‘I know,’ Steve agreed. ‘I was thinking we could find a way to divide the week between us. If you could spare a day at the beginning and the end of the week to bring the boys down and back again, then I’ll do the rest. I’ll fit in my study around their bedtime, and I’m sure the olds won’t mind if I shut myself away for a few hours during the afternoons. If you want to stay over either night, I’ll sleep on the sofa.’
‘You know they’re going to get on our backs about giving things another go.’ She buried her face in her knees, already picturing her mum and Isla on the wrong side of a bottle of wine and holding forth on the difficulties of marriage, telling her she needed to try a bit harder.
‘Jess.’ Steve rapped a knuckle on the screen to capture her attention. ‘Jess, look at me.’ When she lifted her eyes, he was sitting forward, his face filling almost the entire screen. ‘No matter how much I miss the boys, and God knows, I do, I haven’t had any second thoughts about this.’
‘Me either.’ A guilty flush stole up her throat, and she was glad of the shield her knees provided to conceal it. She hadn’t given getting back with Steve any thought, because she’d been too preoccupied with the possibility of being with Tristan at some point in the future. ‘I’m happy here, and so are the kids.’
‘I’m glad. You look better than you have in ages.’
‘Thanks. I was just thinking how tired you looked!’ They laughed, and she realised she’d missed this part of them. The thing they had always been and should’ve remained – friends. ‘Send me through the dates and I’ll square away a couple of days off. At least it will give the boys something to look forward to. And while you are at it, have a think about what you want to do over Christmas. I’ll be flat out here, so you need to decide if you want the boys for part of the holidays, and how you’re going to manage it. I’d like to present a united front when we see our parents before they get any more ideas.’
Finding a good time to broach the topic of having time off was taken out of her hands at breakfast the next morning when an over-excited Elijah announced to everyone he was going swimming in the park with Mummy and Daddy. Wishing she’d waited until she’d spoken to Arthur and Tristan first, Jess hastily explained the whole family was getting together for half-term. She kept it succinct, the breakfast table not being an appropriate place to discuss awkward sleeping arrangements and interfering parents. ‘It will be a couple of days, not the whole week.’
Arthur smiled at her over Elijah’s head. ‘Not a problem with me. We deliberately made your hours flexible to cover stuff like this. Besides, you’re entitled to time off, isn’t that right, Tristan?’
‘Of course.’ For all their similarity in looks, his smile was a bland mask compared to Arthur’s open countenance. ‘Jess has autonomy to manage her workload.’ He cast a cursory glance at the watch on his wrist then folded the napkin from his lap and placed it on the table. ‘Speaking of which, the lighting guy will be here soon, and I need to do a few bits of final prep. If you’ll excuse me?’ From the glances exchanged around the table, Jess wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the stiffness in his posture. Cheeks flaming, she made a fuss of wiping Isaac’s messy hands and face and knew she’d have to bite the bullet and talk to him soon. Only, how on earth was she going to find a way to let him down without making her position at the castle impossible?
Chapter 10
Tristan had been in a shit mood for ten days. The fact it was a situation entirely of his own making didn’t make it any easier to shake off. It was his own damn fault, for speaking up in the first place. If he could turn back the clock and take back that embarrassing declaration, he’d do it in a heartbeat. He’d jumped the gun and shot himself in the foot in the process. If only he’d been patient, the way he’d intended to be then there might have been a possibility of something developing naturally between him and Jess, the way they had in his siblings’ relationships. Only Tristan couldn’t keep his big mouth shut, and now Jess was running scared. Perhaps even running back into the arms of her ex. They must be reconsidering things if they were holidaying together so soon after splitting up. He swished the stick he’d picked up off the ground at a pile of leaves one of the gardening staff had painstakingly raked up, sending them scattering into the wind like the tatters of his hopes and dreams.
‘I knew you couldn’t be trusted to look after my gardens.’ Turning at the sound of his sister’s familiar voice, Tristan found his temper easing at the sight of Iggy and Will striding hand in hand towards him.
‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ He opened his arms to a hug from Iggy, then exchanged a warm handshake with Will.
‘Spot inspection,’ Iggy said. ‘And none too soon by the looks of it. I hope you haven’t made a complete hash of everything in my absence.’
If only she knew. ‘Your plans have been followed to the letter, your majesty, don’t worry. I’ve also signed off on the design for the lighting plan for the woods, it’s in my office if you want to check it out?’
‘Maybe later, after hours being cooped up in the truck, I need some fresh air.’ Come to think of it, she did look a bit pale.
‘Everything all right?’ He glanced from Iggy’s white face to a frowning Will. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Everything’s perfect thanks to Will Talbot and his super sperm,’ Iggy grumbled, rubbing a hand over her belly.
‘You were the one who said you wanted to try for a baby,’ Will said in the exasperated tones of a man who’d made the same point on more than one occasion.
‘Try, I said.’ Iggy snuggled into Will’s side, her arms curling around his waist. ‘Trust you to be an overachiever and manage to knock me up at the first attempt.’
Hugging her close, Will pressed a kiss to the top of head. ‘What can I tell you? I’m that good.’
‘Arrogant pig.’
‘Grumpy mare.’
Tristan watched the interaction play out between them with some bemusement. ‘Is this the point where I’m allowed to say congratulations?’
Loosening her hold on Will, Iggy stepped once more into Tristan’s arms for a hug. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered. ‘Happy, but absolutely terrified, and if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll pull the heads off all your action men.’
‘Your secret’s safe with me, sis,’ Tristan promised, smiling in amusement at the memory of when Iggy had done just that. It hadn’t been funny at the time, especially as she’d swapped them all with heads off her own collection of Barbies and refused to tell him what she’d done with the originals. ‘What did you do with those heads, by the way?’
‘I buried them out in the woods,’ she confessed with an unrepentant grin.
‘You always did have an evil streak.’ Slinging a free arm around Will’s shoulders, he turned them back towards the house. ‘Come on, lets break the news to the rest of the family, and wet the baby’s head.’
‘I don’t think you’re supposed to do that until it’s actually born, which won’t be until next summer,’ Will pointed out. ‘Besides which, your sister has made me promise to go dry until then.’
‘I just want you to share in as many of the delights of this pregnancy as possible, my love.’ Iggy cackled.
Tristan laughed, then gave Will a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. ‘Evil streak, what did I tell you?’
The unexpected arrival of his sister, and the good news she and Will brought with them did wonders to lift Tristan’s bad mood. Sulking about his own romantic misfortunes seemed churlish in the face of their radiant happiness. And for all of Iggy’s grumpiness, he could tell she was delighted with the prospect of expanding the family she and Will were building together. The only awkward moment was when their great aunt queried over when they’d be getting married.
‘We’re not,’ Iggy said, taking Will’s hand as they sat together on one of the sofas in the family room. ‘Don’t give me that look, either, Morgana. What if we get married and our first child is a girl? I know there’s a lot of what-ifs between here an
d there, but if neither Arthur nor Tristan have an heir, then I won’t put my children in the same position I faced because of some stupid, archaic law.’
‘You’d let the title die out, then? After four hundred years of an unbroken line? Preposterous!’ Morgana sniffed.
‘Umm, I think everyone is getting ahead of themselves, here. I can’t speak for Tristan’s plans for the future, but when the time is right, Lucie and I intend to start a family.’ Arthur intervened. ‘Whether Iggy and Will choose to marry or not, is a matter for them and no one else.’
‘Hear, hear.’ Tristan well remembered the hurt and confusion it had caused all three of them when their father had tried to explain why Arthur would be his heir and not Iggy when she’d been the first one of them born. It made no odds to Tristan either way as he’d been the runt of their little litter, but it had affected Iggy deeply – more deeply than even he’d realised until now.
Leaving her place beside Will, Iggy knelt beside their great-aunt’s chair. ‘Please, Morgana, I don’t want to fall out with you.’
‘Oh, child.’ Leaning forward, Morgana cupped her cheek. ‘You always did like to forge your own path. I’ve only ever wanted what’s best for this family, and I suppose I’m just old and set in my ways. Whatever misgivings I might have about your choice, you’ll hear no more about them, and I look forward to meeting my first great-great niece or nephew.’
‘Thank you.’ Iggy wasn’t the only one feeling a little teary, and Tristan couldn’t even blame it on his hormones. God, he was blessed to have such an amazing family. Heart full, he glanced across the room to where Jess had been sitting a moment ago, but her seat was empty.
Making his way out into the great hall, he saw her heading up the stairs. ‘Jess?’
She stopped, and turned, but remained where she was about halfway up. ‘I was just going to check on Isaac. If I’d known your sister had such personal news to share, I would’ve made myself scarce earlier. I didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘No one thought you were intruding, not for one minute.’ He walked to the foot of the staircase, wanting to go to her, to apologise for his bad mood and to find a way of bridging the gap he’d created between them.
She shrugged. ‘Well, anyway, I need to start sorting things out ready for Monday. The forecast for next week looks so changeable, I’m going to have to pack for all four seasons.’
The reminder of where she was going next week, and who’d she be spending time with stung, but Tristan refused to give in to another bout of the sulks over it. It was past time he pulled himself together. ‘I’m sure you’ll have a great time, and the boys must be excited about seeing their dad.’
‘They are. As for having a great time, I’m not holding out much hope.’
‘But I thought …’ Tristan cut himself off, what he thought was neither here nor there. It was Jess’s personal business.
She wasn’t going to let him off that easily, though. Climbing down until she was just a few steps above him, Jess stared down at him. ‘You thought what?’ Her voice was soft.
‘That you and Steve might be thinking about reconciling,’ he admitted. ‘That perhaps that was the reason you haven’t said anything to me about … you know.’
‘Oh, Tristan.’ She took one more step down until they stood eye to eye. ‘Steve and I aren’t getting back together, no matter how much our families might try and throw us together. Next week is a stupid ploy by our mothers to do exactly that, but it isn’t what either of us want.’
Guilt sliced him like a razor. He’d been pouting around the place feeling sorry for himself while she’d been dealing with all this on her own. ‘I’m sorry they’re giving you a hard time.’ He took a deep breath, then ploughed on. ‘And I’m sorry that I put you on the spot the way I did. It was stupid and selfish of me, and I wish you would just forget all about it.’ Jess tugged at her lower lip with her teeth, eyes looking anywhere else other than at his and he cursed himself for embarrassing her once more. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Go and get your packing sorted out. If I can do anything for you – walk down and collect Elijah, or whatever, you only have to ask.’
He turned to walk away, knowing he had to do what he’d asked of her and forget about it, too.
‘Tristan.’ She sounded further away, and when he glanced over his shoulder it was to see she was almost at the top of the stairs. She took another step away from him, as though she regretted calling out, before reaching out to grip the bannister. Time stretched to an almost unbearable tension as they stared at each other, neither one seeming able to move. ‘There is one thing you can do for me,’ she said, at last.
He returned to his spot at the foot of the stairs. ‘Name it.’
‘Wait for me.’
Before his stunned brain could form a response, she spun on her heel and fled up the rest of the stairs to disappear around the corner. He took three steps after her, before pulling himself up short. He’d almost blown it once – twice if you included the way he’d handled things all those years ago. Wait. That’s what he’d promised her, and that’s what she’d asked.
Fair enough, he could do that.
Chapter 11
Jess checked her watch. They’d been at Centre Parcs for six hours and thirty-seven minutes, and it was as awful as she’d anticipated it would be – and more so. From the moment she’d pulled up outside the lodge and her door had been yanked from her grasp by her mother, it had been an endless litany of comments such as, ‘Isn’t this lovely, all of us together again?’ and ‘Steve was just saying how much he’d missed you all.’ Wendy Wilson had all the subtly of a brick, and Isla wasn’t much better.
She’d tried appealing to her dad when he’d taken her keys and said he’d move the car out to one of the perimeter car parks as soon as it was unpacked. ‘Please,’ she’d begged, following along the little path. ‘Tell her she needs to stop this.’
‘I’m sorry, flower,’ her dad, said, giving her a hug. ‘You know how she is. She’s never been very good at facing reality if it doesn’t suit her.’
They’d both fallen silent, then, remembering how she’d failed to recognise the seriousness of Marcus’s addiction, choosing to believe him when he told her he was fine, turning a blind eye to the money that went missing from her purse, until it had been too late. ‘She’s going to have to get used to it,’ Jess said, when they finally broke their embrace. ‘And fast.’
Her father touched her cheek. ‘All right, love. I’ll speak to her.’
By the time she went back inside, Wendy and Isla had been through the case she’d brought with the boys’ things in it and were stripping the boys down to change them into their swimming things, and Jess hadn’t had much choice other than to go along with their plan to take the boys to the huge glass dome housing an array of swimming pools, and water slides for the bigger children. The dome amplified the noise of dozens of other family groups chatting, laughing and in some cases, arguing. Everywhere children shrieked and splashed and screamed until Jess’s head pounded and she felt a bit like screaming herself.
When they’d finally worn the boys out, they’d trooped back to the lodge for the next enforced bit of family jollity – a barbeque. Steve had managed to escape to his room to study, and Jess had taken her time over unpacking the boys’ things as they napped for an hour, the pair of them exhausted from too much excitement. Finally, running out of excuses, Jess had returned to the main living area to find hers and Steve’s dads out on the patio having a beer while Wendy and Isla prepped the meat and salads in the kitchen. ‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘You can tell that husband of yours to get his nose out a book, for a start,’ Isla said, pointing the bread knife she’d been using to cut up a crusty loaf.
God, give her strength. ‘If you want your son to do something, I suggest you go and speak to him yourself.’ When Wendy and Isla exchanged a look, Jess finally lost it. ‘Enough!’ she snapped in a tone she’d never used with her mother in all her twenty-nine years. �
��Unless you want me to wake the boys and pack them straight off back home with me, you’ll both stop this ridiculous pretence that everything is fine.’
‘What’s going on?’ Steve poked his head out of the nearby bedroom. ‘Jess?’
Frustrated to the point of tears, she swiped her arm across her face, getting angrier by the moment that she’d let them push her buttons like this. ‘I told you this was a bad idea, I told you what they’d be like.’
Coming to stand beside her, Steve folded his arms and faced the women across the kitchen. ‘Jess and I have made a decision in the best interest of our family.’ When Isla opened her mouth, he held up his hand. ‘It’s not up for debate. Now, you can either accept it and choose to have an enjoyable week with your grandchildren, or I’ll be helping Jess to pack her car.’
‘Every couple has their ups and downs.’ Jess might have known better than to believe her mum would let it go. ‘You just need to give it time.’
‘No, Mum.’
‘No, we don’t.’ Steve agreed. ‘Come on, I’ll help you with the boys.’ He walked away towards the bedroom where she’d left them napping.
‘Are you really going to do this?’ Jess stared from her mother, to Isla, and back again. ‘Are you really going to make us deprive Elijah and Isaac of the chance to spend time with you, because you’re not getting your own way?’
The glass patio door slid open behind them. ‘What’s going on?’ It was her dad, a couple of empty beer bottles laced between his fingers. ‘Wendy? I thought we talked about this …’
Jess didn’t respond, keeping her attention glued to her mother. Her stomach churned, and she could feel herself shaking a little from the adrenaline surging in her veins. She’d never stood up to her mum before, and even knowing she was in the right, the little girl inside who’d only ever wanted to please hated it. As she watched the tears forming in her mother’s eyes it was all she could do to stand her ground and not rush over to comfort her. If she gave in to those tears now, she’d never have proper control of her life. ‘What’s it going to be, Mum?’
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