“Brian is dead.”
“Oh, Grace, I’m so sorry. What happened?”
Grace swallowed hard while she brought her voice under control. “You hear about the incident in Syria?”
“That was him?” Understanding dawned on Asha’s face. “That was you. You were the other photographer who survived the blast. Grace, why didn’t you tell me?”
Because she hadn’t told anyone. Because the grief was too fresh. And deep down, she felt responsible.
Sure, she’d not been the one to fire the grenade. She’d warned Brian that their position was too exposed, had been trying to get them out. But he was so young and eager to get the shot, and it had been her responsibility to rein in that reckless enthusiasm, just as her own mentor Jean-Auguste had done for her.
She’d failed miserably.
“So that’s why I’m here,” Grace said at last. “I’m supposed to be in Aleppo, but I couldn’t get on the plane.”
Asha reached for her hand across the table and squeezed it hard. “I understand; I really do. But you love the work. Surely you don’t want to quit.”
“Come on, Ash. You know shooting conflicts was supposed to be a short-term plan, not the past ten years of my life. Everyone with half a brain is out, onto something safer.”
“But you’ve worked for this since you were nineteen!”
“And look where it’s gotten me.”
“Achieving a level of success most people never imagine. Newsweek and National Geographic have you on speed dial. You were listed as one of the most influential photographers of the decade, for heaven’s sake.”
“One of the most influential photographers of the decade.” Grace gave a short, humorless laugh. “Had I died along with Brian, would anyone have missed me besides you and Jean-Auguste? I’m thirty-four, Ash. I can pack up my entire life in three cases and a duffel bag. My parents don’t talk to me anymore, and the only person to send me a birthday card was the president of my photo agency.”
Asha’s gaze drilled into her. “You’re back for Ian.”
“When you say it that way, I sound completely pathetic.”
“Not completely pathetic. Just a little bit.”
“It was daft,” Grace said. “If you could have seen the look on his face—”
“You saw him? What did you do? What did he say?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t stick around to find out.”
“Grace—”
“I know, I know. But what do you say in that situation? ‘Hi, I’m sorry I ran out on you six months before our wedding. How have you been?’ Besides, for all I know, he’s married and has half a dozen kids now.”
“He’s not married.”
The pronouncement stunned Grace into momentary silence. “You’ve seen him?”
“He and Jake go out for a pint on occasion. He dates, but as far as I can tell, nothing serious. It leads one to believe he’s waiting for something. Or someone.”
Grace’s heart jolted at the words, but she shook her head. However much she might want to put things right, what she had done to him was unforgivaable. What kind of woman left the man she loved without a proper good-bye? What kind of man forgave that sort of betrayal?
“You should talk to him, Grace. Even if it’s just to put him behind you.”
As Grace opened her mouth to reply, the woman behind the counter shouted a familiar order. “That us?”
“Yeah. I’ll get it.” Asha pushed back the chair.
“Bacon, egg, mushrooms, tomatoes, two toasts! You comin’ to get it, or you want me to fax it to ya?”
Grace chuckled. “Let me. Least I can do after you saved me the hour wait.”
She pushed her way back to the counter, relieved to escape her friend’s scrutiny. Maybe Asha was right, but she’d been trying to put Ian behind her for ten years. What made either of them think she’d be any more successful now?
By the time Grace returned with their breakfasts, she’d steeled herself for more analysis, but Asha didn’t bring up the subject again. Instead, she asked, “Where are you staying?”
“Hotel.”
Asha reached into her handbag and slid a key across the table. “You know the address.”
“Ash, I couldn’t—”
“Nonsense. Of course you could. How long will you be here?”
“At least through the end of August. A friend is putting together a showing of my portraits at his gallery in Putney. After that, I’m not sure.”
“You just got here, and you’re already looking for an excuse to leave.” A smile softened Asha’s words, though, and she reached out to squeeze Grace’s hand again. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me too.” To stave off further discussion, Grace dug into her breakfast and barely stifled a groan of pleasure. Paris might be the culinary center of Europe, but nothing beat an old-fashioned fry-up from this landmark diner. She allowed herself to savor a few more bites before she shot a stern look at Asha. “So. Jake. Don’t think you’re going to slip that one by me. Did you finally say yes?”
Asha shrugged. “After five years of asking me out, it seemed only fair to give the bloke a chance.”
“It’s about time. I’ve always thought you two would make a great couple.”
She laughed. “It had crossed my mind over the years. But one or both of us were always seeing someone else. He was busy with work; I was splitting my time between here and India . . . It wasn’t the right time for a relationship.”
If anyone understood that, it was Grace. Still, after Asha had broken off a tumultuous romance with a fellow physician, Grace had wondered if she would ever take a chance on another man. “We should have dinner, then, the three of us. I haven’t seen him in ages.”
“You haven’t seen anyone in ages,” Asha countered, but it was without heat. She glanced at her watch and grimaced. “I have to go or I’ll be late for my shift. Move your things to the flat, yeah? I’ll be back later tonight.”
“Thanks, Ash. It means a lot to me.” Grace gave her a quick hug, then watched her stride from the restaurant. Of all her friends, Asha was the most dependable, the most understanding. But then, she had a better perspective on what Grace did for a living, having spent much of her early career in conflict zones herself. It took firsthand experience to understand how it felt to live day-to-day in varying degrees of danger.
She turned back to her plate, but her mind returned to Ian. She should have stuck around and talked to him, told him the conclusions she’d reached in the three months since Brian’s death. After all these years, he deserved to know why she had run away. Deserved to know it hadn’t been because she’d stopped loving him.
And maybe he deserved to know that leaving him had been the biggest mistake of her life.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU ALL RIGHT THERE, MATE?”
Ian MacDonald stared at the place Grace had occupied moments before, his limbs frozen. It took several seconds for Chris’s words to sink in. “Fine. Someone I thought I knew.”
Chris followed Ian’s gaze, but the space between the club’s boathouse and the neighboring building was now vacant. “Nice one today. Still set a good rhythm.”
“If by good you mean sadistic,” Marc muttered from the back of the boat.
Ian grinned at their coxswain, who also happened to be an old Cambridge teammate. “Sadistic? That was barely twenty-five.”
“Thirty-two on the push,” Marc shot back.
Ian’s smile widened. By today’s standards, thirty-two strokes a minute was barely a race pace, but it was close to what they’d managed back in the day. The crew for his weekday outings was made up of men like him—former Oxbridge and British Team rowers whose competitiveness hadn’t diminished with their available training time. Still, seeing the younger crews on the water made him realize how much time had passed since he was in his prime.
Back then, the only thing that had mattered to him more than rowing was Grace. He’d abandoned his career, his sponsorships
, his dreams of Olympic gold. And she’d disappeared without a word, taking every last possession but her engagement ring.
“Waist, ready, up!”
Marc’s command cut through the memory, and in unison, the eight-man crew lifted the boat to waist level. At the cox’s next command, they pressed the boat upside down over their heads. The familiar routine gave Ian something to focus on, but he barely avoided banging the stern on the doorframe as they carried the shell back to the club’s boathouse.
After that, he managed to keep his mind on his actions, but he still showered and dressed in a daze, letting the jokes of the other men in the changing room flow around him until Chris stopped behind him.
“Coming to breakfast? Or do you have someone waiting?” Chris waggled his eyebrows suggestively while Ian stared in confusion. “Your date last night?”
He finally followed the insinuation. “Ah . . . no. We wrapped it up early. Not that I’m in the habit of taking home women I’ve just met.”
“You’re not in the habit of taking home any women. I’ve set you up on three dates and none of them have made it past dinner. What’s wrong with this one?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s a perfectly lovely woman—”
“She’s gorgeous!”
“—who is about as interesting as watching paint dry—”
“So? Did I mention she was gorgeous?”
“—and did nothing but talk about the last case she won.”
Chris shot him a reproving look. “You’re a lawyer too.”
“I used to be a lawyer.” Now he didn’t quite know what he was. “I don’t know why you keep insisting on setting me up.”
“At this point I’m not sure either.” Chris heaved a sigh that made it clear Ian’s lack of interest in casual dating was a disgrace to men everywhere. “Anyhow, breakfast?”
“Brunch at Mum’s. We’re taking out the quad on Tuesday?”
“I’ll be here.”
Ian hiked his kit bag onto his shoulder and clambered down the stairs to ground level. Instantly, his unanswered questions crowded in. What was Grace doing back in London? Had she been looking for him? Or had he imagined the petite blonde standing on the bank? The woman he’d seen had much shorter hair than his Grace—
His Grace. The words, even spoken in his head, made his stomach clench. She had made it clear she had no interest in being his Grace when she left. They’d shared a life, a bed, a home for two years, but when it had come time to make it permanent, she’d run. Even in retrospect, there’d been no signs it was coming.
No. He wasn’t going to do this today. He’d already wasted far too much of his life rehashing what went wrong with Grace. Regardless of her location, he was better off without her.
Forty minutes later, Ian knelt on the cold cement of an underground car park in Emperor’s Gate to unlock a heavy chamois cover. A smile came to his face for the first time since leaving the club. If he were honest, his dutiful attendance at his mother’s monthly garden brunches had far less to do with the overly fussy food and pretentious conversation than his method of transportation.
A 1966 Austin-Healey BJ8, a classic piece of British automotive history and the one car he’d dreamed of owning since childhood. It had taken him two years and considerable expense to restore her, from the rusted-out two-tone paint job to the ripped black leather interior. The classic car always served as an excuse to avoid the gossip and slip away with the other auto enthusiasts, including his uncle Rodney. In fact, Rodney was solely to blame for the vehicle’s existence. He’d been the one to take Ian and his younger brother, James, to races at Silverstone and the occasional classic car meet. James had never latched on to the idea, but those outings had been the highlight of Ian’s childhood.
Now that he owned his dream, the trouble was finding time to enjoy it. London’s traffic and its congestion zones made it hardly worth the effort to drive, and work and rowing kept him well tied to the city. Maybe he should take another trip to Scotland and check on the progress of the Skye hotel. Completely unnecessary, of course—Jamie and his fiancée, Andrea, had matters well in hand—but it would be a useful excuse for a short escape.
The twenty-five-minute drive to Hampstead went much too quickly, and he’d barely managed to settle the tension from Grace’s unexpected appearance before he turned off to his mother’s estate. He punched in the gate code and waited for the wrought-iron gates to swing inward. Somehow the opulence of the house struck him as even more excessive than usual as he navigated through the newly landscaped allée to the front of the spectacular Georgian-style manor, all heavy red brick and mullioned windows. He might have spent school holidays here while at Eton, but he’d never dared call it home.
He left the car beside several other expensive vehicles, shrugging his suit jacket on as he went, and headed to the center of the parterre, where several tables had been set up. At least a dozen people milled about, glasses already in hand. Almost immediately, an elegant, dark-haired woman in a cream-colored suit and matching hat caught sight of him and made her way over.
“Ian, darling!”
“Mum.” Ian accepted her embrace and kissed her on the cheek. “You look lovely.”
“And you look quite dapper yourself, Son.” Marjorie took a surreptitious look around. “You didn’t bring anyone, did you? Good. I want you to meet Rachel Corson. You remember the Corsons, don’t you? The father is in shipping, and the mother—”
“Mum, stop.” He cut her off before she could go further in her description. Knowing her, she already had them married in her mind. She’d been fairly vocal about his inability to accomplish it himself. “The last time I met one of your friends’ daughters, it was a disaster. Let’s not repeat history, shall we?”
Marjorie leveled a look at him that managed to fall short of motherly concern. “Five minutes.”
“No.”
“I knew you’d see it my way. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
Ian sighed and tugged on his tie, which had already begun to feel too tight. Twenty-five minutes in the Healey did not in any way make up for this.
“Run, while you still have the chance.”
Ian twisted toward the voice at his shoulder. “Rodney, you startled me.”
“Bloody Mary?”
Ian took a glass from his uncle and looked him over. If Marjorie was impeccably put together, her younger brother always had a studiously mussed air, as if he had been rudely summoned away from a game of snooker. His suit was expensive but rumpled, and he might have forgotten to comb his hair that morning. His eyes, however, missed nothing. Unfortunately.
Ian sipped the cocktail and barely covered his cough. “Might you add some tomato juice to the vodka next time? It’s not yet noon.”
“Only way I can get through these events of your mother’s. And you’ll need it if you plan to stick around for her latest matchmaking attempt.”
“That bad?”
“Pretty, but insipid.”
Ian took another drink, intending to fortify himself for the inquisition, but the trail it burned down his throat convinced him to set the glass on a nearby table. He decided to cut to the chase. Rodney would get it out of him eventually anyway. “Grace is back.”
“Ah.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say? ‘Ah’?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“That I’m mad to be thinking about her after what happened.”
Rodney shrugged.
“You don’t think so?”
“You were happy with Grace right up until she disappeared.”
“We were too different. Look at Mum and Dad. They were happy for a while; then Mum left.”
“There’s much more to that story than a few differences.” Rodney tossed back the rest of the cocktail, then set his glass down beside Ian’s. “And you are not as much like your mother as you think. You drive the Healey?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s go have a look,
then.”
Ian cast a glance back at Marjorie, but she had been waylaid by a group of her guests, none of whom could possibly be Rachel. He hoped. A judge with his family, or maybe an MP. They all looked alike to Ian. He followed his uncle back around the side of the house to the drive.
“How’s work?” Rodney asked.
“Work is . . . work.” It wasn’t that Ian disliked his job exactly. His brother, Jamie, was a renowned chef who had built his first restaurant into an empire that now included six locations, several cookbooks, and a recently completed television cooking program. There was no way he could handle the details himself, and Ian was good at details. But it wasn’t exactly the career Ian had envisioned for himself.
Fortunately Rodney didn’t press, instead stopping next to the Healey to give it an admiring once-over. “Beautiful car, this is. Shame the only time you bring it out is for your mum’s brunches.”
Ian crossed his arms over his chest. “Say what you really want to say.”
“Am I that transparent? Fine, then. I want to know when you’re going to give yourself permission to do what you want to do.”
“I am doing what I want to do.”
“Are you? Just because Grace left doesn’t make your mother right. Not about who you are, what you do, who you love.”
“You’re telling me that I should give Grace another chance.”
“I’m telling you that you don’t need anyone’s permission. Your life is between you and God. And don’t give me that look. I know I’m a drunk. God loves me anyway.” Rodney circled the car, squatted down to examine the grille.
Ian shook his head and repressed a smile. No matter what other family members might think about the conflict between Rodney’s professed faith and his drinking habit, Ian couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. God knew he and Jamie had given Him plenty of reasons to despair about their life choices over the years.
Rodney stood up again and winked at his nephew. “If a beauty like that belonged to me, I wouldn’t be spending my Saturday here with the rich and boring.”
London Tides Page 2
