Zoe listened as Don told her what the intern had done. Yes, it made sense that he would be distrustful of strangers wanting to see his plans. But she’d given her body to him, she wasn’t a stranger. He should at least have known enough about her to know he could trust her.
She lifted her head and tried to breathe. People were milling around, and the airport was busy as always. Six days ago, she’d also been here, trying to get away from Dale. But then he’d come to her rescue, and she’d spent the most amazing few days and nights with him.
Maybe a few days of bliss were all most people got. She’d never forget the magic of those few days.
But she never wanted to be hurt like this again. Ever. A body could only handle so much pain in one lifetime. She had her work, her mom, her sisters and, now and then, her dad. That would be her life. And in the bigger picture, it wasn’t such a bad one after all.
Chapter Nineteen
By the time Dale started hammering on Don’s front door, he was frantic. He and Darryn had arrived too late last night to call anyone. But since early this morning he had been trying to get hold of Zoe.
She wasn’t answering her phone. She hadn’t been at her flat or at work. Susan, the woman who worked with her, didn’t even know Zoe was back.
He’d tried Hannah’s phone, but there was no answer, and the hotel in Mauritius had said she was busy with a shoot.
Because he didn’t have Zoe’s mother’s cell number, he’d phoned every Sutherland in the book in Hermanus but couldn’t get hold of her. She either didn’t have a landline or it wasn’t listed. He’d tried to phone Caitlin, but she kept slamming the phone down.
So here he was. Don would probably kill him, but Dale was beyond caring. He had to get hold of Zoe, he had to tell her how he felt.
He was still hammering when the door flew open. A very grim Caitlin frowned at him.
“What do you want, Dale? You should be very glad Don isn’t here right now, he’s ready to wring your neck. That is, of course, after I finish with you.” She hadn’t raised her voice, but ice dripped from every word.
Dale rubbed his face. He hadn’t slept in hours and was feeling faint, but he had to make Caitlin understand.
“You don’t understand—”
“You’re right. I don’t understand why you would accuse Zoe of using you, of stealing your plans. She doesn’t need you or your bloody plans. You’re my brother-in-law and I love you, but right now I don’t like you very much, so it’s best if you just go.” She started to close the door.
“But I’m in love with her!” Dale shouted and the door stopped.
Caitlin’s face still didn’t show any emotion, but the door wasn’t closing on him any longer. He had a chance. Going for broke seemed to be the only way out of this mess.
“I know I’ve screwed up. I know I’ve hurt her. But you see, I was so dense, I didn’t know this craziness inside of me was because I’d fallen in love with her way back the first time I saw her—in my mom’s restaurant. You remember that day? She was wearing a turquoise top with this ridiculously short white skirt, and I just…” His words dried up. Mere words couldn’t convey the depth of his feeling.
A soft hand touched his, and he looked up into Caitlin’s face. She was smiling and was pulling him inside.
“You men are so dense,” she said exasperated. In the kitchen, she pushed him onto one of the barstools.
“When last did you eat?” she asked while switching the kettle on.
Dazed, Dale stared at her. Eat? He hadn’t thought about food since yesterday morning.
“Thought so. Let’s get some food into you,” Caitlin said and started pulling plates from the cupboard as she kept up a running conversation.
“What you Cavallos don’t understand is that, as far as ordinary people are concerned, you come from a different planet where money is never an issue, where people are always nice to you because you have money and, in most instances, they’re only nice because they want something from you. For that reason, you treat everyone with suspicion and, I don’t know, it’s like you’re waiting for people to do something so that you can prove you’re right. My sisters and I come from a very different background. We don’t use people.”
“I know that…”
“And,” she said, turning around to look him straight in the eye, “from what I can gather, you’ve slept with Zoe, you’ve spent time with her, which means you have to know at least the basic things about her. Like the fact that she doesn’t use people. It’s rather the other way around, she happily lets people use her. She doesn’t realize her own worth—it probably has to do with our dad walking away when we were still little, I don’t know. I had trust issues because of that, and Zoe has somehow decided it was because she wasn’t the kind of girl anyone would want to stay around for. An idiot boyfriend when she was a student confirmed her idea that she isn’t worthy of anyone’s love. She found him in bed with someone else. So you telling her all those horrible things only reinforced that belief.”
Dale stared at Caitlin, only now fully aware of how deeply he’d hurt Zoe.
“What do I do?” he finally said. “I’m prepared to grovel and do whatever else I need to do. But I have to get her back.”
“Why?” Caitlin asked.
“I told you!” he called out. “Because I love her!”
“And?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
Caitlin shook her head and pushed a plate of sandwiches in front of him. “You love her… and? What? You want to be with her? Want to what?”
Dale rubbed his face. What the hell? He’d said he loved her, what the hell was Caitlin going on about?
“What are you doing here?” Don’s voice thundered from the doorway. “Are you upsetting my wife?” he bellowed, and with long strides, he walked up to Caitlin and folded his arms around her before he fixed his blazing eyes on Dale.
Caitlin laughed and patted his cheek. “It’s fine, my darling, relax. He loves Zoe.” She smiled and kissed her husband.
“What?” Don asked while his wife was kissing him.
“He loves Zoe, that’s why he’s behaving like a lunatic.” She smiled wider. “Remember what you were like?”
Don hugged his wife to him. “That certainly explains a lot,” he said, but he was not smiling. “But that’s still no excuse for the way you’ve treated her.”
“I know, okay, I know!” Dale got up. “But I have to get her back. I don’t know how to go on without her. She’d somehow reached into my soul and rearranged my wiring. I need her to be able to function properly. But I can’t even get hold of her. I don’t know where she is!” He was sounding desperate, but at this point he didn’t care.
“She’s with our mom in Hermanus,” Caitlin said.
“Well, then I’ll go to her,” he said and turned to leave.
Caitlin grabbed his arm. “Think about what I asked you. You said you love her. But what then?”
“I have to get to her, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered and stormed out of the house.
Behind him he could hear Don roaring with laughter. There was nothing to laugh about, so what the hell was wrong with everybody?
*
It was cold. Zoe pulled her parka closer around her body. She was walking on Grotto Beach, one of the beautiful beaches of Hermanus. The sky was overcast, the sea stormy, the waves angry. It was June, the middle of winter and, typical of this time of the year, it had been raining since she’d arrived yesterday. When there was a break in the weather, she jumped at the chance to get out of her mother’s house.
Caitlin and Don had ignored her request to be taken to her flat in Green Point yesterday and had brought her straight through to her mother in Hermanus. Her usually happy and chattering mother was quiet, ran a bath for her, bundled her into bed, and had plied her with tea and soup. Zoe had finally fallen asleep.
The wounds on her hands had healed almost completely. What she could do about the wound inside
of her, though, she had no idea. There wasn’t a bandage big enough to cover the hole, and she couldn’t think of an ointment that would ease the pain.
In spite of all the horrible things he’d accused her of, she missed Dale. She missed everything about him—the way his hand would automatically find hers when they were walking, the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, the way he smiled when he saw her, the way he touched her body, the way he kissed her.
A sob escaped and she pressed her hand against her lips. Her heart had been broken into a million tiny pieces—how did one fix that?
Part of her daily job as an interior decorator was to make sure things worked out, to double-check that everything was going according to plan, that orders that had been placed were delivered—she fixed glitches, she solved problems. But she didn’t know how to fix her heart.
Her feet stopped walking. The roaring of the waves slowly receded as the one thought she’d just had exploded in her brain. Her heart was broken. A heart could only break when a person loved someone.
Zoe sobbed out a laugh and hugged herself. Of course she loved the idiot, she’d always loved him.
It started to rain again. She lifted her face up and closed her eyes, letting the rain wash her tears away while the pain inside her body increased with every cold raindrop.
She’d always known he’d walk away. It was going to happen sooner or later. And maybe it was better that it was sooner. And maybe, someday, after the hole in her insides had closed up, she was going to meet a wonderful man. One who loved her for who she was, one who understood her soul, one… how did her mother put it again? One whose smiles began with her.
She grimaced. And pigs will fly. Yeah, right. Fed up with herself, she stomped back to her car. If Dale didn’t want her, fine. She should have told him about asking for the plans, but if he’d told her about the bloody intern, she’d have understood and maybe they could have worked something out. But the fact was, he hadn’t spoken to her about anything of importance, really.
And he obviously hadn’t bothered to get to know her at all, otherwise he would not have accused her of all the things he had. Which meant he was the idiot.
Chapter Twenty
Dale lifted his hand to knock on the front door of Zoe’s mother’s house in Hermanus. From here he had a beautiful view of Walker Bay. The greyness of the clouds was picked up by the water, turning the sea into a dark mass that seemed to go on forever. It echoed what was going on inside of him.
Without Zoe there was no colour in his life. Why had it taken him so long to realize that?
The door opened before his knuckles could connect with the panel.
“Hello, Dale,” Zoe’s mother said, the smile he was used to seeing on her face gone for the moment.
He opened his mouth to start his apology, but she pinned him down with a look that made him forget his words. For minutes she stared into his face. And then, miraculously, her smile appeared and she held out a hand to him.
“Now I see. You love her?” she asked simply.
Relieved, Dale nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“Come in,” she said and opened the door wider. “You remember the way?”
Dale nodded and walked down the short corridor to the big lounge overlooking the ocean.
“You look as if you could do with some tea. Or do you prefer something stronger?”
Dale turned back to her, shaking his head. “I don’t want anything, I just want… Zoe.”
She smiled. “Of course you do. She’ll be back soon, she went for a walk. Please sit.”
Dale sat down but couldn’t relax. He had to explain. “I’ve hurt Zoe. I’ve said terrible things to her and—”
“Are you here to apologize or are you here to tell her how you feel about her?”
“Both,” Dale said.
“I’ve told you before that the man who wants Zoe will have to make her understand how deeply he loves her. She will have to believe the guy is in it for the long haul.”
“I love her, I do.” Dale said, frowning. “But other than telling her that, I’m not sure what I can do. It’s up to her whether she believes me.”
“If it was any other woman, I would’ve agreed with you. But we’re talking about Zoe. Their dad left when they were little. It affected all three of my girls in various ways. Caitlin had trust issues, which she had to sort out before she could trust Don, and Zoe doesn’t believe she’s worthy of anyone’s love.”
“So, what do I do?” he asked. “Please tell me, because I need her in my life. Permanently.”
Her smile lit up the whole room and her eyes glittered. “This is why I write love stories.” She sniffled. “You know what to do, I’m so glad and, of course, you have my blessing.”
Dale frowned, not quite sure why he needed her blessing.
“I hear her footsteps,” Zoe’s mother said and got up.
With his heart nearly jumping out of his chest, Dale slowly got to his feet. He made huge deals every day of his life, he took risks, he negotiated and bargained with hardcore businessmen, but he had always been sure of himself, sure about what he was putting on the table. But today, his love for Zoe was the item on the agenda, his heart the currency, and he wasn’t sure about his bargaining powers at all.
Zoe was nearly at the gate before she noticed the car. Dale’s car. Her heart skidded to a halt before it began beating to an erratic rhythm. She combed her fingers through her hair. She was a mess. Her eyes were probably red-rimmed, she was wearing an old pair of jeans and an ancient jersey underneath her parka.
What the hell. He’d probably thought up some more nasty things to say to her, so what she looked like was not important.
She hung the parka on the hook near the front door and slowly walked towards the lounge.
Both her mother and Dale were standing, her mother was smiling broadly. Dale looked as if someone had punched him in the gut. Hard.
Good.
“Zoe, guess who came looking for you,” her mother said and waved her in. “I’m making tea. Dale wants to talk to you.” She walked towards the kitchen. Just before she walked through the door, she made big eyes at Zoe behind Dale’s back.
Zoe ignored her. Not even her romance-loving mother could do anything to make Zoe feel better at the moment.
“What do you want, Dale?” she asked and focused on the top button of his shirt rather than his eyes.
“Zoe, I—” he began and came closer.
She held out a hand. “Stay where you are. You can say what you came to say from over there.”
Dale stopped. “I’m sorry about the things I’ve accused you of. You were right—I was freaked out by what was happening between us and I used the first excuse to push you away. But—”
“Dale, save it. Apology accepted. We had a fling or whatever you want to call it. It’s over. And I’m actually glad I’m not under contract with you anymore, it will give me more time for the other projects we’re working on. We don’t have to see one another too often. Maybe the odd Christmas, but I’m sure we could handle that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m cold, I want to take a shower. Good day,” she said and turned to leave.
*
Dumbfounded, Dale stared at Zoe’s retreating back.
What the hell? With two long strides, he reached her and turned her around to face him. “I am not leaving before I’ve said what I’ve come here to say.”
Zoe looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You’ve apologized, what more do you want to say?”
“I love you,” he blurted out. “That’s what I’ve come here to say. I. Love. You.” He said each of the words slowly, waiting for her to swallow, to blink, to show some sort of response.
Zoe cocked her head. “Oh, you love me? So now what? You want a few more romps in bed?” She sighed. “Look, Dale, sooner or later you’re going to find another excuse not to be with me. It happens. Men don’t stick around. I know that. So, thank you, but no thanks.” She turned around and stormed out of the room.
<
br /> Bewildered, Dale stared after her. What the bloody hell?
Zoe’s mother opened the kitchen door. “Did you tell her?”
“Yes, I told her, but she’s stormed away,” he said and put his hands on his hips.
An emptiness filled his heart. She obviously didn’t feel the same way. Somehow he’d never factored that possibility into the whole thing.
“What exactly did you say to her?” Zoe’s mother asked and slowly came closer.
“That I love her. I said the words. But she clearly doesn’t feel the same way,” he muttered and looked around for his car keys. “I’m sorry that I’ve bothered you.”
Zoe’s mother sighed dramatically. “Oh, you men!” she called out, exasperated. “Let me walk you out.”
Dale turned and walked out of the room, out of the house, out of Zoe’s life. This was it.
“I thought you knew what you had to tell her,” Zoe’s mother said, and he stopped halfway down the stairs.
“What more could I say?” he asked, fed up, hurt and upset.
“Did you tell her you want her in your life? Permanently?”
“I’ve told her I love her,” he called out, his frustration boiling over. “Surely that implies the rest!”
Zoe’s mother smiled and patted his shoulder. “You’ll figure out what to do, but”—she sighed and smiled—“because you’re a man, it’s probably going to take you a while, and in the meantime, my Zoe is hurting. I’m going to put my nose where it doesn’t belong and will spell out for you what needs to be done. And I’ll talk to your mother.”
“My mother?” Dale asked, flabbergasted. “What does she have to do with anything?”
“Everything, of course! This is what you have to do, and I know just the place where it all should happen,” Zoe’s mother said enthusiastically and began explaining.
*
An Impossible Attraction Page 13
