Break Up to Make Up

by Fiona Harper

  Oh, who cared?

  He kissed down the length of her neck as she stretched her head back and arched underneath his touch. But then a thought occurred to him, and he couldn’t swat it away, no matter what Adele’s hands were doing. He broke apart from her and she opened her eyes, puzzled.

  ‘Adele, I…’

  The skin between her brows wrinkled.

  ‘I just want to know that you really want this—and not just because you’re sleepy and aren’t thinking straight. The last twenty-four hours have been pretty surreal and I don’t want to do anything you might—’

  She pressed a delicate finger onto his lips. It took all his willpower not to take it into his mouth and consign the rest of his sentence to eternal silence.

  ‘—regret,’ he managed finally.

  She moved her hands to either side of his face and stroked his temples, his eyebrows with her fingertips. The look on her face brought a lump to his throat.

  ‘Nick.’

  She said his name as if it were a precious secret, and he knew her answer.

  Before he could dip his head to kiss her again, she laughed and gave him a shove, sending him crashing backwards onto the mattress. Then he saw her face smiling, coming up close and going out of focus as she swung a leg over his body and leaned in to kiss him.

  Once upon a time, he’d described Adele as icy. Many people made that mistake, but they just weren’t paying attention. From a distance, the shimmering brilliance of frost and extreme heat looked almost identical.

  Adele kissed him again, her hands exploring his body, causing little fires to ignite round his toes, and soon he was too busy experiencing the flames to analyse it any further.

  When Adele thawed like this things got very hot. White hot.

  Adele opened and closed cupboard doors, looking for mugs. A food basket sat on the kitchen counter, filled with tea, coffee, milk and the most mouth-wateringly soft white bread she had ever seen. Della must have left them the food basket last night when she’d made up the beds, but both she and Nick had been far too tired to even notice it.

  Nick.

  Her heart did a little lurch just at the thought of him.

  Despite the warm afterglow that made her insides feel like melted butter, there was also a little fluttering feeling in the pit of her stomach, a sense of uneasiness. A warning she should be very, very careful.

  She’d made love with Nick. And boy, it had been way-off-the-scale, thermometer-popping fantastic, but now she was starting to wonder if she’d lost her mind. This had the mark of a one-night stand—a moment of madness. She’d told Nick she wouldn’t have any regrets but, even though she’d meant it at the time, she suspected it had just been wishful thinking.

  But at the same time, this wasn’t a one-night stand. It was Nick. And it had felt like coming home, not like meeting a stranger. Oh, this was so confusing!

  She slumped into one of the wooden chairs surrounding the hefty pine table and supported her head in her hands. However, she didn’t get the chance to think her way out of the dilemma as Nick came crashing down the stairs and burst into the kitchen.

  She stood up again, mouth halfway open and ready to say goodness knew what. He scooped her up in his arms and peppered her face with kisses.

  ‘Good morning once again, Mrs Hughes.’

  Her mouth opened a little further before he cut her off again by rapping on the pine table in the middle of the room, a wicked glint in his eye.

  ‘How sturdy do you think that kitchen table is?’

  Despite the furnace that immediately whoomped into life inside her, she gave him a weak smile and extracted herself from his arms.

  ‘Coffee?’ was all she could squeak out.

  He looked slightly perturbed, but recovered quickly enough. ‘Good thinking. We’re running on empty. Best get some fuel in us first.’

  She turned to fill the kettle and he draped himself over her shoulders and nuzzled his chin into her neck. If he kept this up she was going to go stark, staring mad.

  ‘Why don’t you pop across to the farmhouse and see if Harry will give us a lift back to the car and directions back to the main road while I sort out…fuel?’

  Nick was definitely back in Labrador-mode. He bounded out of the kitchen door and she heard him whistling as he crossed the farmyard.

  What had she done? In momentarily lowering her defences this morning, had she agreed to a reconciliation? Nick seemed to think so. Somehow, he’d forgotten all the things that had driven them apart in the first place. There was so much to sort out in her head. Having sex hadn’t blasted all of those things into oblivion. They were still there—like a tribe of warriors on the horizon, waiting to charge down the hill and hack away at this moment of euphoria.

  Nick had hurt her so badly when he’d left last time. She didn’t think she could bear to go through all of that if it didn’t work out a second time. She had to think of herself, of keeping herself safe.

  And he still didn’t know about the miscarriage.

  But now was not the time to tell him. How could she crush his mood with something like that? But she was going to have to say something, to set a few boundaries.

  Maybe, just maybe, they still had a future together, but it was going to take time to repair the holes they’d ripped into each other. This time they needed to plan it all out and build on a proper foundation. And if Nick wasn’t going to agree to that, they were dead in the water before they’d even started.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE was safe from Nick’s attentions while he had his hands on the steering wheel. It gave her time to work out what she wanted to say. After that he might not be so enthusiastic. At least she’d managed to distract him from the kitchen-table idea by sending him off to use the Smiths’ phone to call Invergarrig and explain the delay to his mum.

  Maggie had been frantic, of course, and when they’d got back in range of a mobile-phone transmitter, both their phones had erupted in a symphony of beeps from text messages and missed calls.

  The dent in the back of the car wasn’t nice to look at, but hadn’t caused any major damage. Harry had even managed to unwedge her case. After being fussed over by Della, they’d said their goodbyes and driven off, Adele navigating from the list of directions Harry had scrawled on the back of an envelope. So much for high-tech wizardry.

  She looked at the hamper of food in the back seat that Della had insisted they take for the journey. She’d even dried Adele’s clothes for her before they left, for which Adele was very relieved. She seemed to be able to think better when she was wearing her own underwear.

  Nick had promised Harry and Della they’d return in the summer for a proper holiday and hadn’t seemed to notice that she hadn’t joined in making plans. She had to say something to him now, before it all got way, way, way out of control.

  She stared ahead at the road. The sun was out and, as they left the hills of the Lake District behind, the snow was thinning. At this rate they’d reach the hotel by mid-afternoon.

  Nick grinned across at her. ‘This evening is going to be a piece of cake now.’

  ‘It is?’ If anything, she was dreading it more than she had before. At least then she’d had it all figured out. She’d had a strategy to follow.

  Trust Nick to relish the flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants approach. Mind you, he pretty much lived like that all the time. She was surprised his jeans hadn’t sprouted wings before now.

  ‘Now we don’t have to pretend to be happy together—we are. We can just enjoy ourselves.’

  Right. She had to say something now, before she ended up being back with Nick by default. This had to be her decision too. She just couldn’t be swept along by his enthusiasm this time. Too much was at stake.

  Nick sensed Adele had something she wanted to say about two minutes before she opened her mouth. It was something about the way she breathed, he decided, as if she were rehearsing something in her head and breathing at the gaps in the unspoken sentences.

&nb
sp; There was no point pushing the issue and asking her what was up before she was ready, because that only caught her on the hop and she got flustered. She had to have that perfect opening line. The best plan was to keep his eyes on the road and wait.

  Sure enough, before the next junction, she cleared her throat.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  That’s right. Keep the tone casual. Do nothing to put her off her stride. If she lost her train of thought, she might sink back into silent muttering. And, if that happened a few times, she’d give up altogether and then he’d never knew what she’d been going to say. It would drive him nuts for days.

  Maybe, if he’d employed these tactics more frequently in the past, instead of cracking a joke to ease the tension, things wouldn’t have reached boiling point and they’d never have spent all this time apart.

  ‘I think we need to clear something up.’

  Oh?

  He raised his eyebrows, but said nothing, because he really wanted to hear this.

  ‘It’s about last night…well, this morning…sort of.’

  So much for the perfect first line. She must really be in a stew about something.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Give me a second…’

  He concentrated on overtaking a lorry while she regrouped. She clasped her hands into a tight little ball.

  ‘I’m not sure we can just jump into being back together.’

  What?

  ‘But you…we…’

  ‘I know. And I’m not saying it wasn’t good—’

  ‘You’re telling me it was a one-off? For old times’ sake?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then what? Do you want to give this marriage another go, or not?’

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t know.’

  Oh, she really knew how to make a guy feel good about himself.

  ‘It’s not that I’m saying no, Nick. Just that we haven’t solved anything. Sleeping together hasn’t made all our problems disappear, has it? We’ve still got to face all the things that kept us apart and then, when we have, we’ll need to think about whether this is what we really want.’

  Translate that into: Adele needed to think about what she really wanted. His mind was already made up.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Nick, I—’

  ‘Do you mind, Adele? It’s getting busy now we’re approaching Glasgow. I think I need to concentrate on driving for a bit.’

  ‘But—’

  She snapped her mouth closed and stared straight ahead.

  It had been childish of him to axe the conversation like that, but he’d wanted to show her she couldn’t just have it her own way all the time. And she wasn’t the only one who needed time to think.

  Concentrating on the traffic calmed him. For the next twenty miles he mulled over what she had said. He should have seen it coming. Adele didn’t do spontaneous. Then he remembered the way she’d practically pinned him to the bed that morning and let out a low whistle.

  OK, sometimes Adele was spontaneous, but he knew that most of the time she needed space to sort things out. You couldn’t just dump things on her. She needed time to adjust and refocus.

  That was why she’d flapped and squawked about his job in LA when he’d made his big announcement. He’d just been so excited he hadn’t stopped to think. Of course, Adele would have freaked out. Now he’d stopped being angry with her, he could see the whole situation more clearly.

  If he’d given her a little more time, she’d have probably come round to the idea. After a couple of days he’d have found her on the internet, researching cheap flights and checking her workload. She’d have had all sorts of brainwaves about how to make it work. She was great at planning details. Only he hadn’t given her the chance.

  Well, this time it was going to be different. He would give her as much time and space as she wanted. He would talk about whatever she wanted to talk about. And just to make sure things went his way, he was going to be as charming as he could possibly be at the party this evening. He wasn’t going to give her any excuse to give in to her fears and bail on him a second time.

  ‘OK. Point taken. What do you want to discuss?’

  There was a long silence. At least, it seemed long. She hadn’t been expecting that.

  Eventually she said, ‘I think we need to clear up the whole argument over your Hollywood job.’

  ‘You’re right. We need to resolve that.’

  He could feel Adele looking at him. ‘Nick, are you feeling all right?’

  ‘Fine. Never been better.’

  ‘Well…OK. Let’s talk, then.’

  It wasn’t the easiest thing, having an in-depth discussion while driving, but the more of this they thrashed out before the party the better. He dived right in, hoping she’d appreciate him taking the lead.

  ‘I know I really upset you when I left, Adele, and I’m sorry for that. I was just so cross with you I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  ‘I was cross with you too.’

  ‘Sweetheart, I don’t think anyone’s going to disagree with you on that one.’ He wondered if she’d ever replaced the plates from their dinner service.

  ‘I expected you to go down the pub, come back later and make a joke out of the whole thing like you normally do. I was in shock when I realised you were halfway across the world.’

  ‘I think I was in shock, too. I couldn’t believe I’d done it either. I tried to phone when I landed, didn’t I?’

  He glanced across and she was blushing. ‘Yes. You did. And I slammed the phone down on you.’

  ‘You needed more time to calm down. I should have realised that.’

  ‘No, Nick. Don’t put it all on yourself. I was having a temper tantrum, plain and simple. But I was scared. Seeing you only in dribs and drabs until there was nothing left of our relationship but long-distance phone calls and strained reunions was more than I could handle. I didn’t want to get to the point where we didn’t know each other any more.’

  Exactly what had happened with her parents and, although she pretended not to care, he knew it still hurt her deeply. The hole their daughter had left behind in their lives had been quickly filled with business trips and jet-setting, and when Adele had gone to stay with them she’d discovered that whatever ‘home’ had been had evaporated.

  That was why buying a house and investing time and energy in it had been so important to her. He’d been daft to assume she wouldn’t baulk at leaving her beloved nest with practically no warning.

  He got that.

  What he didn’t get was why she decided to jump before she was pushed. Why not even try to make the relationship work? He’d hoped he was worth more to her than that.

  ‘I know I sprang the whole thing on you and expected you to jump on board as quickly as I did, but I did it so we’d have more time together.’

  She humphed. ‘Being on a different continent means we spend more time together? I don’t see how.’

  ‘Think about it. I’ve worked with Tim Brookman, Oscar-winning producer famous for his action flicks. My name is well and truly on the map. I’ve had so many job offers since finishing the film I can’t count them. Rather than me chasing the jobs, now they’re chasing me.’

  ‘Well, that’s all fine and dandy for you, but how does that help me? I’d still be stuck in our little house on my own most of the time.’

  ‘I can cherry-pick the good jobs now—ones that pay well—so I can take longer breaks, or projects closer to home. And I have a plan I want to share with you.’

  ‘A plan? You?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about teaming up with Andy and opening our own special-effects studio. We could do a lot of the construction in our own premises when we find somewhere and the two of us could share the travelling. In a few years, if things get more established, we could employ a couple of film-school graduates, train them up and send them off to do some of the leg work. I could stay behind and run things from this end.’

&
nbsp; ‘A studio? That’s a fantastic idea!’

  ‘I know.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Just look at where engaging your brain before you rush into things can get you. Mind that car.’

  He hadn’t realised he’d taken his attention from the road for that long. He slowed to increase their distance from the car in front.

  ‘So you like the idea?’

  ‘I do. It could be a roaring success.’

  But there was still a hint of wariness in her voice.

  ‘So, do you understand why I had to take the job? Why it meant so much to me—to us?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this before you left?’

  He sighed. ‘The studio was only half an idea at that point and I know how much you hate half-baked plans. Anyway, you know what we’re like when we get on a roll with the arguing. Rational explanations tend to go out of the window.’

  ‘It makes more sense to me now I know that, but at the time it just seemed as if you wanted me to uproot myself and abandon my business, my friends—everything that made me feel safe and secure. I felt threatened and I lashed out.’

  ‘Don’t I make you feel safe, Adele?’

  She took too long to answer.

  ‘Well, that says it all, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘You’ll go out on a limb for Mona or your other friends, drop everything for them when they need you, cheer them on at every hurdle. Why can’t you do that for me too?’

  He really shouldn’t have opened this can of worms. They were going to be coming off the motorway soon and winding Scottish country roads were not the right setting for this discussion.

  ‘I do—at least I try to.’

  ‘Well, maybe I want more. Maybe I want you to open up to me the way you do to Mona. You tell her everything, but there’s a part of yourself you won’t share with me, no matter what I do. Somehow you just can’t trust me enough. And I don’t think we’ve got any chance of success if we’re not going to be totally open and honest with each other.’

  She didn’t move. Her hands were folded in her lap and she was very still.