tossed the pile of trash into the unlit fireplace on his way to the armchair by the window. There, he put his head between his legs, trying not to move or think or breathe. Trying his damndest to not throw up.

  When he looked up again, his stare landed on the fireplace. The folder taunted him with his own worst fears, laughed at the deluded idiot sitting in the chair.

  A layer of grit cemented the contents of his stomach. He lurched up to grab the folder and ripped it into small pieces. He didn’t stop ripping until the result of his trust, of his love, had been shredded.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kate crashed as soon as she got home. She didn’t make it to her bedroom, just collapsed on the sofa.

  She’d been living on a high-wire for too many days, the guilt and tension, regret and sorrow, draining her. And last night, well, how could she sleep through her last night with Alexander? She’d lain there, her cheek pressed to his chest, listening to his heart beating against her skin, careful not to let a single tear fall until his breathing evened out.

  She’d known. From the moment she made the decision to tell him, she’d known the outcome. But she couldn’t leave this lie to live between them. Alexander deserved better. Maybe he deserved better than her.

  It still hurt.

  Losing Alexander hurt.

  That’s as far as her numb brain went before sleep washed over her exhaustion.

  Tuesdays were usually slow at the paper with the week’s edition going out the night before, but this Tuesday Kate didn’t even get out of bed until late afternoon.

  Her first thoughts on waking belonged to Alexander.

  Would it have made a difference if he’d given her a chance to explain? She doubted it. There was no excuse, no reasonable explanation for snooping into his past. And when it came down to it, no matter what colour excuses she painted on her actions, that was what she’d done.

  Everything hurt. Not just her heart, but her head, her muscles, her stomach, her bones.

  She picked up her phone at least ten times to call Megan. Her self-imposed ban on disturbing her friend’s honeymoon could take a hiatus for this crisis. But the thought of speaking about Alexander, saying his name, talking about him as the man she used to have, the man who might have loved her, dried her throat and added another punch to the pain. Each time, she banged her phone down again without pressing the dial button.

  Wednesday morning, she awoke at the crack of dawn, her body finally protesting the neglect. She donned sweatpants and trainers and forced herself to go for a jog before work. That cleared the fog in her head, if not the pain.

  She’d get through this, one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, until the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach faded.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  What was the matter with her?

  Why did she always have to be so impulsive, have to know everything?

  Why, why, why hadn’t she just left Alexander’s past alone?

  The incriminations pounded inside her skull as she dragged herself to the paper, went through the motions of living, until a massive crack of lightning snapped the air inside the office. Thunder followed almost instantly, the roar reverberating in her desk and chair. Adrenaline rushed through her, pushing out the lethargy as she looked out the window for the first time in hours.

  The sky was a black, roiling mass struck through with bright shards from bolt after bolt of lightning. She moved closer to the window, drawn to the sinister spectacle, goose bumps spreading over her skin. The air felt different, wrong, as if charged with alien static.

  Within minutes, the storm was upon the town, a howling inferno of gale force winds and rain, so thick and heavy, she couldn’t see the building across the street. The town siren joined the cacophony, the storm alarm barely audible above nature.

  She ran back to her computer and quickly called up the local news channel feed. It was full of early warnings that had just come through. A high precipitation super cell building off the west coast. Not expected to hit the land mass. People nevertheless advised to stay indoors.

  “Early warning, my foot!” She grabbed her cell phone and hit her mother’s speed dial, her heart thudding as loudly as the next roar of thunder. “Mom! Are you at home?”

  “Darling, I was about to call you. Where are you?”

  “I’m at the paper, but I’ll come over.”

  “No, stay where you are. Our street’s flooded, anyway.”

  “Already?”

  “We’re fine, although I might pop next door quickly. You know how poor Agnes gets when—”

  “Mom?” She pressed the phone closer to her ear, shouted above the disconnected signal. “Mom?”

  She tossed the phone onto the desk, was about to grab the landline when an explosion sent her sprawling to the floor. She scrabbled around to see the entire wall of windows had been shattered. The equivalent of a mini-hurricane swept through the opening, throwing chairs into the air, wiping computers off desks, driving hail stones the size of golf balls at her.

  Her heart raced, blood pounding at her temples. She kept close to the floor, crawling to the safety of the small kitchen at the back. She stayed on the floor, sitting against the wall, her arms wrapped around her knees.

  The battering seemed to go on for ever and ever. The lights went out at some point, plunging her into the eerie pall of the storm’s black heart. She couldn’t decide if she was grateful or not that the lightning had finally petered out.

  Once her heart stopped thudding, worry set in with a torrent of jumbled scenarios.

  Had Alexander been caught in the storm? If it was blowing in from the ocean, the valley would offer protection. If there wasn’t a mudslide off the mountain. Or flooding in the valley. Isobel’s cottage was right on the beach. But she’d be at the spa, wouldn’t she? After she’d finished the tunnel mural, Finn had her doing murals in all the log cabin bathrooms. But the spa was right on the shoreline as well. God, what was the state of her mother’s street by now?

  The second the sound of the storm changed, she jumped to her feet. The wind was still howling, but no longer hurling everything in its path. The hail had yielded to pelting rain. She ran to the landline, but that was dead as well.

  Outside, the darkened sky looked slightly less fierce. A few people had started to emerge from whatever shelter they’d found. The street was strewn with bicycles, trash cans, wha
tever the storm had gobbled up and spat out. The only significant tree in the paved town centre, an ancient oak as tall as the church spire, had been split down the centre, one blackened half still standing, the other half embedded in the roof of the town hall.

  She managed to navigate the Jeep around the debris and deep pools, making her way slowly toward her parents’ side of town. Her mother hadn’t exaggerated. They lived in a dip and, at the bottom, water rose to porch level of most of the houses on that street. She had to leave her Jeep at the top and wade through knee-deep water.

  Ambulances sounded in the distance. Police sirens. The town’s emergency services were coming to life.

  By the time she reached their home, the rain had stopped and the sky was opening to pale streaks of sunlight. The storm had left as fast as it had come. Her heart sank at the devastation around her. This street was intact apart from the flooding, but on the way here, she’d seen roofs ripped off, trees uprooted, shattered glass everywhere. That would stay with them for weeks. She prayed everyone was safe.

  A short while later, a small search party had taken to the water-clogged street, searching through each home to check for anyone in need of help. Thankfully they found no casualties, but some were in shock and in desperate need of comfort.

  “We need to get them to the town hall,” her mother said. “Mr. Granger can’t spend the night alone and the Crowleys have two young children and a baby. Lord knows when the electricity will be back up.”

  “The town hall’s wrecked, mom.” Kate shoved a weary hand through her hair. “Will you be okay? I want to see if I can find Izzy.”

  “Go, love, we’re fine here.” Her mother grabbed her in a fierce hug. “Just be careful.”

  “I won’t be long,” Kate promised.

  Her teeth chattered as she trudged back up the hill. Her jeans were soaked and the chill seemed to have hit her bones now that she wasn’t rushing into homes and dashing up and down stairs, hauling blankets and battery-operated bottle warmers and whatever else could be borrowed from one family to help another.

  She was a couple of yards from her Jeep when she saw him climbing out of the low-slung Aston Martin. She blinked, convinced the fear and panic had caught up to her, making her delusional. But he didn’t disappear on the other side of her blink. He was still there, solid and very real, and he was safe.