She literally froze on the spot.
God, he hadn’t changed. He was still as beautiful as he always had been, still the man who towered over other men. His hair was shorter than it had been four years ago and she could tell from the shadow on his jawline that he hadn’t shaved. In the space of a few seconds, during which time Jennifer felt her breath catch in her throat, she took in everything. The lean, long body in a pair of jeans and an old striped rugby jumper, the sleeves of which were shoved up to the elbows, those amazing deep blue eyes, now focused on her in a way that made her head swim.
Disastrously, she felt herself catapulted back to the young, naive girl she had once been.
‘James. What on earth are you doing here?’ She knew that her hand was trembling when she hit the light switch. ‘You told me that you would be leaving the country!’
‘I should be in the air right now but the weather got in the way of those plans. It’s been a long time, Jennifer…’
The silence stretched and stretched and stretched and she had to fight to maintain her self-control. Four years of independence, of cutting herself free from those infantile ties that had bound her to this man, and she could feel them melting and slipping away. She could have wept. Instead, she let the little ball of remembered bitterness and anger form into a knot inside her stomach and she began to get rid of her coat, which was heavy and damp from the snow.
‘Yes. Yes, it has. How are you?’ She forced a stiff smile but her heart was thumping like a sledgehammer.
‘I thought I’d stay in the cottage until you got here, make sure you arrived safely. I wasn’t sure whether you were going to drive or take the train.’
‘I… I took the train.’ Her car was parked outside her friend’s house in London where she stayed every time she came back to the city. ‘But there was no need for you to hang around here. You know I can take care of myself.’
‘You’ve certainly been doing a very good job of that while you’ve been in Paris. My mother frequently regales me with news of yet more promotions.’
She still hadn’t taken a single step towards him because her feet appeared to be nailed to that one spot in the hallway.
He was the first to break the spell, turning away and heading into the kitchen, leaving her to follow him.
He hadn’t said a word about how much she had changed. How could he have failed to notice? But then, why was it so surprising when he had never really noticed her? The ease she had once felt in his company was nowhere to be found and it was a struggle thinking of polite conversation to make.
‘It’s been a very successful posting for me,’ Jennifer said politely. ‘I never thought that I’d end up staying over there for four years but as I accepted more and more responsibility, the work became more and more challenging and I found myself accepting their offers to stay on.’
‘You look like a visitor, standing there. Sit down. You might as well forget about getting anything done tonight. We can work on detailing what will need to be done to the cottage tomorrow.’
‘We? Like I said, there’s absolutely no need for you to help me with this. I plan on having it all finished by tomorrow afternoon and I’ll be leaving first thing the following morning.’ This was not how two old friends, meeting after years of separation, would act. Jennifer knew that. She could hear the sharp edge to her voice and, while she was dismayed by it, she was also keenly aware that it was necessary as a protective tool, because just looking at him rooting around in the fridge with his back to her threatened to take her down memory lane and that was a journey she wasn’t willing to make.
‘Good luck arguing with the weather on that score.’
‘What are you doing in the fridge?’
‘Cheese, eggs. There’s some bread over there, bought yesterday. When the snow started, I realised I might find myself stuck here and if I was stuck here, then you would be as well, so I managed to make it down to the shops and got a few things together.’
‘Well, that was very kind of you, James. Thank you.’
‘Well, isn’t this fun?’ He fetched a bottle of wine from the fridge, something he had bought along with the food, she was sure, and poured them both a glass. ‘Four years and we’re struggling to pass the time of day. Tell me what you’ve been up to in France.’
‘I thought I just had. My job is very invigorating. The apartment is wonderful.’
‘So everything lived up to expectation.’ He sat back in the kitchen chair and took a deep mouthful of wine, looking at her over the rim of the glass. God, she’d changed. Did she realise just how much? He couldn’t believe that the last time he’d seen her had been four years ago, but then she had made sure to be unavailable whenever he’d happened to be in Paris, and somehow, whenever she’d happened to be in the UK, he’d happened to be out of it.
She had cut all ties with him and he knew that it had all happened on that one fateful night. Of course, he didn’t regret the outcome of that evening. He had had no choice but to turn her down. She had been young and vulnerable and too sexy for her own good. She had come to him looking for something and he had known, instinctively, that whatever that something was he would have been incapable of providing it. She had been trusting and naive, not like the hard-edged beauties he was accustomed to who would have been happy to take whatever was on offer for limited duration.
But he had never suspected that she would have walked out of his life permanently.
And changed. And had not looked back.
‘Yes.’ Jennifer played with the stem of her wine glass but there was no way that she was going to drink any of it. ‘Everything lived up to expectation and beyond. Life has never been so good or so rewarding. And what about you, James? What have you been up to? I’ve seen your mother over the years but I really haven’t heard much about you.’
‘Shrinking world but fortunately new markets in the Far East. If you like, I can go into the details but doubt you would find it that fascinating. Aside from the challenging job, what is Paris like for you? Completely different from this neck of the woods, I imagine.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘Are you going to expand on that or shall we drink our respective glasses of wine in silence while we try and formulate new topics of conversation?’
‘I’m sorry, James. It’s been a long trip with the train and the taxi and I’m exhausted. I think it’s probably best if you went up to your house and we can always play the catch-up game another time.’
‘You haven’t forgotten, have you?’
‘Forgotten what?’
‘Forgotten the last time we met.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes. Yes, I think you do, Jen.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by dragging up the past, James.’ She stood up abruptly and positioned herself by the kitchen door with her arms folded. Not only were they strangers, but now they were combatants, squaring up to each other in the boxing ring. Jennifer didn’t dare allow regret to enter the equation because just looking at him like this was making her realise that on some deep, instinctive level she still responded to him. She didn’t know whether that was the pull of familiarity or the pull of an attraction that refused to remain buried and she was not willing to find out.
‘Why don’t you go and change and I’ll fix you something to eat, and if you tell me that you’re too exhausted to eat, then I’m going to suspect that you’re finding excuses to avoid my company. Which wouldn’t be the case, would it, Jen?’
‘Of course not.’ But she could feel a delicate flush creep into her cheeks.
‘Nothing fancy. You know my culinary talents are limited.’
The grin he delivered was an aching reminder of the good times they had shared and the companionable ease they had lost.
‘And don’t,’ he continued, holding up one hand as though to halt an interruption, ‘tell me that there’s no need. I know there’s no need. Like I said, I’m fully aware of how
independent you’ve become over the past four years.’
Jennifer shrugged, but her thoughts were all over the place as she rummaged in the suitcase for a change of clothes. A hurried shower and she was back downstairs within half an hour, this time in a pair of loose grey yoga pants and a tight, long-sleeved grey top, her hair pulled back into a ponytail.
It had always been a standing joke that James never cooked. He would tease her father, who adored cooking, that the kitchen was a woman’s domain, that cooking wasn’t a man’s job. He would then lay down the gauntlet—an arm-wrestling match to prove that cooking depleted a man of strength. Jennifer used to love these little interludes; she used to love the way he would wink at her, pulling her into his game.
However, he was just finishing a remarkably proficient omelette when she walked into the kitchen. A salad was in a bowl. Hot bread was on a wooden board.
‘I guess I’m not the only one who’s changed,’ Jennifer said from the doorway, and he glanced across to her, his eyes lazily appraising.
‘Would you believe me if I told you that I took a cookery course?’
Jennifer shrugged. ‘Did you?’ She sat at the table and looked around her. ‘There’s less damage than I thought there would be. I had a look around before I went to have a shower. Thankfully, upstairs is intact and I can just see that there are some water stains on the sofa in the sitting room and I guess the rugs will have to be replaced.’
‘Have we finished playing our catch-up game already?’ He handed her a plate, encouraged her to help herself to bread and salad, before taking up position opposite her at the kitchen table.
Jennifer thought that this was the reason she had avoided him for four years. There was just too much of him. He overwhelmed her and she was no longer on the market for being overwhelmed.
‘There’s nothing more to catch up on, James. I can’t think of anything else I could tell you about my job in Paris. If you like I could give you a description of what my apartment looks like, but I shouldn’t think you’d find that very interesting.’
‘You’ve changed.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘I barely recognise you as the girl who left here four years ago. Somewhere in my memory banks, I have an image of someone who actually used to laugh and enjoy conversing with me.’
Jennifer felt the slow burn of anger because he hadn’t changed. He was still the same arrogantly self-assured James, supremely confident of their roles in life. She laughed and blushed and he basked in her open admiration.
‘How can you expect me to laugh when you haven’t said anything funny as yet, James?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about!’ He threw his hands up in a gesture of frustration and pushed himself back from the table. ‘You’ve either had a personality change or else your job in Paris is so stressful that it’s wiped out your sense of fun. Which is it, Jen? You can be honest with me. You’ve always been open and honest with me, so tell me: have you bitten off more than you can chew with that job?’
‘I know that’s what you’d like me to say, James. That I’m hopelessly lost and can’t handle the work in Paris.’
‘That’s a ridiculous statement.’
‘Is it? If I told you that I was having a hard time and just couldn’t cope, then you could be the caring, concerned guy. You could put your arm round my shoulder and whip out a handkerchief for me to sob into! But my job is absolutely brilliant and if I wasn’t any good at it, then I would never have been promoted. I would never have risen up the ranks.’
‘Is that what you think? That I’m the sort of narrow-minded, mean-spirited guy who would be happy if you failed?’
Jennifer sighed and pushed her plate away.
‘I know you’re not mean-spirited, James, and I don’t want to argue with you.’ She stood up, began clearing the dishes, tried to think of something harmless to say that would defuse the high-voltage atmosphere that had sprung up.
‘Leave those things!’ James growled.
‘I don’t want to. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day and the less I have to do in the kitchen, tidying up stuff that could be done now, the better. And by the way, thank you very much for cooking for me. It was very nice.’
James muttered something under his breath but began helping her, drying dishes as she began washing. Jennifer felt his presence as acutely as a live charge. If she stepped too close, she would be electrocuted. Being in his presence had stripped her of her immunity to him and it frightened her, but she wasn’t going to give in to that queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She launched into a neutral conversation about their parents. She told him how much her father enjoyed Paris.
‘Because, as you know, he stopped going abroad after Mum died. He once told me that it had been their dream to travel the world and when she died, the dream died with her.’
‘Yes, the last time I came here for the weekend, he was waiting for the taxi and reading a guide book on the Louvre. He said it was top on the agenda. He’s been ticking off the sights.’
‘Really?’ Jennifer laughed and for an instant James went still. He realised that the memory of that laugh lingered at the back of his brain like the refrain from a song that never quite went away. Suddenly he wanted to know a lot more than just whether she enjoyed her job or what her apartment was like. She had always, he was ashamed to admit to himself, been a known quantity, but now he felt curiosity rip through him, leaving him bemused.
‘You’ve opened up a door for John,’ he drawled, drying the last dish and then leaning against the counter with the tea towel slung over his shoulder. ‘I think he’s realised what he’s been missing all these years. He was in a rut and your moving to Paris forced him out of it. I have a feeling that he’s going to get bored with weekends to Paris pretty soon.’
‘We don’t just stay in Paris,’ Jennifer protested. ‘We’ve been doing quite a bit of Europe.’ But she was thrilled with what James had told her. It was a brief window during which, with her defences down, they were back to that place they had left behind, that place of easy familiarity, two people with years and years of shared history.
She glanced surreptitiously at him and edged away before that easy familiarity could get a little too easy, before her hard-won independence began draining away and she found herself back to the girl in the past who used to hang onto his every word.
‘In fact, I’ve already planned the next couple of weekends. When the weather improves, we’re going to go to Prague. It’s a beautiful city. I think he’d love it.’
‘You’ve been before, have you?’
‘Once.’
‘And this from the girl who grew up in one place and never went abroad, aside from that school trip when you were fifteen. Skiing, wasn’t it?’
Yes, it certainly was. Jennifer remembered it distinctly. James’s father had just died and he had been busy trying to grapple with the demands of the company he had inherited. He hadn’t been around much and when, after the skiing trip, she had seen him for the first time after several weeks, she had regaled him with a thousand stories of all the little things the class had done. The cliques that had subdivided the groups. The quiet girl, usually in the background, who had come out of her shell because she was one of only a handful who had been any good at skiing.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And who did you go to Prague with?’ James enquired casually. ‘I’ve actually been twice. Romantic city.’ He turned to fill the kettle and found that he was keenly awaiting her response.
Jennifer frowned. She was relieved that he had his back to her. Her first instinct was to tell him that her private life was none of his business. She quickly decided that it was one thing being scrupulously polite, but if she began to actively push him away he would start asking himself why and they would be back to the subject she was most desperate to avoid: her mistimed, unfortunate pass at him. He would really be in his element then, she concluded bitterly, holding her hand and trying to as
sure her that she shouldn’t let the memory of it interfere with her life, that their friendship was so much more important than a silly non-escapade. She would be mortified.
‘Yes. It’s a very romantic city. I love everything about it. I love the architecture and that terrific feeling of a place almost suspended in time. Don’t you agree?’
‘So who did you go with? Or is it a deep, dark secret?’ He chuckled and turned round to face her, moving to hand her a mug of coffee and then sitting down and pulling one of the chairs in front of him so that he could fully relax, using the spare chair as a footrest.
‘Oh, just a guy I met over there.’
‘A guy!’
‘Patric. Patric Alexander. Just someone I met at a party a while back…’
‘Well.’ He didn’t know why he was so shocked at this. She had always been sexy, although it was fair to say that she had never realised it. She was still sexy and the only difference was that Paris had made her realise just how much.
‘French guy, is he?’ James heard the inanity of his question and his lips thinned although he was still smiling.
‘Half French. His mother’s English.’ She gulped down her coffee and stood up with a brisk smile. ‘Now, I really think it’s time for you to head back to your house, James. I have unpacking to do and I want to be up fairly early to make a list of what needs doing. Hopefully not that much. I noticed that the rug in the sitting room’s already been rolled. Thank you for that.’
‘Thank God there’s no carpet downstairs. The joys of flagstones when there’s a flood! Why didn’t this Patric guy come to help you?’
‘Because he’s in Paris.’ She moved to the door and frowned when he remained comfortably seated at the table.
‘The name doesn’t ring a bell. I’m sure your father would have mentioned him to me in passing—’
‘Why would he?’ Jennifer snapped.
‘Because I’m his friend…? How long have you been going out with this Patric guy?’
‘I really don’t want to be having this conversation with you.’
The Girl He'd Overlooked Page 3