by Fiona Harper
Jennie nodded, but it was a hollow gesture. She knew she should understand, but she didn’t. How could she when Alex had mentioned an ex-wife, but had hardly said more than that? She’d thought his lack of communication on that matter had been because it was all done and dusted, in the past. Alex was like that. Once he closed the lid, walked away from something, he never went back to it. But, sitting in that hotel suite on her own, she’d started to come up with other reasons.
What if he’d never truly got over his ex-wife? What if he still loved her deep down? What if he’d realised, when he’d learned about the car accident, and he’d thought that his first wife was teetering on the edge of life, that everything he’d had with Jennie was just fluff and sparkle, that he had to drop everything to be with the first Mrs Dangerfield?
And, in those terse calls, Alex had done nothing to dispel those fears.
She looked at Alex now. Really looked at him. There was anger and frustration furrowed into his brow and his shoulders were bunched, but deep in his eyes there was something else. A weariness she’d never seen before. Hopelessness. Loss. While she feared what all that might mean, a part of her reached out to him, wanted to soothe him and make it all better.
Why hadn’t she seen that the first moment he’d stood in front of her in the party? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t memorised every contour and plane of his face, the exact shade of the ring around his irises, the sharp line of his cheekbones and the tiny betraying lines at the corners of his eyes.
She’d been too focused on herself, on what she wanted, what she felt. Hadn’t she been guilty of everything she’d just accused him of? She’d spent all that time in the hotel worrying about her feelings of abandonment, not worrying about Alex and all that he must have been going through. How selfish she’d been. Despite all her attempts to grow up and be a better person, she was just as shallow as ever.
She turned her ankle in on itself and rubbed the carpet with the toe of her shoe. Sudden and unusual insight hit her straight in the stomach. ‘There’s more to all of this than you told me, isn’t there?’ And she knew she wasn’t talking about feelings for his ex-wife. It was bigger than that.
Alex looked slightly taken aback, though he hid it well, but Jennie had seen the unmistakable flash of surprise in those pale blue eyes. He nodded.
‘Becky died.’
All the air left Jennie’s mouth, leaving her incapable of forming words. She’d died? Becky Dangerfield had died? She looked at Alex. He was watching her reaction, a hollow look in his eyes.
‘Why didn’t you tell me things had got that serious? She was making progress, you said…’
He looked away. Jennie hoped fervently it wasn’t because he was too disgusted to look at her, but she couldn’t blame him if he had.
‘She was. But she took a sudden turn for the worse. There wasn’t anything the doctors could do.’
‘But…’
‘I tried to tell you—’ he said, flashing a look back in her direction. Yep. Disgust was clearly evident. Jennie felt sick. ‘—but you hung up on me and turned your phone off.’
She hung her head. Her quick temper was always getting her into trouble. But she’d been so cross! He’d been missing from their honeymoon for four days when he’d finally had the inclination to call her and talk to her for more than sixty seconds. She’d been looking forward to hearing his soft, sexy voice telling her she was all he could think about, that he couldn’t spend a moment more away from her side… Fat chance. Alex had sounded all calm and matter-of-fact when he’d announced he wouldn’t be coming back to Paris, that she needed to get herself on a train and be there at his side. He needed her. He had things to tell her.
It had been the last straw, confirming all her doubts about what sort of priority the first Mrs Dangerfield had in his life. At least, she’d thought it had confirmed all her doubts. The fact she’d been so wide of the mark made her feel even more queasy.
She’d packed her bags and left the hotel within the hour.
Oh, she felt so ashamed of herself. Her father was right. Her fling-herself-in-at-the-deep-end approach was nothing but foolishness. She’d hurt Alex horribly. She looked up at him. He wore a guarded expression and his lips were taut. Her stomach bottomed out further.
‘That’s not all, is it?’ she asked, her voice wavering.
Alex shook his head again. ‘I found out…something else…just before I called you that last time, but I didn’t know how to—’ He broke off and looked away. ‘It was all so complicated. And I wasn’t sure what was truth and what was fiction. Besides…it wasn’t the sort of thing I could have told you over the phone.’
Big red alarm bells went off inside Jennie’s head. ‘Why?’
He looked away again, and his tiny admission of guilt hit her just as hard as the right hook she’d been contemplating landing on him a few moments earlier.
‘You didn’t trust me,’ she said quietly, answering her own question.
Nobody ever trusted her with anything important. She was madcap Jennie—impulsive and wild, but tons of fun. And, even though she’d tried to shake that reputation in recent years, she’d gone and mucked it up by dropping everything, including her business commitments, and flitting off to Vegas to marry a man she’d only known for a few months.
‘No,’ Alex said, all hint of smiles, sarcastic or otherwise, gone. ‘Don’t you dare accuse me of that. It was you who didn’t trust me. You didn’t believe me when I told you that I’d get back as soon as I could.’ By the time he’d finished talking, his voice had gone from low to almost shouting.
Jennie matched his volume. ‘It was our honeymoon, Alex! Funnily enough, I expected you to actually be there!’
His jaw clenched and the next words came out with difficulty. ‘I did get there.’
She sat down suddenly, landing in a large armchair. ‘You did?’
He’d come for her? Come after her?
Her stomach rolled and she cupped a hand over her mouth. How could that be true? She would have known. A week after their Las Vegas quickie wedding they’d flown to Paris, but the following night that phone call had come, and early next morning Alex had boarded Eurostar and travelled back to London, assuring her he’d be back within twenty-four hours. And then it had started—the pacing round the hotel suite, the staring at the phone on the bedside table.
In those few short days inside the hotel room, everything had become magnified—the sense of loss, the fear he’d never come back again, the creeping feeling that things would never be the same. Thinking back now, that time had a similar…flavour…to the weeks after her mother had died. The sense of confusion had been the same. And, just as her father had been after her mother’s funeral, Alex had seemed hidden behind a brick wall that she hadn’t been able to scale.
Leaving the hotel in Paris had been a desperate act, not a logical decision. At that moment she’d truly believed her marriage to be crumbling. If only she’d been patient—grown-up—about Alex’s absence. If only she hadn’t let panic make her decisions for her. She’d been so stupid.
She had come back to England, just as Alex had asked, but she hadn’t remained in London. Well, only long enough to delete all of Alex’s puzzled messages from her answer phone with one furious press of a button, then pack a small case.
She hadn’t even told her family she was back—they had still been under the impression she was sunning herself in Mexico. That had suited her just fine. She’d needed time to lick her wounds before she was ready to face anyone—especially Alex—again, so she’d hidden out for more than a week in a little cottage on the Norfolk coast that a friend owned. After that she’d gone back to her flat. But her answer phone had been silent that time. And the voicemails had stopped arriving on her mobile in the middle of her week away. Even though she hadn’t known where Alex was at that point, his apathy had radiated in waves across London. So, too ashamed to admit her most spectacular ‘scrape’ yet to her family, she’d kept quiet, hopped back into her l
ife with a smile on her face as if nothing had happened and had tried to work out what to do next.
Her conscience had prickled her, telling her to call him instead, but she’d been too hurt, and hurt had quickly hardened into pig-headedness. She hadn’t wanted to be the bigger person. In her mind, it had been up to Alex to make the first move, to prove with his actions that he still wanted her, because if she hadn’t been first place in his life, what was the point of continuing with their marriage?
She’d wanted to believe that Alex had intended to return to her in Paris. She wanted to believe him now, but he was wrong: she had trusted him, but she didn’t want his pity or false assurances now. And she wasn’t ready to let him humiliate her a second time. So, instead of falling into his arms, she crossed her legs, stretched her arms across the back of the chair and gave him a tight smile.
‘You finally deigned to show up? That was big of you.’
Alex ignored her childish comment, which just made her want to goad him all the more.
‘When I finally arrived at the hotel,’ he said, ‘they told me my bride had checked out two days earlier.’
Jennie didn’t react. What did he expect? They’d been married for just over a week when he’d disappeared. A week! What woman wouldn’t have taken that as a major hint? Oh, no, there was no way she was letting him play the part of ‘victim’ in this scenario. That job was hers and she was going to milk it for everything it was worth, make him pay for discarding her so easily.
‘Okay, Alex. Put your money where your mouth is.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘If you actually do trust me, if I’m the one who’s totally in the wrong, tell me now. What really happened between you leaving me in Paris and coming back to find me? What else do you need to tell me?’
Alex inhaled quickly and exhaled slowly. Carefully, deliberately, he cleared the coffee table of make-up and other wedding preparation debris and then sat on the edge, facing her, elbows propped on knees, hands clasped together.
‘I know I need to explain. That’s part of why I’m here now.’ He paused and his knuckles paled. ‘But I’m not sure you’re going to like what I’ve got to say, and I’m not sure you’ll want to stay married to me when you know the truth. It’ll change everything for us—all our plans, how we pictured our lives together.’
Jennie swallowed. He sounded so serious she was halfway to regretting her flounce back across the Channel in a fit of pique. But it was obvious he didn’t understand her at all. She always flung herself into her adventures with everything she had, and she’d meant to approach her marriage the same way—one hundred per cent commitment, one hundred per cent loyalty. It had smarted when she’d believed that devotion hadn’t been returned.
She rolled her lips in on themselves, moistening them. ‘Do you… Do you even want to stay married to me?’
Alex didn’t move, but his eyes suddenly grew hollow with despair, changing his whole expression. Jennie’s heart did an irregular little beat.
‘When I make promises, I keep them,’ he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE’D spoken the truth—he didn’t go back on his word, even if it cost him. Bailing out of things because they were too difficult was weak.
He looked at Jennie, sitting in the chair opposite him, her mascara-laden eyelashes blinking back moisture, and suddenly he felt ashamed of his behaviour. When he’d come up the hotel drive earlier that evening, he’d been in control of himself, remembering all the reasons why he needed to find Jennie and talk to her, but the minute he’d seen her all his noble intentions had skittered away.
What was it about her that fried all his senses? Really? Nobody else ever had this effect on him. He managed to walk down the street, hold down a good job—basically, live his life—without losing control of his emotions, so how did one woman overturn all that?
Right. From this moment on, he was going to pull it all back and start behaving like an adult. It wouldn’t be that hard. He only had to think of the look of raw vulnerability in his wife’s eyes when she’d asked, her voice wavering, if he wanted to stay married to her. It had pierced him, and all his anger had drained out of that tiny hole in an instant. He’d felt something pure, something real. Something that had hitherto been suffocated by his self-righteousness, and it had him questioning every prejudice he’d had about her.
It was as if there were two Jennies—the one he’d married and the one who’d deserted him—flickering in and out of sync with each other, like the deteriorating picture on an old TV set. But which one was real and which one was the mirage?
The woman he’d fallen in love with had been vivacious and intelligent and capable, a woman who took everything life threw at her in her stride. He’d respected her strength, her bravado, but maybe he’d been blinded, as the old saying suggested. He’d thought her resilience had come from inner strength, but after she’d left Paris he’d considered that maybe there was another explanation. Perhaps the strength he’d ascribed her had just been shallowness. Maybe it had been that, apart from herself, nothing really mattered to her and, therefore, she couldn’t be wounded by anything.
He’d lived through hell for the five days he’d been away from her, and had watched a woman he’d once loved wither away in a hospital bed until someone had asked him for a decision to turn the switch off. He’d still been named her next of kin, and none of her scavenging family had been found to dispute that. But it was only after that that things had got really complicated. He’d needed Jennie—needed her to be her bright, bubbly, affectionate self, needed her to hold him together when he’d thought he’d been about to fall apart. The fact that she’d had a tantrum and stomped off home like a spoilt princess hadn’t gone down well at all.
After his wasted trip to Paris to find his missing bride—hours he could have spent much more productively—he’d come back to England exhausted, and had been thrust headlong back into the horrific consequences of his ex-wife’s death. One surprise had come after another as the four years since he’d last seen her had slowly unravelled themselves before him and given up their secrets. Just as well he did what he did for a living and that where his expertise wasn’t relevant, he had friends and contacts who could point him in the right direction.
And in his spare time he’d tried to find his new wife. He’d called her office, her home, her parents’ home, but the story had always been the same: Jennie was on an impromptu holiday, having the time of her life. At first he’d wondered if they’d all been stonewalling him, but after meeting Marion Hunter earlier this evening he’d got the feeling that her family had been just as much in the dark as he had.
Eventually, he’d given up. Waited for her to stop ignoring his calls and come to her senses. Christmas had arrived soon after that, and he’d decided to wait for her stepbrother’s wedding to confront her. He had family who actually wanted to be around him, and life-changing news to break to them. Tired of searching for a wife who didn’t want to be found, he’d concentrated on that for a few days, knowing the inevitable showdown would happen soon enough.
He looked at her. She had been relaxing in the armchair, but now she was leaning forward, her eyes large, all traces of her sassy smile gone, and it gave him a terrible sense of déjà vu. Right now she looked very much like the woman he’d married. Which was very confusing, because he wasn’t even sure if that woman was real.
But…if the Jennie he’d married wasn’t a mirage, he might have to label her differently. Could he? Could he rip off the one saying ‘problem’ and replace it with one that read ‘solution’? Did he trust her enough to even find out?
He needed time to think, and created some by walking over to the champagne bucket and hoisting out the dripping bottle. He held it up and asked Jennie a question with a tilt of his head.
‘If there was ever a time I needed a drink,’ Jennie said wearily, ‘it’s now.’ She nodded at a tray of clean glasses on the sideboard nearby, and he took his time opening the bottle and filling them. When he was ready, he hande
d her a glass and sat down on the sofa opposite her.
To find out the truth, he was going to have to excuse himself as prosecutor, a role he seemed to have slipped into without realising it, and remind himself he was supposed to treat what he heard, not even as if he were an impartial judge, but as if he were a jury member. He had to hear what she had to say expecting only truth and innocence, convicting her mentally of no crime until all the evidence was in, even if the events of the last couple of weeks screamed at him to do otherwise.
So he leaned forward and looked her in the eye. They both had questions that needed answering, but he had to remember not to goad and trap as he usually did during cross-examination. These days he had enough seniority in his chambers to pick and choose his cases, and he no longer immersed himself in defence work, as he’d done when he’d been married to Becky and had believed that every under-dog had deserved its day in court. Nowadays, he only took prosecution cases if he could help it. Protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves also involved punishing those who preyed on them. But he’d got used to being suspicious, of seeing the lies everyone tried to hide behind. He’d have to snap out of it now and act as if he were conducting a defence—gently guide her, lead her and hope she’d give the right answer on cue. It wasn’t so long since he’d last done that. Surely he could remember how?
He kept his voice low, coaxing. ‘I know you were upset when I asked you to join me in London, but why did you disappear? Why didn’t you come home?’
‘Men,’ she muttered. ‘They never understand anything.’
‘Explain it to me, then.’
Jennie stared at him for a few seconds, then took a big gulp of her champagne. ‘You have to understand, Alex. Spending days on my own, pacing round a hotel room only to slope off back to London without my groom wasn’t exactly the fairy tale I’d pictured when I’d imagined my honeymoon.’
