by Annie O'Neil
‘Can you be honest with me, Lucas?’ The question was out before she could stop it. ‘I need to know why you really came back. I know Henry rang you, but with your contacts you could’ve surely found someone else to fill in for us here these couple of months.’
Lucas turned in his seat and looked at her. ‘I think we both know I’m six years late, Ellie.’
‘For what?’ she pressed. ‘Winning my love? Winning Maverick’s? That took about five seconds. What is it you’re really after, Lucas? Absolution? A clear conscience? It sure as hell isn’t me.’
She saw Lucas give his knees a scrub then balled his hands into fists. Good. He was as frustrated as she was.
‘Can we maybe have this talk somewhere stationary?’
‘What?’ She glared at him. ‘Now my driving’s not good enough for you either?’ She swerved to miss a pothole, silently acquiescing that perhaps he had a point.
‘Do we have any more calls to make?’
She threw him a guilty look. ‘No. I just...’ She stopped herself when her voice cracked then began again. ‘I found Viola’s story upsetting.’
‘Not inspiring?’
She pulled the car off into a little recess in the hedge, twisted her leg round so she was facing him and said, ‘Seriously? You think I would find a story about meeting the love of your life only to have him dump you at the first hurdle inspiring?’
‘No.’ Lucas reached out and swept some of her hair away from her face. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Lucas,’ Ellie said, swiping his hand away. ‘Why. Are. You. Here?’
He opened his mouth and closed it for a minute. Annoyingly, he looked completely adorable. All lost for words and clearly wanting to say the right thing but not knowing how. If this were seven years ago, she would’ve reached out, held his face in her hands, pulled him to her and kissed him.
But it wasn’t then. It was now. Six years after he’d taken back his proposal. She had a child to look after. Her own heart to protect. And a veterinary clinic to run.
‘Speak, man, or I am quite happy to find however many locums it takes to replace you and hand you your walking papers.’
‘No.’ Lucas shook his head solidly, the passion in his voice matching hers. ‘Not now that I’ve met Mav.’
A chill ran down Ellie’s spine. ‘You are not taking him from me.’
‘No.’ Lucas said. ‘But I— Can we walk and talk?’
She nodded. ‘There’s a footpath down here.’
He gave the thick hedge she’d parked the van alongside a dubious look.
‘There’s a way through to a lovely little river. I bring Esmerelda down here sometimes with Mav.’
‘It’s not where you bring people to disappear them?’
‘It’s where I go for picnics,’ she said dryly as she got out of the car and grabbed her backpack from behind her seat. ‘C’mon. I’ve got sandwiches. You want to walk and talk? Follow me.’
They set off at a brisk pace under the cool canopy of trees, Ellie doing her best to stay a step ahead of Lucas. Every emotion under the sun was zipping through her bloodstream right now, but the number one thing she didn’t want to do was cry. Neither did she want to shout about her son’s future. He was hers. Yes, Lucas had a right to have access to him. It was only fair to Mav, but...she’d go down fighting if Lucas suddenly slapped a custody agreement in front of her.
All of which threw her hackles and her suspicions straight back up into the stratosphere. She wheeled on him. ‘Are you sure you didn’t know about Maverick before you came down?’
‘Absolutely. Henry didn’t say a word. He just said you were in a pickle because of Drew’s accident.’
‘A pickle?’ Ellie laughed. ‘He called nearly losing my best friend and business partner to a car accident a pickle?’
‘Henry was always the master of understatement.’
She threw up her hands. ‘Looks like there’s yet another person I didn’t know as well as I thought I did.’ She tipped her head up to the sky and squeezed her eyes shut tight. No. She was not this person. She was not an embittered, angry person. She’d worked so hard to put the past in the past. This was a hiccough. An emotionally charged, life-changing hiccough. She looked at Lucas determined not to let her emotions get the better of her. Stomping away in a huff did not pay dividends. ‘What else did he say?’ Ellie pointed Lucas towards the path that led to the river, a little too aware of their arms brushing each time the higgledy-piggledy path brought them closer together.
‘He said you had an amazing facility. That I should take inspiration from you.’
‘What? You’ve got all of the bells and whistles at your disposal in London.’
‘Not any more.’
‘What?’
Lucas wiped his hands together. ‘That chapter in my life is done and dusted.’
‘Right. At the ripe age of thirty-five you’ve finished with Uber-Vet for ever. What happens when you realise that you miss the celeb lifestyle and change your mind, beg them to take you back?’
‘Seriously, Ells—Ellie.’ He corrected with one of those goofy oops smiles of his. ‘Henry’s taken over the show permanently.’
It still wasn’t an answer.
‘Lucas!’ She stomped her foot. ‘Will you please tell me why, of all the veterinary clinics in the world, you had to come help out at mine?’
‘Because I needed you to know how awful I felt about what had happened. Make peace with you. Can we do that? Try to make things right between us?’
* * *
Ellie stared at him solidly, her expression still, then after what felt like ages she said, ‘You should know by now not to say things you don’t mean.’
Lucas meant it. That had always been his intention in coming down here. What had shocked him were the words he hadn’t said. I still love you.
They reverberated around his heart as if the words had been inscribed there.
He looked deep into Ellie’s eyes, wondering if she was feeling the same thing. A long-lost feeling that could be revitalised. Renewed.
I still love you.
The words gained traction as his heart pounded the words out in a syncopated cadence.
I still love you.
He couldn’t say them. Not yet anyway.
Viola’s words rang in his head. Carpe diem. Fine. He’d do something about it. But step by step. No way was he going to scare her away. Not with a relationship with his son on the line. ‘I mean it, Ells.’ Lucas pressed his fists to his heart. ‘Just because things turned out the way they did, it never meant I stopped caring about you. Splitting up hurt me every bit as much—’
‘Oh, hold on a minute, Lucas. Splitting up with me served you and you only, so let’s ratchet back the sanctimonious I was doing this for both of us attitude, shall we?’ Ellie distractedly pulled her hair up into a top knot, then tugged it down, then tangled it up again until finally leaving it to its own devices as she sat down on a tree stump by the edge of the river.
Okay. Fair enough. But she was still here. Still listening.
Lucas sat next to her, channelling his energies into digging deep into his soul to find the best solution. He loved her. Now he needed to find out what the hell to do with it. Stuff it back in the box where he’d put it all those years ago? Or rebuild the trust he’d so obviously broken by taking matters into his own hands.
Tension buzzed between them like high-tensile electricity.
‘I— There were many things I wish I’d done better.’
She shot him a sharp wounded look.
‘I know, I know. It’s a cheap way of explaining myself, but...’ He tried to lay out the facts so she could understand. ‘After I proposed, I called my family to tell them the good news.’
A wary look shadowed her eyes.
‘It turned out things at home were very compli
cated. Nothing to do with you. They all love you and think you’re brilliant, but...they’d been waiting until I finished vet school to tell me just how bad things were.’
Her shoulders dropped a notch. ‘What happened?’
‘Jonty went AWOL, for one.’
‘What? He just disappeared?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘But I thought he was meant to take over your father’s practice so you could come to Cornwall?’
Lucas gave her a wry smile. Families. They were complicated. And Lucas’s was no different.
‘Turns out, as the deadline approached, Jonty’s drinking increased. So had his time at the races.’
Ellie raised her eyebrows. She knew too much champagne and access to horseracing wasn’t a good combo for Jonty. It was one of the reasons it had been agreed Jonty would work with his father. So he could be reined in, so to speak.
‘Long story short,’ Lucas continued, ‘a lifetime of trying to become the man our father wanted Jonty to be landed him in rehab. The clinic hadn’t been doing well the more Dad’s Parkinson’s progressed, but he’d been too damn proud to tell anyone until Jonty upped and left and I called to tell him I was moving to Cornwall.’
‘But didn’t he know? We’d talked about it for ages.’
‘Course he did. I guess he’d just been hoping Jonty’s wild phase would come to an end, but it was one of those awful convergences of bad timing, bad debt and poor health. It was going to take an epic amount of energy to turn things round at my dad’s clinic. Years. I didn’t know what else to do. There was no way I was going to drag you down with me. Believe me, I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing.’
A wash of compassion softened Ellie’s features as she inspected the new landscape of her memories. For the first time since he’d come down he felt a glimmer of hope that they could be like they had once been. Best friends, confidants, lovers. They’d known everything about each other. He’d thought they always would. And then life had intervened.
‘Lucas...’ Ellie’s voice was cautious, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to go down this road but was going to make herself, if only to find peace. ‘One of the things I always admired about you was your sense of honour. It was why it shook me to the core when you split up with me.’
‘I did what I did because I believed it was honourable. If there had been any other way...’ He brushed a bit of her hair behind her ear then ran his finger down her sweet face again. ‘It was such an incredibly complicated, unhappy time for my family.’
‘So...’ Her eyes connected with his with a primeval intensity. As if she could actually see directly into his heart. ‘In your weird, backwards way you were protecting me by breaking things off?’
He nodded. That had been exactly it.
The softness in her features hardened again. ‘You should’ve trusted me to stand by you.’
He snorted. ‘What? Burden you with debt and put years between you and the dream of opening the Dolphin Cove Clinic? No way. I would never have done that. Not to you or Drew.’
‘Drew would’ve understood.’
He gave his jaw a scrub. Yeah. Drew probably would have. He’d not even bothered asking. It had just seemed too much to ask of a friend.
Ellie poked his thigh. ‘And I’d just promised to marry you. To stick with you. Through everything.’
Lucas felt his ribcage expand and contract. The emotional weight of all he’d put her through hit him like a wrecking ball. Little wonder she’d kept Maverick a secret. He didn’t know if he would’ve trusted him to come through for her either. Not after what he’d put her through.
‘Do you think there’s a chance we could start over? As friends...for Mav?’
She blew out a slow breath. ‘I don’t know, Lucas. I’m not sure I can go back to the way things were.’
‘I disagree.’ He softened his tone. ‘I know it’ll take work. I know it’ll take time. But I believe we can fix this, Ellie. What we had was...it was out of this world. And something’s telling me you feel it, too.’
She lifted her hands up. ‘Whoa, there, sonny boy. Having you here is a reminder of the one time in my entire life when I felt small, insignificant. You made me feel worthless and I promised myself I would never, ever feel that way again.’
‘I don’t want you to feel that way again.’ He meant it with every fibre of his being.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Maybe. There are six years of resenting you for not believing in me that I need to sort out.’ She lifted up a hand so she could explain herself. ‘Look. I don’t want to be angry at you. I don’t want to hate you. I don’t want to resent you. I want Maverick to have a dad.’ Her serious expression lit up with a gentle smile. ‘And even though you’re pretty new at it, you seem to be catching onto this whole dad thing pretty well.’
Lucas knew now was not the time to accept kudos. He nodded for her to continue.
‘Now that I understand why you did what you did a bit more, I can let a lot of that pent-up grr out.’ She made another grr and feigned watching it disappear down the lane.
‘It’s a big ask.’ Obviously. ‘Asking you to forgive me.’
‘I want to forgive you. I... I do.’ She gave him a look he couldn’t read. ‘You know what my mum says about things like this.’
He nodded, smiling as she threw some air quotes up and said, ‘There’s no point carrying around anger or defensiveness when gravity is already against you.’ She picked up a stick and began to trace a swirl into the earth. ‘Rotten things happen. Quite a few epically rotten things happened to you. But you should’ve believed that as your fiancée, as your wife, I would’ve wanted nothing more than to be there, by your side, supporting you, loving you. For that alone I... I’m going to struggle, Lucas. I will try to be friends. Honestly, I will, but...sorry. Forgiveness isn’t going to come easily to me.’ When she met his eyes, he saw all he needed to know. She still loved him. And that’s why the hurt ran so deep.
He wanted to push it. Press her to admit she felt that same heated frisson whenever their hands brushed. Notice how charged the atmosphere between them was when their eyes met and the space between them took on a magnetic quality. They were meant for one another. Always had been. He knew it in his marrow. She did too. But she was protecting herself. She was being cautious.
‘Friends?’ he said, extending a hand.
Friends,’ she repeated sadly.
The moment her hand touched his... With work and commitment, one day, somehow, everything would be all right again, and they could finally be a family.
CHAPTER SIX
‘LUC!’ ELLIE KNOCKED on the guest flat door. ‘You in there?’
No answer.
She glanced out at the bay beyond the flat’s balcony. The summer sun was just dipping below the horizon, the sea sparkling like diamonds. A perfect night for a romantic stroll...
Er... No, it wasn’t. It was a perfect night to perform surgery on a Labrador retriever who could very likely die if someone didn’t answer his blinking door soon!
‘Lucas?’ She tried again, tapping her foot impatiently. Maybe he was out. Urgh. Not tonight! She needed him. She glanced at her watch then out at the clinic car park. They’d be arriving any minute now.
She blinked back some frustrated tears. She wasn’t sad. Or mad. She was tired, mostly. The last few months of trying to run everything with Drew in hospital had been wearing. Just having him back in Dolphin Cove eased her stress. Saying that, with the amount of rehab he was still facing? The truth of the matter was Drew was still several weeks away from consulting let alone operating. A hard-hitting reminder that the clinic ran much better with two vets and even more smoothly with three.
She knocked again. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Answer the bloody door!
Maybe he’d gone into the village to visit Drew. When he could prise him out of the house, that w
as. Drew had definitely become a bit of a hermit. She reeled back through the evening. Nope. Not likely. She’d been down at the Pelican an hour ago to give Mav a goodnight kiss before he went upstairs for Grandma and Grandpa night, a summertime special. She’d not seen Lucas or Drew and Drew would have definitely pulled her aside for an update on the ‘Lucas situation’.
Meaning had she decided to fall in love with him again? Drew thought she would. Ellie insisted she wouldn’t. Out loud anyway. They’d achieved a perfectly civilised working relationship and she made sure not to be too protective when it came to the time he wanted to spend with Mav. Ignoring the way her heart pounded when she saw the two of them together or the way her body responded whenever his hands brushed against hers was rather tricky but...she was made of stern stuff. She had to stay strong. Resistant to the Lucas Effect.
She banged on the door again. ‘Lucas!’ She was going to have to do this on her own if he didn’t answer in thirty seconds.
She racked her mind. Where could he be? Apart from the pub and a couple of small restaurants, there wasn’t really anywhere else to go in Dolphin Cove. Not at this hour anyway. He’d said something about running some errands for Drew a couple of days back. But errands at nine o’clock at night?
Her heart lurched up into her throat.
He wouldn’t...no, he wouldn’t be out on a date, would he? Not that she cared. He could do what he liked with his life as long as he didn’t hurt Mav.
She pictured him laughing with another woman and reaching out to hold her hand.
A swirl of nausea rose in her throat.
She did care.
Well, not tonight she didn’t. Tonight she was a vet and vets didn’t have time to be all jealous over imaginary dates their ex-fiancé may or may not be on. She knocked one final time. ‘Lucas!’
The door swung open and all the silly thoughts that had been swirling round her head disappeared when there, lit by the remaining glow of the evening’s sun, was Lucas Williams with nothing but a towel round his waist.
