by Zara Cox
Enough!
My palms stung with the power of my applause, dragging me back to the present.
Back to Savvie.
A heavy dose of angst drained away as I watched her smile.
Someone shoved a hideously large bouquet of flowers in her hands, temporarily obscuring her face from me. Probably her investors, who must be ecstatic at how the collection had been received.
Or...the man her gaze slid to as she turned to leave the catwalk.
Even before I caught a full view of him, I knew.
Dan.
My leaden hands dropped to my sides.
Had she invited him here? Would she really do that?
‘Jesus, Bryce. You look like you’ve seen Satan himself.’
The stark observation shattered my thoughts, reminded me of another situation I needed to deal with.
Graciela.
I swallowed the sour taste in my mouth and looked at my sister.
Wary eyes returned my stare. ‘If you expect me to apologise for turning up unannounced, forget it.’
But beneath the bravado there was something else. A yearning for a connection that resonated inside me. ‘Gracie—’
‘We don’t need to talk if you don’t want to. Just...let me be here. Please?’ The request was soft, vulnerable in a way that made me feel like a heel.
My head jerked in a nod and the sensation of drifting without a life jacket swelled larger.
I needed to talk to Savvie.
Needed to see her. Touch her. The growing suspicion that this...thing inside wouldn’t fix itself without her spiked hard.
‘I need a drink,’ Graciela announced.
About to tell her to entertain herself while I tracked down Savvie, I froze, watching in disbelief as Dan mounted the stage and disappeared behind the curtain.
The fury I expected to feel was shockingly absent. Instead raw fear clawed at my insides, that paralysing helplessness I’d felt watching her marry that bastard returning full force.
I took a step, then froze again as Savvie emerged, minus Dan, from behind the curtain.
She was a vision in gold. The cocktail dress she’d changed into had a plunging neckline, displaying her amazing cleavage and left her dark bronze shoulders bare, ending just above her knee to showcase her spectacular legs. The headdress was gone and her mane was free and a little wild, just the way I liked it.
God, everything about her was just the way I liked her...but what right did I have to her? The need to find out propelled me across the room to her. Perhaps something in my face alerted her to my mood. She stopped mid-conversation, excused herself and turned to me.
‘Bryce—’
‘What the hell is he doing here?’
That she knew who I meant further disgruntled. ‘Ignore him. He’s not important.’
‘Are you sure?’
Her gaze sharpened, grew brighter with anger. And disappointment. As if I had something to be ashamed of. ‘I didn’t invite him here, Bryce. He’s dating one of my models. He’s her plus-one.’
Relief drained out of me but swiftly on its heels followed shame at how quickly I’d needed to hear that. Would it always be like this?
‘That’s our problem, isn’t it?’
My stomach dropped when I realised the words hadn’t come from my lips or even my psyche but from Savvie.
‘What?’
‘You’re never going to trust me, are you, Bryce? Because of your parents? Because of that letter you still won’t talk about?’
I opened my mouth to immediately deny that. But the appropriate words never emerged. ‘We need to talk.’
Her eyes darkened to almost black, unmissable pain filling the depths. The churning vortex of dismay and uncertainty widened inside me as she shook her head. ‘I... I can’t. I’m busy. Anyway, I think it’s pointless.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘This isn’t about Dan and we both know it. It’s about you not trusting what’s right in front of you because you think it’s going to be snatched away at any moment. I can’t change that for you, Bryce. You have to find your own way to change it.’
I wanted to rage at the harsh judgement but deep inside I tasted the truth of it. Wasn’t Dan’s presence here some sort of twisted sign that I was deluding myself into thinking this would work? When the only real things I’d made work for me were the towers I’d built?
The only meaningful relationship I’d thought I’d had had been with Savvie, and it turned out I’d been abysmal at it. She hadn’t believed the foundations of our friendship were strong enough to sustain revelations of her issues. Truth was, I still didn’t...
‘Bryce?’ I caught the faintest tremble in her voice and hated it because I knew it was my fault.
‘Yeah?’
‘Tell me what you’re thinking?’ Wary suspicion tinged the words. As if she knew my turmoil. Knew what was coming even before I did.
And that shaking inside? Yeah, my solid ground was gone, the foundation of belief that I could in any way be the person she needed eroded to nothing. I was a Mortimer. Fruitful in making money and bankrupt everywhere else.
Excerpts of my mother’s letter flashed like neon ticker tape in my mind.
Bryce,
I was going to leave this until you were older but...well, you’ll just write me another letter, won’t you? And, frankly, you need to know a few home truths.
You’re a Mortimer. Mortimers are only good for one thing: making or spending money. Emotional entanglements are superfluous and will only lead to disappointment.
Cut it out of your life now, before you become a disappointment to the family name. Accept that in this you can’t have it all.
I’m never coming back. Neither is your father. The family name will buy you all the regard you need. Don’t bother looking for it some other way.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t offer emotional guarantees you can’t deliver on. You only need to take a look at this family to see we’re fruitful in one area only. Let that be your lesson.
We’ve done our duty. Stop dreaming and do yours.
Cold hard truth hit me. ‘I can’t do this.’
She exhaled shakily. ‘Do what?’
‘Go on this...path with you. I can’t be another bastard who lets you down.’
‘Then don’t. It’s pretty simple, Bryce.’
I laughed. ‘For you maybe. I don’t make guarantees without solid backup.’
Despite the suspicious glint of tears, her chin went up, her eyes challenging me. ‘And you can’t guarantee this so, what, you’re going to run?’
Resentment welled. ‘We agreed—’
‘I don’t give a crap what we agreed. Truth or dare,’ she whispered.
Trust her to get it right for the first time in her life. The first time I didn’t want to play. I remained silent.
‘You always go for dare, right, Bryce? Well, I’m daring you, right here and now to pick us. To stay and give this a chance.’
As if her presence here were ordained by some cosmic entity, I caught Graciela from the corner of my eye. Another reminder of my emotional bankruptcy.
I shook my head. ‘There’s a project in Hong Kong Damian wants me to take over.’ I’d thought Damian’s email about a rare opportunity to secure prime land in Hong Kong for our next project couldn’t have come at a worse time and I’d been sorely tempted to let it go before I’d remembered that nothing about what Savvie and I were doing was guaranteed to last.
She inhaled a stunned breath. ‘So you’re leaving me? Again?’
The soft, anguished accusation slashed me wide open. But it was better this way. Wasn’t it? ‘Yes.’
This time the tears rose. ‘Then go.’
I watched her walk away while the earth beneath my feet shook.
CHAPTER TEN
&
nbsp; Savvie
THE FUMES OF pride and sheer stubbornness kept me going through two hours of smiling, mingling with guests and talking to fashion bloggers about the new collection when all I wanted to do was curl into the foetal position and bawl my eyes out.
It also kept me from losing my shit every time Dan smirked at me from across the room. He’d managed to corner me for half a minute backstage and attempted to land a few mind-fucking blows but they’d bounced off me. And while the confirmation that he no longer had an emotional hold on me made me glad, he represented a long, deeply regrettable stretch of a life spent without Bryce.
The man I loved.
The man who’d walked away from me. Again.
I’d expected him to leave but he was still here, probably because he didn’t want to be alone with his sister.
No longer my problem.
The thought hurt more than I anticipated, giving me a glimpse of the hellish heartache facing me, especially when I caught his hazel eyes on me.
Eventually, the investors left, happy that the launch had been a success and initial orders for the collection were already surpassing expectations.
Every single thing had gone off without a hitch. The icing on the cake would’ve been Bryce.
Anguish raked through me, overwhelming me with a rush of tears.
I needed to get out of here.
About to do just that, I caught a glimpse of Graciela. As much as I wanted to put all things Mortimer behind me as quickly as possible, I couldn’t leave without some acknowledgement of her presence. Heart lurching, I approached where she stood alone near the bar.
But she wasn’t alone. At the last moment, I saw Bryce, half concealed by a stage prop.
Walk away...
‘Tell me what was in your letter,’ Graciela demanded.
I froze.
‘You go first,’ Bryce responded.
Several expressions passed over Graciela’s face before her lips set in a mutinous line and she looked away from him.
‘Yeah, I thought so. What good will rehashing all of it do, Gracie?’
Bleakness turned her eyes dark. ‘I don’t know but I feel I have to...try.’
He said nothing. After a moment, she swallowed. ‘Do you think we’ll ever be able to get past it?’
I held my breath, realising the answer was as important to me as it was to Graciela.
‘For like...half a second, I thought I would. Not any more.’
His sister’s gaze probed his for several heartbeats. Then she sighed. ‘You think you can ever forgive me...for my monumental stupidity?’ Her voice was ravaged with pain.
He didn’t answer for the longest time. Then he grabbed her and pulled her into a bear hug. For a moment she remained stiff and unyielding. Then, with a hoarse little sob, she wrapped her arms around his waist.
‘It wasn’t stupid but I would’ve preferred to have lived in blissful ignorance for a while longer. Or for ever, actually. Because, really, who the bloody hell wants to find out they don’t have what it takes to sustain a relationship, never mind a family, no matter how accurate that assessment turns out to be?’
Graciela pulled away from him. ‘You don’t really believe that, do you? That we’re that fucked up?’ Despair wove through her voice.
Bryce stared down at her with hard sympathy. ‘I think the evidence speaks for itself, don’t you?’
‘Then what are you doing here with Savvie?’ she pressed.
Again my heart caught as I listened, knowing I needed to walk away.
‘We had unfinished business.’
‘Had? But I thought—’
His harsh laugh stopped her. ‘Yeah, that’s the thing with Savvie. She lures you into believing unrealistic fantasies. Which is decidedly the anti-Mortimer way, as we well know.’
‘I think you’re wrong, Bryce—’
‘Enough, Gracie. It’s over. Let it go.’
‘Okay. Can you drive me to my hotel?’ Graciela asked.
I waited till they were gone, then stumbled away, Bryce’s words lacerating my heart into tiny, useless shreds.
Minutes later, I slipped away from the after-party knowing I had to get away before I disgraced myself by breaking down.
Within the hour, my bag was packed and I was heading for the airport. The store wasn’t set to officially open to the public for another week. And since the day-to-day running of every Voluttuoso store was entrusted to an expert management team, I could take a week. Or a month.
But even as I hurried to the check-in desk and booked a first-class seat to Bali, I knew I would need much, much longer to even attempt to piece together my shattered heart.
* * *
One week.
The resort was perfect, the staff attentive without being intrusive.
The setting was paradise itself.
And yet I couldn’t have been more miserable if I’d tried.
I told myself it was the abrupt standstill after going full throttle for months making time drag. But I was deluding myself. Each heartbeat sounded like a death knell, each forced meal a chore I would gladly have given up if I could.
The last time I’d felt like this was the first day of my honeymoon after I’d married the wrong man. Bora Bora had felt like hell, the look in Bryce’s eyes as I’d walked down the aisle on the arm of another man a constant reminder that I’d taken the wrong turn.
But this time I hadn’t. This time I knew what I wanted.
Bryce. Always.
I’d dared him to stay. And he’d gone.
Hadn’t he warned me right from the start and then over and over again that we were different people?
I should’ve listened.
And what...? Not fallen in love with him? When I’d been in love with him since I was sixteen years old? When that love burned brighter despite the possibility that the only time I would come close to him again was through his business?
Harsh hot tears prickled my eyes, sent me off the lounger I’d plonked myself on in the hope that the sun would burn away some of my unhappiness.
My beachfront chalet was private enough to guarantee I wouldn’t be disturbed and open enough to ensure I could stroll into the sea in two dozen lazy steps. The temptation to do just that, to keep swimming until I lost myself in the ocean, produced even more tears.
God, I was hopeless.
My feet crashed into the waves and with relief I dived into the crystal blue waters. I swam until exhaustion deadened my arms, then reluctantly returned to the chalet.
The first prickles of awareness tingled through me two minutes into my open-air shower on the front porch. I ignored it, wrapped my sarong over my naked body and returned to my lounger, determined to find a few minutes of peace in the pages of my novel.
He was standing in the gap between the hedge that formed the natural barrier between my chalet and the beach. His broad back to me, he stared at the waves crashing onto shore while I stared, slack-jawed, at him.
Every cell in my body had been dying to see Bryce again but now he was here...now he was a solid, breathing form in front of me, my brain scrambled to nothing.
He turned around.
We stared at each other in silence.
Then he prowled forward, lowered himself into the lounger next to mine and remained silent for the next five minutes. While my heart thundered as if it were preparing for a one-hundred-metre sprint.
Every inch of my body tingled and burned as if my frozen limbs were coming back to life.
After an eternity he fixed me with fierce hazel eyes. ‘I think there should be a law against this extreme level of emotional devastation that haunts you when you walk away from someone you care about. Don’t you think?’
My heart dropped into my stomach. ‘I don’t agree. The pain is there for a reason. What are you doing he
re, Bryce?’ I blurted.
He swallowed. When he exhaled it wasn’t quite steady. ‘You owe me a dare.’
‘That’s why you’re here? For sex? Forgive me if I’m wrong but aren’t we in the past? As in “we had unfinished business”?’
He paled, then squeezed his eyes shut for a minute. ‘Gracie? Or did you overhear?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes. No!’ He stopped, raked a hand down his face. ‘Christ, I don’t even know any more.’ He stared down at the hands hanging loosely between his knees. ‘You know why I used the past tense?’ The question was ragged with pain.
Numbly, I shook my head.
‘Because it was my way of bracing myself against exactly this...helplessness that I wouldn’t be enough for you. I know you didn’t invite your ex but I saw your reaction to his presence.’
Before I could ask what he meant, he continued, ‘I may have been pissed when you chose to go to Paris but I loved how you took control of your life, loved watching you battle and grow out of your insecurities. Watching you take charge of your femininity, letting it empower you, was such a turn-on. And then I watched you hand all that incredibleness to that arsehole. And you know the worst thing? I know now that letting you get away was all my fault. I wanted to punch his lights out. He managed to win my best friend away from me because I believed I didn’t have what it took. Because I wasn’t emotionally equipped to give you what you needed.’
I swallowed the knot in my throat before I could speak. ‘Because of my own shortcomings I talked myself into making the wrong choice. And when it was over, I guess...a part of me was ashamed for ruining our friendship. And the part of me that wanted...more was scared you’d see me as spoiled goods.’
His jaw rippled. ‘Fucking hell, Savvie. I’d never think of you like that.’
The power behind his words sent more prickles to my eyes. Before I could snatch in a breath he gripped me tighter.
‘Truth or dare?’
My heart lurched. ‘Truth. Always.’
His throat worked. ‘Am I still worth taking a different path with, Savvie?’
‘Yes,’ I answered with every ounce of love in my body.
Hazel eyes burned into mine. ‘For how long?’ he fired back.
