Suddenly a domineering muscular man with a cane pushed the recorders away from Mimi and blocked the reporters from coming any closer.
‘That’s enough for tonight, guys,’ Hal said in a deep, commanding voice which was impossible to argue with. ‘We hope to see you all at the fashion show tomorrow. After you’ve seen Miss Ryan’s designs, she will be happy to answer your questions. Thanks. See you at the show tomorrow and enjoy the party.’
Seizing a chance, and while Hal was still occupied with the photographers, Mimi simply turned her back on him and the party and walked as gracefully as she could through the smiling well-wishers towards the exit.
And fled out of the hotel and down the stone steps as fast as she could manage without falling over.
‘Mimi. Wait. Please!’
Hal hobbled down the stone steps one at a time, cursing the pain that jetted through his leg as he tried to hurry, and reached the pavement just as Mimi was trying to attract the intention of a passing black taxi-cab.
To his overwhelming relief, her steps slowed.
Mimi turned slowly on the stone pavement and looked back at him, her face contorted with such pain, regret and grief and every kind of emotion he did not want to see there.
She did not speak. She did not need to. Her face told him everything he needed to know.
All of her inner pain, the hurt, the bewilderment and the humiliation were combined into that one single look.
And in that fraction of a second he knew.
He was falling for Mimi Ryan—a woman who he had met only a week ago. A woman who had turned his crazy world upside down and in every direction possible.
He wasn’t ready for this. Not now. Not with the turmoil of Tom’s death still so raw and whirling around inside his head and heart. He barely knew what day of the week it was. How could he trust his feelings when he still felt so broken and fractured he doubted he could ever be whole again? He couldn’t—and it would be totally wrong to tell Mimi how he felt until he had put that past behind him.
But there was one thing he could not hide—her good opinion mattered. If he only did this one thing, he had to tell Mimi the truth and make her understand that he had not betrayed her trust, that he had been as surprised as she had been when Luca Fiorini had walked into the party. Because if he didn’t the cost would be too great.
He knew that now. He could not lose this girl, no matter what happened between them going forward.
Hal forced his feet to move, hands and cane loose by his sides, aware that Mimi was still standing in silence, just looking at him in disgust and disappointment.
He had to persuade her to listen to him. That was all that mattered.
‘I’m so sorry, Mimi. I had no idea that Poppy had invited Luca Fiorini tonight. Poppy didn’t know anything about your connection to the Fiorini family, and she never intended to upset you. I think Luca saw your photograph in the catalogue and made the connection, but he didn’t say a word to Poppy. Please, believe me. I didn’t know that Luca was going to be here.’
He stretched out his hand and opened his fingers for her to take before lowering his voice and trying as best he could to smile and mean it.
‘Why don’t you come back inside? I am sure that Luca would love to talk to you. We can turn this around and make the best of it. This is your party, your celebration. Please, come back in.’
Mimi looked at him and for a second her chin quivered with emotion before she answered in a low, bitter voice. ‘You did not listen to one word I said back in my apartment. Not one! I told you that I wanted nothing to do with the family—this has to be my work, my achievement! Not theirs! The only thing waiting for me back inside that room is more humiliation and embarrassment.’
She shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘I am not ready to talk to Luca. Not like this. Can’t you understand that?’
She was gulping down breaths of air and gesticulating widely, but he had his own response. Fighting to control his voice, he snatched at some small chance to turn this around. ‘No. You are the one who is not listening to me. I didn’t know he had been invited. How could I? Poppy must have pulled a lot of strings to persuade the head of a fashion house to turn up in person, but there was no reason for her to tell me about it.’
He took a step closer so they were both at the same height.
‘It was your decision not to tell Poppy that you were related to the Fiorinis. Yours. So do not blame Poppy for inviting as many of her fashion-trade friends as possible to bring in as much publicity as she could for your show. You should be pleased that he is here at all.’
Mimi blinked and looked stunned by his statement, then gesticulated back to the hotel entrance. ‘Pleased? Pleased that everyone in the room was staring at me like that?’
She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘Why am I even trying to explain? You obviously have no idea that Luca Fiorini has just ruined every plan I had built up for my career. I wish I had never told you anything about my family.’
‘Then why did you? Why did you tell me about your dad and your terrible graduation show?’
Mimi glared up at him wide-eyed.
‘You know why. And don’t you dare try and change the subject.’
‘You told me because you thought I would feel sorry for you, didn’t you? The poor schoolgirl who lost her father because the Fiorini family kept him on a string. The cruel words from the rich and famous relatives. Come on, admit it—you wanted my pity!’
Hal reached out and tried to take her arm, but she knocked it aside. ‘Go back to Poppy and your mountains, Hal! Go back to your sports and your camera. You don’t know anything about me!’
‘I know that you’ve been living in that museum of a shop for the last ten years of your life. Ten years! That’s a prison sentence, not a life.’
He took a step closer.
‘Don’t turn this into one more excuse for locking yourself away and wallowing in your own self-pity. One more excuse for not taking a risk and making a decision about your life. You want to be with me as much as I want to be with you. And do not even try and put the blame on me!’
‘Poppy…’
Hal took her hand, firmly this time, and he had no intention of letting it go.
‘This is not about Poppy. Or the show. This is about you, Mimi. I’m not listening to any more excuses about your relatives. They won’t work this time. And they never did.’
He took another step closer until his face was only inches from hers, his eyes locked onto hers.
‘Do you truly want to run back to your safe little flat, above your safe little shop, with the same safe friends? Do you want to spend the rest of your life finding one excuse or another for not taking a chance at happiness, blaming something or someone else for your loneliness? And what happens when you can’t afford to keep the shop going? What do you do then?’
Mimi opened her mouth to answer, but instead her lip quivered with emotion and she closed her eyes as his words seemed to hit home.
When he spoke again, his voice was slower, calmer. A whisper. His hand wrapped around her waist, drawing her shaking body into the warmth of his embrace.
‘You don’t have to live in your family’s shadow. You have a choice and I want to help you be the best you can be. You are the most talented woman I have ever met in my life, Mimi. Will you give me a chance to be part of your life? Will you take a risk with me?’
Both of her hands were pressed hard against his dinner suit jacket, and he could only wait, his heart pounding, as she lifted and pressed her palms down again before she was ready to lift her head and look him hard in the eyes.
He didn’t like what he saw there.
‘How can I? I don’t know the first thing about you, Hal. I’ve told you things about my life and parents which I have never even spoken about before! And what have you told me, shared with me, trusted me with?’
She stared hard and the knot in his stomach grew to epic proportions.
‘Nothing. You have not told me one th
ing that means something to you! Tonight I had to hear from Tom’s girlfriend that you were so strong for everyone else after Tom died. How do you think that makes me feel? She assumed that you had told me all about the accident. That’s what people do when they are close, they talk about the important things in their life. Well, so far I seem to have been the one doing all of the talking.’
‘Aurelia? She told you about that?’
‘Oh, yes. Except, of course, she thought I knew all about it. Have you any clue as to what it feels like to be the only person in the room who is not in on some big secret? The outsider? I felt as though everyone in that room knew about Tom’s accident except me. Everyone!’
‘I’m sorry. I should have told you.’
Mimi pushed hard against his chest with both fists and stepped back, increasing the distance between them in every way possible.
‘Yes, you should. And it is way too late now. Oh, Hal! You promised to take care of me. And you didn’t. You should have told me and you didn’t! Why? Why could you not tell me about what happened on the day he died? Do I mean so little to you? Is that it?’
‘No. You mean a very great deal to me. But I promised Tom that I wouldn’t tell anyone about what happened on the day he died until the time was right. That’s why I couldn’t tell you the truth. Why I haven’t been able to tell anyone the truth. Those people at the party only know that we had a climbing accident. They have no idea about what really happened.’
Her whole body stilled and she turned back to him. ‘What do you mean? Why do you have to wait until the time is right? I don’t understand.’
Hal froze, his back rigid, and so taut that when he spoke the energy of his words reverberated through his chest and were amplified in the air that separated them.
‘Tom was dying of cancer. He didn’t go to the mountain to climb that day. He went to the mountain to die the way he wanted to die. And I helped him do it. I helped my best friend kill himself.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
MIMI lost track of time as they walked, slowly, silently, around the park, the distance between them shifting as her feet began to hurt and Hal’s cane knocked against a park bench or the trunk of a tree or shrub.
There were no words, no false motivational speeches of consolation or explanation. Simply two people lost in their own worlds and thoughts that happened to be on parallel tracks at the same time.
The gap between them on the narrow path was only a few feet, but she had never felt so distant from another person.
Hal had not tried to hold her hand, or explain.
He had simply followed her into the quiet space in the cool of the late evening, away from the busy street, the noise and bright lights of the smart hotel, and the glittering people within it, who were probably wondering where they had got to. She had walked out of her own pre-show party but she could not think about that now. Hal was all that mattered.
She needed time to calm herself and try and make some sense of what Hal had told her.
He had helped Tom to kill himself? That had to be some sort of horrible, terrible mistake. He had been his friend. He had been going to be the best man at Tom’s wedding to Aurelia. No, there was more to this than a simple admission of guilt.
He would tell her when he was ready. If she was willing to listen.
The lovely limo-shoes she had chosen tripped over a pebble on the pavement, hurting her toes, and she flinched and walked gingerly over to a wooden park bench which was half-hidden under the shade of a large tree, set back from the path and surrounded by shrubbery. It was dark, sheltered and secluded. She collapsed down on the rough seat, uncaring now about the damage it would cause to her new dress, and slipped off her shoe so that she could massage her toes.
From her place in the dark she could see Hal walk slowly up the pavement in the faint streetlight until he was only a few feet away from her, but with his head turned away from the light so that she could not see his face. From his stiff back and hunched up shoulders, everything about Hal’s body screamed that he was tense and in pain, and she wanted to go to him. And knew that she couldn’t.
The physical distance from Hal was nothing compared to the dark, unspoken secrets that kept them apart.
Mimi closed her eyes and breathed in the cool, damp evening air, desperate to calm her reeling brain. He had asked her to give him a chance, to take a risk on him.
Oh, Hal. You ask that and then you hit me with your secret about Tom. What other secrets are weighing you down? How much do I really know about you?
She wondered how long it had been since he had trusted anyone with the truth about who he was and the burdens from the past he was carrying with him.
He had been right to challenge her about her safe little life in her shop and apartment, but at that moment her coping strategies seemed liked nothing compared to the weight of responsibilities and debt that she was carrying.
What was she going to do—walk away? Or stay and help him?
One thing was clear: what happened next was not up to her. It was up to Hal. He had to decide whether he was going to open up his secret world and let her in. Or not. He had turned the key and told her what lay inside. But the door was still firmly closed in her face.
And she was going to stay on this bench, in the dark shadows, until he made the decision.
Minutes stretched out until she could feel the slight damp penetrate her evening jacket and she squeezed her swollen foot back into her shoe, knocking it against the bench as she did so.
That simple movement echoed across the air between them and as she watched Hal from her shadowy seat his shoulders seemed to slump back a little and his voice sounded out across the gloom. It was as wonderful as the first time she had heard it in Poppy’s office, but now tinged with deep emotion, which totally captured her attention, forcing her to listen with her whole body.
‘Tom was diagnosed with an incurable lymphoma. He had put his muscle weakness down to some horrible virus we picked up on the last tour of Patagonia, but this time it didn’t get better. It got worse—bad enough for me to drag him to have tests.’
Hal turned his face a little so she could see that he was staring at the hard stone surface ahead of him, as though trying to gain strength to carry on. But her heart was singing. He was opening up to her—finally!
‘The diagnosis still came as a shock. There was nothing they could do. Aggressive treatments would have destroyed his quality of life, so Tom decided to go back to his home in France with Aurelia and enjoy what was left of his life.’
As she looked into his face Hal appeared to falter. Mimi licked her lips and whispered out loud in as gentle a voice as she could manage, ‘Did you stay with him? In France?’
Hal twisted his head in her direction then shook it several times. ‘I was spending a lot of time with clients in South America, but I got the call about a month later. Tom had spent the winter putting together the charitable foundation for disabled climbers and doing some skiing, but he was losing muscle power faster than he had expected. If we waited much longer he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it onto the mountain. So he suggested that we get together for one final trek to check a new walking route in the French Alps for clients. It was probably going to be his last chance for the two of us to go out before he became too weak to make the trip.’
Hal blew out several times. ‘I had no idea it was going to be so hard. We had a brilliant few days’ holiday, laughing over wonderful food and wine. But that morning we set off after breakfast, and I don’t know what it was, but I sensed that something was different.’
He leant on his cane, shifting position. His leg had to be hurting by now, but he did not move on, but braced his cane into the grass.
‘It was a beautiful day. Blue sky, warm sunshine reflecting back from the snow cover. I actually felt guilty to be so healthy, alive and well on such a lovely day. After a couple of hours we were the only people on the most dangerous part of the mountain, standing on a narrow ledge, roped togethe
r and looking down a sheer rock-face with boulders below us. We hadn’t said much on the way up, but suddenly Tom started talking about how he had seen his dad die slowly of cancer when he was a boy and had felt so helpless.’
Hal’s fingers tightened, then stretched out and clamped around the cane so fiercely that Mimi could almost see the white of his knuckles.
‘He kept telling me there was no way he was prepared to put Aurelia through that agony. He loved her too much for that. So he had decided that when the time was right he would end his life in the mountains. He planned to take back control over his life by deciding how he was going to end it.’
Hal threw back his head against the hard seat. ‘You can imagine what I said to that! I even called him a coward, looking for the fast and painless way out, while the rest of us were going to be left behind to pick up the pieces. I didn’t want anything to do with it.’
Hal sniffed several times, his head back, and Mimi did not dare look into his face or try and offer words comfort. This was something Hal had to do on his own. He had to survive this.
‘I started to get really angry with Tom, calling him all of the selfish names I could think of, begging and pleading with him to think about new treatments which could keep him with us a few more months, or even a year. But Tom had been thinking about the options for weeks. He knew what he was doing.’
Hal wiped his cheek. ‘But then he made me promise that I would keep his plan secret so that Aurelia wouldn’t know. And it just broke my heart.’
His words came out in shuddering, short breaths. ‘He just smiled and hugged me and told me that he was going to miss me. Started talking about all of the crazy mad things we had done together over the years since university, and before long we were both laughing and crying then laughing some more. And then he stopped laughing and said, “tell her when you think the time is right”, but he was crying when he said it. It was the first time I had ever seen him cry. And in that fraction of a second, while I was distracted, Tom unclipped the rope holding us together, told me that he loved me, took two steps backwards and fell off the mountain. Onto the rocks below.’
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