“Eh Kate, love? Where are you? Have you found some clothes yet? We need to get Rupert dressed. He’s getting cold.”
In an instant Kate saw the look of confusion come across Marcus’s face, followed quickly by anger.
“Who the hell is that? And who the hell is Rupert?”
Before she could answer, Joel came up beside Kate in the doorway. “Oh hey,” he said. “I’m Joel.” He thrust out his hand, which Marcus ignored. “And you are?” He let the question hang in the air.
“Joel. This is Marcus Antony Thornton.” Kate used his full name, knowing that was how he preferred to be introduced.
“Oh.” Joel looked Marcus carefully up and down, taking everything in at a glance. “I should have guessed.”
Marcus’s eyes flashed and again Kate saw confusion reflected in them. Joel glanced briefly across at Kate but remained silent.
“Marcus, this is Joel.”
She made the introduction but didn’t try to explain who the man was at her side. As she stood awkwardly in the door between the two men, she felt heat emanating from Joel’s body and it gave her a sense of comfort.
“Go ahead, love. Invite him in. There’s no point having this conversation standing outside in the cold. I’ll go and stoke the fire and put the kettle on. Rupert can wait.” Joel spoke softly before turning to walk back down the hallway.
“Who the hell is he?” Marcus was angry and Kate knew from past experience that his temper escalated quickly when a situation wasn’t clearly explained to him. Her shoulders sagged.
“Come in then, Marcus, and I’ll explain.” She stood aside so he could pass her into the narrow hallway and closed the front door. “The lounge is through that door on your right.” She indicated the doorway and then followed Marcus into the room and watched as he glanced around him, taking everything in.
“This all looks very nice and homely, Kate.” She heard the lack of sincerity in his voice but ignored it.
Sitting on the edge of the couch, Kate jiggled her legs as she waited for Joel to finish stoking the fire and leave the room before she eventually spoke.
“Joel is a friend I’ve met up here. He’s been digging over my vegetable gardens today. Rupert is the scarecrow he just finished making for me.” Really, she didn’t know why she should have to explain. It was none of his business.
Marcus shook his head and she could sense his confusion. “So is he living with you?”
“No,” Kate replied indignantly.
“But you’re sleeping together?”
“Marcus! Other than the fact that that is none of your business, the answer is no. Joel is a friend. That’s all. There is absolutely nothing between us.” She was angrier with him than she could ever remember and was surprised at the way she defended herself when speaking to him. Marcus lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender and the silence between them was deafening. He wasn’t used to her standing up for herself.
Finally he spoke. “Why did you leave me, Kate?”
Marcus’s question was genuine and she heard the sincerity in his voice. He looked completely baffled and Kate had a fleeting moment of panic. What if she had read the situation all wrong, just as her mum and then Melissa and Joel had suggested? She could see by the look in his eyes that he legitimately didn’t seem to know the reason she had left. Something stirred in Kate’s heart. Seeing him again had dredged up memories of all the wonderful times they had shared together. She had been so in love with him.
Kate always thought herself blessed to have won his affections, and although there were times he’d been arrogant and opinionated, he had always treated her well. She shivered involuntarily as she remembered the way he used to slide his sunglasses down his nose, look over the top of them and wolf whistle at her whenever she modeled the new clothes he’d bought her. He was so generous, even if she didn’t always appreciate the over-the-top expensive outfits he purchased for her. She knew that giving gifts was his way of showing his love.
He was staring at her and for a fleeting moment she wanted to run to him and lose herself in his arms. That same magnetism was there, drawing her back toward him.
Was it all just one massive misunderstanding?
Thankfully Joel chose that moment to enter the room from the kitchen, his timing completely off. “Cup of tea anyone?” His Irish accent was even more pronounced than usual and Kate wondered if he was putting it on for Marcus’s benefit.
“Something stronger would be good,” Marcus replied.
Kate saw Joel frown slightly and she answered for him. “I’ve got some wine in the fridge if you’d like that.”
“I’d prefer a scotch.”
For a moment Marcus sounded so like his normal arrogant self that Kate was tempted to laugh out loud, but she could see that Joel was still frowning so she covered her mouth and coughed.
“You know I don’t drink scotch, Marcus, and therefore I don’t keep it in the house,” Kate replied. “I obviously didn’t picture you showing up here expecting it,” she added as an afterthought.
“I won’t have anything then,” Marcus replied.
Suit yourself.
“I’d love a hot chocolate please, Joel.” Kate tried to smile up at him, wondering if he was feeling as awkward as Marcus clearly was.
“No worries, Kate. Then I’m going to head home if that’s okay. It’s been a long day. I’ll be back tomorrow to finish getting Rupert dressed and if we’ve got time, we might even be able to get some seedlings planted in those veggie boxes.”
Joel’s usual smile was gone, replaced by a look Kate couldn’t determine.
Damn! He probably thinks I’m going to go back to Marcus.
Marcus and Kate sat in awkward silence as they waited for Joel to return from the kitchen. He placed her favorite mug in front of her. She could see two marshmallows floating in the milky froth, just the way he knew she liked it. Unexpectedly he reached down and gave her a swift kiss on the cheek. Kate felt the brush of his lips near her ear and his stubble scratched her cheek. She also clearly heard the words he whispered to her.
“Forgive him.”
Her tightly wound body almost sprang out of the chair, and it took everything within her to remain sitting. Anger was coursing through her body so tangibly she could almost feel it. She just didn’t know who she was angry with the most. Marcus or Joel. She took deep breaths and the feelings began to subside.
Throughout the entire exchange, Marcus remained standing at the fireplace, trying to look relaxed with one arm resting on the mantelpiece but failing miserably. Kate wondered if the arm of his suit was going to get covered in dust as it had been a while since she had done any cleaning.
Marcus waited until he heard the front door slam before finally speaking. “Okay, so why don’t you tell me what’s going on here, Kate?” Marcus asked. There was no anger, no recriminations, just confusion and hurt in his tone.
Willing the tears not to fall, Kate began by telling Marcus about the day she had come home to discover the text message from Cindy on his phone. Marcus let Kate speak without interrupting, which surprised her, as she expected the lawyer in him to be constantly interjecting and objecting, as he usually did. When she finally finished talking she looked up at him and was surprised by the look on his face. It wasn’t the look of shame or guilt or denial that she had been expecting and she was immediately filled with dismay.
Oh god, I’ve totally misconstrued the whole thing! Joel was right. Kate’s heart thudded so loudly she wondered if he could hear. How was she going to fix this?
Marcus sat down gently on the couch beside her. “These cushions look good on this couch.” Marcus indicated the bright multicolored cushions that sat between them.
Kate pulled one of them to her chest and hugged it tightly, as though forming a barrier of protection, waiting for Marcus to respond. She knew he would have been listening to every word she spoke while at the same time formulating his carefully worded response.
“You’ve got it all w
rong, Kate,” Marcus said, surprising her with his lack of eloquence. She had expected a long speech. Her heart plummeted. Oh no!
“Tell me how,” she answered softly.
“Yes, Cindy did stay overnight. She’s a friend and needed somewhere to stay. But we were not having an affair.”
“What about the part in her text where she asks, ‘When are you going to talk to Kate?’” Kate had memorized the text message and even after months, the words were still burned fresh in her memory. “It’s pretty obvious you must have been sleeping together. She went home and broke it off with Jack and was waiting for you to do the same with me.” Kate hated the whinging sound of her own voice.
“No. That’s not how it was, Kate. I was going to talk to you about my new job.”
“Oh.” His answer surprised her and she wasn’t sure what else to say. Her stomach churned. It looked like maybe she’d been totally wrong this whole time. “But she wanted to catch up again later that night. To talk about your future.”
Kate emphasized the word, all the while her brain was scrambling as she tried to comprehend what he was saying. Was he denying the affair? Could she go back to him? Should she? She shook her head but the thoughts only became more clouded. She tried to listen and focus on what Marcus was trying to say.
“Only because that’s what time suited us both. She’s my personal assistant for god’s sake! She’s been helping me work on a proposal for our boss for months and because of her help, I was finally offered the promotion we had always dreamed of. She was coming back to talk about our future.” Marcus was beginning to sound exasperated, a tone Kate knew and recognized. He used it often when he couldn’t get his point across.
“Promotion?” she echoed the word as a question. What promotion was he referring to? He’d never mentioned anything about it to her. Had he?
“The firm has offered me a new job. I was waiting for the right time to tell you that we’re moving to Hong Kong. That’s what Cindy was talking about. She’s coming too. As my executive assistant.”
“What?” Kate sat up straighter on the couch, shoving the cushion aside and looking at him in astonishment. “Hong Kong? You were going to tell me, out of the blue, with no warning, we were moving to another country?” She couldn’t believe his audacity.
“Katie! Relax. It’s not until next January. There’s still plenty of time for you to give notice here and tie up any loose ends. And when we move you won’t even have to work. I’m going to need you to be my hostess for lots of functions. You’ll love getting all glammed up. Just think, you can have your hair and nails done every week if you want to! I’ll be earning so much money we’ll even be able to have the penthouse apartment we’ve always dreamed about. The cost of living is so much cheaper in Hong Kong. Oh, and there’s a great expat community so you won’t have to worry about being lonely.”
Kate opened her mouth and closed it again. She was literally speechless. The nerve of the man!
“So, Katie darling, can we just move on and forget about this little misunderstanding? You know how much I care about you.”
He shuffled closer to her on the couch and tried to put his arm across the back of her shoulders. Kate shrugged his arm off and for an emotion-charged moment she didn’t respond. She hated any form of confrontation, but right at this moment she didn’t have a choice. She was dumbfounded at his arrogance and had to tell him what she thought.
“Marcus Antony Thornton, you must think I’m stupid!”
“What?”
She glared at him. “What makes you think I would willingly give up the career I love, the job I’m good at, and move overseas away from my parents to a country where I can’t even speak the language? Just because you care for me?”
“Don’t be like that, Kate. You know I love you.” Marcus’s answer was not what Kate expected and she recoiled slightly. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d said those words to her. Does he actually still love me? Her mind raced in circles.
As he spoke, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a familiar turquoise-colored box from within its depths. Kate felt slightly ill as he handed her the small box to open. She lifted the lid hesitantly and instantly felt herself relax. Inside was a pair of large diamond earrings, not the ring she realized she had been dreading to see.
“Katie darling, you know I don’t believe in marriage – it’s just a piece of paper – but I know how much you love jewelry. They’re real Tiffany you know, although I don’t know how anyone can tell the difference. Cindy helped pick them out.” He leaned toward her and looked into her eyes. “Maybe now you can see how much I want you to come back home. I need you to come home. I can’t take this job in Hong Kong without you.”
Kate closed the lid of the box and handed it back to Marcus, understanding what he was inferring. Without her by his side, playing the role of “hostess,” the job offer was off the table. Kate’s eyes were finally opened and she understood why their relationship had been so wrong, even from the very beginning. Her body began to relax as the tension within her eased. She actually felt sorry for him.
Choosing her words carefully, she spoke calmly and softly, her voice full of conviction and passion. “Marcus, I do love jewelry but I prefer to receive it for all the right reasons. You cannot bribe me with gifts to become your token partner for the rest of our lives. I want more than that. I am worth more than that. The moment I felt like I had to prove my worth to you was the moment I had to walk away forever. These past four months I have realized I am so very different from you. I want different things in life than you do and perhaps what has happened is all for a reason. It’s for the best.” Kate paused and looked him in the eye. She was about to address the elephant in the room. “After the baby …”
“This has nothing to do with that,” he snapped and Kate saw the menacing flash in his eyes again.
“Actually Marcus, it has everything to do with our baby,” she replied evenly.
“Oh for god’s sake, Kate, it wasn’t even a baby. I’ve told you before, you just have to move on.”
“So? What? It was just a blob of tissue to you? Is that it?”
“You’re a nurse. Surely you know that’s all it is. What were you? Eleven weeks? It’s not like it was even viable—”
She cut him off. “I was over twelve weeks pregnant.”
“The timing wasn’t right.”
“The timing was never going to be right for you, was it?” She spat the words out as though they tasted like poison on her tongue.
“A baby would have interrupted my plans for our future.”
“Yeah, your plans for my future. I can’t believe I even let you talk me into an abortion.”
“Bloody hell, don’t call it that! It was a termination, Kate, that’s all. Women do it every day. You make it sound all emotional when you talk like that.”
“Maybe because it is emotional for me. That baby was part of me.” And you’re my only link to the baby, she wanted to cry out. Once Marcus was gone, Kate’s greatest fear was that all memories of the baby would be gone with him. That was the problem with keeping it a secret.
“It wasn’t a baby! It was a bloody mistake,” he yelled.
Kate drew her breath in sharply. She always wondered if he felt this way, but this was the first time he had admitted it. With clarity, she knew she could never go back to him.
“I think you should go.” Kate stood up. She never wanted to lay eyes on him again.
“So I’ve driven all this way for nothing,” Marcus said.
“I don’t think it’s been for nothing,” Kate replied bluntly. “Now we can both move on with our lives and become the people we are meant to be.”
She walked toward the front door, catching sight of him standing up and putting the box back in his jacket pocket, retrieving his car keys at the same time.
“I guess I’ll be going then.”
“You guessed correctly.”
He looked dejected as he walked toward his car. Kate
remained silent as he unlocked it before getting in behind the wheel. He looked back toward her as he pulled the seatbelt across his chest and something within her broke.
“I hope you have a happy life, Marcus.” She couldn’t believe how civil she sounded.
And I forgive you.
As the unspoken words echoed through her mind, she felt like a massive weight had lifted off her shoulders. She hadn’t even needed to speak the words out loud.
“You too, Kate. You too.”
He closed the car door and Kate waited for him to wind down the car window.
“Marcus, why don’t you give Cindy a call? I know she loves Tiffany just as much as I do.” As she spoke, he turned the key in the ignition. The car roared to life and Kate wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. If he did, she hoped her words didn’t sound too bitter.
Standing in the cold in the doorway of her farmhouse, Kate hugged herself as she watched Marcus drive away from her life for good. For once she felt like she’d handled confrontation well. She waited until the taillights of his car were no longer visible before closing the door.
Although she was filled with a fresh sense of loss, she also felt ready to move on. She’d cut the cord between them and she was finally set free.
Chapter 20
Kate was still tired when she woke the following morning. As she stretched and yawned, it took her a moment before she remembered the events of the day before and she sat bolt upright in bed. After months of constantly feeling angry and hurt by Marcus’s betrayal she was surprised by how empty she felt. It was as though a large space had been opened in her heart, ready to be filled again. She expected to feel sad at the loss of their relationship but there was nothing. No pain. No anger. Perhaps this is what forgiveness feels like.
Immediately her mind raced to Joel. She had to let him know what had happened. Out of nowhere a thought hit her like a ton of bricks and her heart plummeted. Had she just lost two men in one day? Grabbing her phone, she sent him a short text.
Intensive Care: Escape to the Country Page 16