Her Guilty Secret

by Clare Connelly

  Because you love him.

  Yeah. Because I love him.

  My sister’s coat has been forgotten; it’s her favourite. Black leather with little frills on the cuffs. I move towards it at the same time she knocks on the door. I grab it in my hand and walk back to the door, pulling it inwards, and in the same motion I extend the jacket.

  But the ready smile dies on my lips as I stare straight into the face of the man who has been filling my mind and dreams since the day he walked into my university class.

  ‘Connor.’ My voice is raspy. I clear my throat. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to congratulate you.’ And he holds out a massive bunch of flowers from behind his back. I stare at them, then at him.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Dash called me.’ His expression is serious now, his voice gravelled. ‘I’m proud of you.’

  I swallow, tears thickening in my throat. ‘Thank you.’ The words are stiff—a rejection of all the pleasure I feel at seeing him. ‘But I told you not to come back here.’

  A muscle jerks in his jaw and a look of defiance flares in his eyes. My stomach rolls. It’s too much. Seeing him again, and right when I was longing for him—I step backwards unconsciously and he takes advantage of it, moving into the flat and closing the door.

  Strange that it didn’t feel over-full with my whole family here and now I am claustrophobic, drowning in the company of just one man.

  I watch as he takes the flowers into the kitchen and begins looking into cupboards, presumably for a vase. He finds one and fills it with water, and all I can do is stare. Stare at him in his jeans and shirt, his sexy back, beautiful hair, the body that I know so well.

  He looks so good there. So right. But it’s all wrong, I remind myself. I need to remember that. He walked out on me, out on this life; he didn’t want this. He has no business here.

  ‘How’s your case going?’ I ask, the words dripping with hauteur.

  ‘I’m busy,’ he says. Am I imagining the tightening of his shoulders? The tension in his frame?

  I want to ask him if he’s happy, but I know I shouldn’t care. ‘Why did you come here?’ I ask instead, moving towards him, the question drenched with emotion. ‘You could have just ordered flowers online.’

  ‘I could have,’ he agrees. ‘But I wanted to see you. To tell you I’m happy for you. I wanted to hug you.’

  God, I’ve wanted that, too. So much. ‘You shouldn’t have come.’

  His eyes narrow and then he nods, a nod of acceptance. Fear trembles in my gut. Now that he’s here, I don’t want him to leave. The contradictory feelings tangle inside me.

  ‘I had to,’ he says slowly. He places the flowers in the middle of the bench. ‘I had to tell you in person that I messed up. Just like you said. I should never have left London. I should never have left you.’

  I draw in a sharp, thick breath and shake my head. ‘Don’t. Don’t say this now. It’s too late.’

  ‘Is it?’ He moves closer to me but I still him by lifting my hand, holding it between us as a shield.

  ‘Yes! I’ve been through hell, Connor! You don’t get to fly back and tell me you’re sorry and then what? Go back to Dublin? To your criminals and your career and the justifications you exist on?’

  He dips his head in silent acknowledgement of my charges. ‘Yes. I have to go back to Dublin.’

  The sound that escapes me is pure outrage. It’s a wounded, defiant hiss. ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘Wait—’

  ‘No!’ Our passion has always been primal and now my rage is also. ‘No! No! No! I will not wait! We’ve said everything there is to say! You’ve made your choice and I’ve made mine...’

  ‘I’m not staying in Dublin.’ He speaks quietly. Softly. But the words have the power of a bursting dam.

  ‘What? Why not?’ I’m still yelling and I don’t care.

  ‘Because it’s too far away from the woman I love.’

  Silence. Silence stretches like an elastic band and then I grunt angrily. ‘What is this? More redemption?’

  ‘Honesty,’ he says. ‘With you and myself.’ He moves towards me and I’m too shell-shocked to step away. ‘I thought leaving you was the only way to show you that I was worthy of you. I hate the idea of not being able to live up to what you deserve. I want to give you the world, the stars, the moon, the universe, and I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I’m enough for you.’

  I sweep my eyes shut, needing a second to regain my breath without his distractingly handsome face right in front of me.

  ‘But I do know that I want to spend every day for the rest of my life trying to deserve you. I know that I got into this thinking you would somehow fix me, and you have. Not in the way I thought, Olivia. I don’t believe there is any kind of absolution that I want. But you’ve made me see how many possibilities there are for me. I don’t have to follow the same path I always have.’

  I open my eyes and he’s right in front of me, staring into my soul.

  ‘You showed me what can happen when you’re brave enough to stick to your guns, even when the odds are stacked against you. Look at what you’ve done. You’ve made your dreams come true! You’ve worked hard and you’ve aimed high and now you’re getting everything you’ve ever wanted. I’m so proud of you and I’m so inspired by you.’

  It’s too much. His words are like firecrackers under my grief. They shoot it upwards, pushing it out of me, leaving an eerie sense of weightlessness. I’m no longer in free fall. Now, I’m floating.

  ‘When I got the letter and you weren’t here, I hated you. I just wanted to share it with you so badly. I felt sick for missing you.’

  ‘I felt the same when I heard. I’ve never been happier nor prouder.’

  I smile. It’s involuntary but it lights me up completely. And then I remember—all the reasons he left—and I am being pulled back down to earth.

  As if reading my shift in emotion, he nods. ‘Six months,’ he says, lifting a hand to my cheek. His touch is like striking a match to tinder. My body sparks. ‘I’ll wrap up my caseload and begin to set up my London office. You’ll start at the CPS and settle in, so that by the time I’m in London there’ll be nothing untoward about us seeing one another.’

  There’s too much there to digest. ‘Six months?’

  ‘Six months,’ he says with a nod.

  ‘Your London office?’

  He nods.

  But I frown. ‘Connor, that’s going to mean we’re working against each other. I don’t see how that’s viable.’

  His smile is pure confidence. ‘I’m shifting my focus.’

  ‘Oh?’ My heart races.

  ‘I like to fight the fight and I love to win, but it occurred to me after talking to Dash that there are much better wars to wage.’

  ‘Such as?’ I’m almost afraid to ask.

  ‘Well, there’s a council in the south for a start. They’ve been overcharging Council Tax, particularly in migrant communities where English is spoken as a second language, and very poorly at that. It’s systemic abuse.’

  ‘You’re going to go after them?’

  He nods. ‘And Pirion Financial Services. Have you heard of them?’

  I can only nod.

  ‘It’s one of the largest pension funds in the UK and it has a habit of over-billing recipients, who are often too infirm to spend hours and hours on calls to sort it out.’

  He wraps his arms around my back, pulling me towards him. ‘And Gristinton Academy, who refused entry to fifty per cent more girls than it did boys, and to every applicant with an autism spectrum disorder.’

  He drops his forehead to mine and I breathe him in, my heart so full.

  ‘You’re going to use your powers for good,’ I say, everything inside me locking into place. I’m exactly where I need to be—and wit
h the person I want to share everything with.

  ‘I’m going to use my powers for good,’ he confirms. ‘And all because of you.’

  My heart turns over. ‘Don’t say that. You were on this path. You knew you weren’t happy with the cases you were defending.’

  ‘But you were the one who made me see it. I didn’t have the courage to admit that, until you forced me to.’

  He presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth and I smile.

  ‘I didn’t have the courage to realise that loving someone is about staying and fighting, not leaving.’ The pad of his thumb brushes across my cheek. ‘I will never leave you again.’

  ‘After this six months, you mean?’ I tease.

  He laughs. ‘I’ll be back often enough that you won’t have time to miss me.’ And he kisses me, finally. A kiss that is familiar and not, a kiss that is full of our future and our past. A kiss that is uniquely us.

  * * *

  He takes five months.

  And he was right. In those five months, I’ve made myself at home at the CPS. I’m doing my traineeship, but my degree feels like a thousand light-years ago. So too does the fact Connor Hughes was once my professor.

  We talk on the phone every night. I fall asleep with him at my ear, and his stories run through my brain.

  He flies to London every weekend.

  I fly up there when I can.

  And the five months speed by so much faster than I could ever have imagined.

  * * *

  My dream has always been to work for the CPS. And now I have that dream, and new ones are filling my mind.

  All of them include Connor.

  It takes me two years to finish my traineeship and he’s right there with me, establishing himself as a defender of the innocent, overwriting the reputation he’d earned. It’s still there. If you Google him, you see his link to Donovan. But you also see the money he’s won for victims of systemic abuse, for victims too weak to defend themselves. And that’s Connor’s legacy. He isn’t wholly good—but who is? The important thing is, he faced a crossroads in his life and he chose to take this path. He chose to do right. He chose to be the best version of himself.

  And he says that was all for me, but I know differently. He would always have made this choice. It just might have taken him a little longer.

  When I’m fully qualified, finally, we go to Africa to celebrate. I’ve always wanted to go on a safari and Connor has connections with a six-star park there. The bungalow we stay in overlooks a wild, untamed expanse and we’re woken at dawn by an elephant drinking just outside our window.

  I poke Connor’s ribs and he blinks, then smiles. A smile I will never get sick of.

  That night we watch the sun go down and it is red and pink, the sky mauve and black. It’s like nature’s fireworks. And it is against that backdrop that he asks me to marry him, and he promises me the same thing he did three years earlier. He promises to try to deserve me, for the rest of our lives.

  And I tell him that he does—that he has deserved me from the beginning.

  I agree to marry him, and my dreams shift once more—there is a wedding and one day children, but always Connor, and always the CPS, and this beautiful life with a strong, flawed, courageous partner by my side.

  For as long as we both shall live.

  * * *

  If you enjoyed Her Guilty Secret, look out for the next installment in Clare Connelly’s Guilty as Sin duet!

  His Innocent Seduction

  Coming soon!

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  Stripped by Nicola Marsh

  Sweet as Sin by J. Margot Critch

  Getting Naughty by Avril Tremayne

  Also by Clare Connelly

  Off Limits

  Burn Me Once

  The Season to Sin

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Stripped by Nicola Marsh.

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  Stripped

  by Nicola Marsh

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hart

  I’M NURSING MY third bourbon when Kevin barges into my office without knocking.

  ‘Thought I’d find you here,’ he says, helping himself to a double shot and joining me in the leather armchairs around the coffee table.

  ‘Not a great deduction on your part, considering I’ve been sitting here every night for the past two weeks.’

  ‘You’re a sarcastic bastard.’ He raises his glass to me before tipping it back and draining half in one gulp. ‘Your grandfather was the same. The great Ralfe Rochester took shit from nobody.’

  My throat tightens, like it does every time anyone mentions Pa. It has been three long weeks since the funeral here on Gem Island, his favourite island in the Whitsundays, four since he died—without me beside him. Pa wasn’t just sarcastic; he was a stubborn old bastard too.

  He should’ve called me; should’ve told me about the ongoing heart-valve problems. But he didn’t and he drop
ped dead before I could tell him half of what I should’ve. Like how much he changed my life. Like how much I owed him. Like how much I loved him despite doing my best to prove otherwise since he found me.

  He died not knowing how I felt about him and that’s something I’ll have to live with every single day.

  ‘He’d be proud of what you’re doing here.’ Kevin gestures around the monstrous office, with an entire glass wall overlooking the resort and the ocean beyond. ‘This hotel has always been his favourite.’

  I know. It’s the only reason I’m stuck on this godforsaken island and not back in Buenos Aires or Brooklyn or Bangladesh, working behind the scenes to set up infrastructure for foster kids. Those kids need me like I’d once needed Pa. He found me at sixteen, took me in, nurtured me. He gave me everything. And what did I do in return?

  Pretended I didn’t need him. Acted like an ungrateful prick every time he reached out. Did a lame-ass job with the role he assigned me in the company.

  Abandoned him.

  I should’ve been here when he died, held his hand and given him whatever comfort I could. Instead, he died alone, his heart giving out just like the docs said it would. Yeah, Pa was stubborn to a fault. Guess I know where I get it from.

  ‘I intend to get this place noticed.’ I swirl the bourbon, staring at it until my eyes blur. It’s easier than looking up and meeting Pa’s right-hand man’s eyes and seeing pity. It’s a wasted emotion and I don’t stomach it, never have. That’s one of the things Pa first said to me, how he admired my resilience, how I didn’t wallow in self-pity.

  I didn’t tell him that feeling sorry for myself had been belted out of me in the first foster family I’d grown up in. Attacks I’d deliberately provoked to prove my defiance meant more than their disdain. Fuck ’em all had been my motto growing up. Still is.

  ‘Do you want me at the meeting with the new PR firm in the morning?’

  I shake my head. As much as I appreciate Kevin’s input I need to start doing things for myself. I need to get this business back on track. The extent of Pa’s failing health has revealed itself in the company’s bottom line and it isn’t pretty. I can do this for him, even if being tied to a desk for the foreseeable future is the last thing I want. Maybe if I’d been a better grandson I would’ve known how dire things were and stepped up earlier.