No, she and Finn had never been friends, but now she found herself asking why that was. Why had there always been that distance between them, which had only seemed to get wider when he had married Caro?
Had she known on some level that these feelings had been growing under the surface all along? Had he? After all, he was the one who had called them out into the open now. Was it so difficult to imagine that he had been aware of them before this week?
Had she been aware of them? Never consciously. She was sure of that.
She had held Finn at arm’s length for as long as she had known him, as she had every other man in her life. Even those who had made it into her bed were still considered with a healthy amount of suspicion—if all they were interested in was her body then what was the point of letting them closer? Had she done the same with Finn—what, out of habit? And missed the fact that he seemed to be an actual good guy?
‘I don’t want to go into details,’ she said, shuddering at the thought, and wondering how to tell the story in as few words as possible. Writing tight copy was her speciality. This should be as easy as breathing for her. But when her life was the story it didn’t seem so simple. ‘I got stuck in a room where I didn’t want to be. With someone I didn’t want to be there with. I got out, but not entirely unscathed, I think we can say after last night. I’m sorry that I tarred you with the same brush. I didn’t mean to imply anything. It just triggered me, I guess, and I wasn’t thinking rationally after that.’
She watched as his jaw tensed, then his eyes softened. ‘I’m so sorry that that happened.’ His voice was gruff, and she wished she knew him well enough to understand the emotion she heard in it. ‘Is there anything else I can do to make you feel safe?’ he asked.
Madeleine shook her head, wishing she could go back in time to a point where Finn didn’t think that it was his responsibility to take care of her.
‘I do feel safe,’ she told him. ‘I’m sorry that I made you think that I don’t.’
‘You have nothing to apologise for. I don’t want you to ever feel like you have to say sorry for that.’
‘I freaked out.’ She sat up a little straighter, the memory of the previous evening making it impossible for her to relax. ‘I basically accused you of...’
‘You didn’t.’ He reached out a hand to cover hers and she started at the feel of his skin on hers. She had to force herself to remain still. Not to react how she wanted, to turn her palm over. To slide her fingers between his and hold on. ‘You reacted to a situation instinctively to protect yourself.’ He went on, ‘Never apologise for that.’
‘Well...thanks.’ She pulled her hand away, breathing a sigh of relief at the clarity it brought. Trying not to think too hard about why such a simple touch made thinking so difficult. ‘I feel like you’re being much nicer about this than I deserve.’
‘Why wouldn’t you deserve me being nice to you, Madeleine?’
She stopped short at his words. No one had done this before. No one had made her stop and think about why she said certain things. Why she thought about her past in a certain way. But now Finn was holding up a mirror to how she had acted last night and, instead of looking away, she wanted to see more. Wanted to understand why she had made the decisions that she had. She’d been hiding from her past for more years than she cared to admit.
But it wasn’t his job to tease that out with her. He had done enough by making her think of that time, that maybe it was time to reopen that wound and see if there was anything that could be done about making it heal a little smoother this time.
‘I... I don’t have an answer for that today,’ she replied at last, realising that she had left him hanging. ‘But I’m grateful to have you,’ she added, meaning it. Whatever weird feelings she was having for him, she was thankful that she had freaked out on someone so obstinately determined to be supportive. ‘Do we need to talk about what you said? About...chemistry? If you’re going to find it awkward, me being here, maybe I should think about finding somewhere else to stay.’
‘We can talk about it if you want. If you feel we need to. I’m sorry if saying it wasn’t the right thing. But I was under the impression that we could both feel it, and it seemed safer to have it out in the open. I don’t know. I feel like, if we ignored it, it could become this big...thing. And it doesn’t have to be a thing. I thought it would be best to be honest, so you could make an informed decision about whether you want to stay. I didn’t say it because I want you to go.’
‘But isn’t it complicated, me staying, now that we’ve said that?’
‘It doesn’t have to be. Because we’re grown-ups here, Madeleine. Right? So there’s a spark. You’re Jake’s sister. I’m hardly going to act on it.’
She wasn’t sure how much of what she was feeling was showing on her face. But she was a little affronted, and she would be surprised if Finn wasn’t perfectly aware of that fact right about now.
‘Come on. I have six-month-olds. Two of them. I’m basically desperate for your help. I love Jake and I would never do anything that would risk my oldest and strongest friendship. You’re like family to me, Madeleine. I love you and I want you to be safe. But I don’t want more than that. I didn’t think you did either.’
‘I don’t!’ she said, her voice spiky with indignation. ‘Why do you suddenly think that I do?’
‘I don’t. But everything is so awkward this morning and I just want everything to go back to normal. God, it’s never this hard with Jake. Why can’t it just be that simple with us?’
‘Um, these?’ she suggested, glancing down at her chest.
‘No,’ Finn said, meeting her eyes with a glare that caused a crease between his eyebrows. ‘Don’t accuse me of that. That’s not fair.’
‘Come on.’ She forced a nonchalant shrug. ‘It’s just a body. You said yourself; it’s just attraction.’
‘Actually, I don’t think I did say that.’ That frown again.
‘What then?’
‘I’m pretty sure that I said we had chemistry. And your body...’ he gestured towards her while his eyes remained fixed determinedly on hers ‘...lovely as I’m sure it is, is not chemistry.’
‘Attraction. Chemistry. Whatever,’ she said, trying to dismiss his words. But if what he felt for her wasn’t based on how she looked, then she wasn’t sure where that left them. He was easy to write off if he was only interested in how she looked. She had had plenty of practice dealing with that, after all. But chemistry was something else. Chemistry was something linking them. Something bringing them together. Something mutual. And it was definitely harder to ignore than attraction.
The worst thing was, he was right. There was something between them. She didn’t want it to be there, and she didn’t like it being there. But it was there, and she didn’t know how to make it go away.
Pretty much her whole adult life, she’d only been interested in relationships where she knew the score because she was the one making up the rules. She’d dated guys who were pretty and shallow and uninteresting, because she knew that she could drop them without a second thought when they disappointed her. Which they invariably did. And now here was Finn. Totally honourable. Totally out of bounds. Totally confusing her.
Hart started to grizzle, growing bored of burying his hands in the sand, and Madeleine picked him up, standing and bouncing him gently on her hip, glad for the interruption to what had somehow become an uncomfortably personal conversation.
‘Shall we walk for a bit?’ she asked Finn, smiling at Hart as he quietened with her and made grabs at her hair and her earrings.
‘So we’re just calling it quits on that conversation?’ Finn asked, looking at her sceptically.
‘We are,’ she confirmed. Though she had her suspicions that this chemistry wasn’t going to fade helpfully into the background and allow her to concentrate on—say—her childcare responsibilities or job-hunting o
r finding somewhere to live.
‘I’m feeling restless,’ she announced, lifting Hart into the air and then planting a kiss on his forehead, pulling faces at him before parking him higher on her hip. ‘Can we walk? Please?’
‘We can go for a walk,’ Finn confirmed, standing so that he could look her in the eye. ‘But we started this conversation last night. And it feels like leaving it unfinished is adding to the tension here. If we keep walking away from it, it’s going to become a thing.’
It was her turn to crease her brow, because he was making a lot of assumptions here. Ones that she didn’t particularly care for. ‘How do you know that talking about it is going to make it go away?’
‘Because I’m sure that we’ve both got very good reasons why we want to make it go away.’
He thought it was just that easy? If it turned out to be, great. She would be delighted. But she couldn’t help thinking he was being a little naïve here.
‘So we just reason our way out of it?’ she asked.
‘Exactly.’
She envied his supreme confidence. But she didn’t share an ounce of it. ‘Not to play devil’s advocate here—and I’m not talking about us specifically—but don’t you think that if it were that easy to talk your way out of feelings like this, more people would do it? Like, there wouldn’t be affairs, or star-crossed lovers. Or, I don’t know, inappropriate workplace relationships.’
He rolled his eyes and she knew that he wasn’t taking her seriously. ‘I’m not talking about other people. I’m talking about us.’
‘I noticed,’ she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Fine. Let’s stop. You’re right, it’s not getting us anywhere anyway.’
‘Good. We’ll call a truce,’ Finn said to her relief. ‘We will ignore everything that we’ve been talking about this morning because we are grown-ups who know better. But I’m telling you, I can’t live with an atmosphere. And if I feel like there is one, we’re going to talk about this again.’
Madeleine nodded. ‘Fine. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. We’ve acknowledged it. We’ve established that neither of us is interested in pursuing it. We’re moving on. Now,’ she said, strapping Hart into the pushchair and making moves to fold up the picnic blanket, ‘let’s go for a walk. I’m not used to lazing in the sunshine.’
He laughed at that. ‘As if there’s such a thing as lazing with these two around.’
They walked along the South Bank, past the squealing pre-schoolers who were running in and out of the fountains and past pained-looking tourists on the terraces of bars and restaurants, trying to look as if the incessant noise wasn’t bothering them. At the foot of the London Eye she stopped and looked up at the pods, rotating so slowly around the centre that it hardly seemed as if they were moving. In her ten years in London, she’d never been up there. Never seen London from a different angle, a different perspective than being stuck right in the middle of it, just trying to get through the day.
‘What is it?’ Finn asked as she continued to stare up at the giant Ferris wheel.
‘Do you think the babies would like it up there, or would they be scared?’ she asked Finn, wondering whether she was really asking for the twins or for herself.
‘You want to go up?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s a beautiful day. I’ve been wanting perspective. But this seems a little literal, don’t you think?’
He stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned back as he looked at her, his expression thoughtful. ‘Perspective is a good thing, however you get it.’
‘I’m not sure that going up there is going to find me a new job or a place to live.’
‘No, maybe not,’ he agreed, ‘but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to hurt either. So let’s go,’ he said, pushing the pram towards the Fast Track queue.
‘You’re just going to queue up?’ she asked, laughing with surprise. ‘Don’t your sort arrange to hire the whole thing, or put on a special event or something?’
He stopped and looked at her, frowning. ‘My sort? I practically grew up in your kitchen. How is my sort not your sort?’
She caught up with him, picking up the sunhat that Bella had thrown to the ground as a convenient distraction. ‘Um, I don’t know. Maybe because when we all left you went off and became a genius and a millionaire?’
‘I was always a genius, you know.’
She met his eyes and laughed again at the smirk on his face.
She shoved him gently with her shoulder as she came back to stand beside him. ‘You were always a pain, you mean. You were never a genius. You used to burn the toast.’
‘And here was me thinking you never noticed me at all.’ God, that grin of his really was too much. It spread automatically to her face without her even thinking about it. And it made her want to sway her body closer to his in a way that would be bad for both of their states of mind.
She reined in her libido and tried to keep her body on-message. ‘I noticed the smoke alarm going off at regular intervals,’ she said. ‘It was kind of hard to ignore.’
‘I had to get your attention somehow.’
She looked up and met his gaze, neither of them looking away long after the look had turned from friendly to intense to something much more concerning and she knew that, however hard they tried to talk about it or ignore it, this chemistry wasn’t going anywhere. The thought sent a shiver through her, and she wasn’t quite sure whether it was pleasure or fear.
‘Don’t tease me.’ Her voice dropped to something more serious. Because they couldn’t keep bantering like this. They were going to get themselves into trouble. They had to be more careful. ‘You didn’t think of me that way back then,’ she told him with absolute certainty. ‘You couldn’t have cared less whether I noticed you or not.’
‘God, you’re so sure of yourself, aren’t you? You can’t bear to think that I might remember things differently.’
‘Jake would have killed you. Or wanted to, at least.’
He nodded slowly, his eyes still never leaving hers. ‘Then it’s a good job that Jake could never read my mind.’
‘You don’t spill your guts to him like you do to me then?’
Finally, the grin was gone. She had got through to him. She saw the defences come back up. ‘I don’t spill my guts to you.’
‘You’ve not been able to stop talking about this thing between us.’
‘Because it’s distracting,’ Finn said, his voice shorter, spikier. ‘It’s taking up so much room in my head right now that I don’t know how to talk about anything else.’
‘Why not just forget it?’ she asked.
He placed his hands on his hips, his body language matching the scowl on his face. ‘Because it’s important that I don’t forget. I know I keep saying that there’s this connection between us, Madeleine. And it’s true. I feel it. The reason I want to talk about it is because I don’t want to give that spark any power. I’m not interested in a relationship. I have the children to think about, I’m still processing a marriage that broke down and nearly took my business down with it, all because I... Look, my life isn’t compatible with a relationship. With anyone else, I don’t know...maybe I’d be up for something casual. I don’t want casual with you. I don’t want anything with you because Jake is practically my brother, which makes you family and I don’t want to do anything to mess that up.’
God, she hadn’t been expecting such a torrent of words. There was too much there to process, standing here amidst a chaotic queue of tourists in the middle of a London summer. She knew that she’d be killing herself trying to remember every word when she was finally alone tonight. But, for now, the gist of it was enough. He was as wary as she was, and he wanted whatever spark this was between them shut down fast. Good. She could get on board with that.
‘Then I’m glad we’re on the same page because I don’t want anythi
ng either, casual or otherwise, Finn. It sounds like you’re afraid I’m going to jump you. Or seduce you or something. For the record, I’m not interested in a relationship with you or anyone else. Now, can we please, please stop discussing this?’
He gave her the most intense look for a beat, and then another. And then, when she thought she couldn’t bear it any more, he broke into an easy sunny smile and changed the subject. ‘When you admit that you are desperate to play the tourist and go on the Eye.’
She was desperate to shut him up. She returned his smile, but couldn’t quite convince it to reach her eyes. ‘Fine, yes. Let’s go.’
‘So gracious,’ Finn said, pushing the pram further up the ramp as the queue edged close to the embarkation platform.
The pod rose so slowly and smoothly that it was hard to even believe that they were moving unless she looked away from the skyline for a moment, then looked back again to find it that tiny bit further away. The crowded pod—twenty-five of them plus the double buggy—had them wedged into one spot, where for most of the ride up her view was mainly of the back of the six-foot bear of a tourist who had rudely pushed in front of her. She didn’t want to look back at the hefty winding gear responsible for keeping nearly five hundred feet of Ferris wheel in the air. And it didn’t take long for her to realise that actually she had been pretty happy down on the ground, untroubled by thoughts of how sturdy that engineering really was.
But as the pod crested the top of the wheel and the bear of a man in front of her moved to another part of the pod, her cynicism fell away. The early summer sunshine flooded them with light and suddenly London was glorious beneath them, the river a living, moving ribbon through the landmarks of the city that had become so familiar that she’d stopped seeing it. From up here, she couldn’t believe that she didn’t spend her day looking around herself in wonder at the city where she got to live. And then, when she looked to her left, there were the Houses of Parliament.
Reunited by the Tycoon's Twins Page 6