by Helen Brooks
She was about to leave the cloakroom when she glanced at herself in the mirror again and then drew closer, arrested by the look in her eyes. She blinked, unnerved by the haunting sadness. Was that what Forde had seen? Worse, was that why he had stayed and made love to her? He’d stated quite clearly that the only reason he had come to see her was to discuss the work he wanted her to undertake for Isabelle. Had he felt sorry for her? He had left her severely alone since the time she’d threatened to take out a restraining order; maybe he was seeing other women now?
Feeling emotionally sick, she left the cloakroom and went into the main part of the café. The lorry driver had left but a group of motorbike enthusiasts were clustered around three tables, talking and laughing. She saw them glance her way but, after one swift glance, kept her head down. Dressed in leathers and with tattoos covering most of their visible flesh, they were a little intimidating, as were the huge machines parked outside next to her beaten-up old truck.
The waitress brought her sandwich and tea immediately as she sat down. Aware her eyes were still puffy from the storm of weeping, Melanie forced down the food as quickly as she could and drank one cup of tea before standing up to leave. She had just reached the door when someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned sharply to find a huge, bearded biker behind her.
‘Your bag, love,’ he said, holding out her handbag, which she realised she’d left on a chair, the keys to the car being in her pocket. And then, his eyes narrowing, he added, ‘You all right?’
‘Yes, yes, th-thank you,’ she stammered, feeling ridiculous.
‘You sure?’
His blue eyes were kind under great winged eyebrows, and, pulling herself together, Melanie managed a smile. ‘I’m fine, and thank you for noticing the bag,’ she said, silently acknowledging this was an apt lesson in not going by appearances.
He grinned. ‘I’m well trained, love. My girlfriend’s the same. Forget her head, she would, if it wasn’t screwed on.’
Once on the road again, Melanie gave herself a stern talking-to. The biker had asked if she was all right and the honest answer would have been no, she doubted if she would ever be what he termed ‘all right’ again, but that was nobody’s fault but her own. She should have known better than to marry Forde and try to be like everyone else. She wasn’t like everyone else.
She passed a young mother pushing a baby in a pushchair and bit hard on her lip. It still hurt her, seeing mothers with babies. Like a knife driven straight through her heart.
Throughout her life, every person she had loved had been taken from her in the worst possible way. First her parents, then her grandmother, even her best friend at school—her only friend, come to it, because she hadn’t been a particularly sociable child—had drowned while on holiday abroad with her parents. She could still remember the numbing shock she had felt when the headmaster had announced Pam’s death in assembly, and the feeling that somehow the tragedy was connected with Pam’s friendship with her.
If she hadn’t married Forde and wanted his baby, Matthew wouldn’t have died. She had tempted fate, thought she could escape the inevitable and because of that Forde’s heart had been broken as well as hers. She would never forget the look on his face when he’d held that tiny body in the palms of his hands. That was the moment she had known she had to let him go, make him free to find happiness somewhere else. Forde had said last night that she would have given her life for Matthew’s if she could and he was right, but she hadn’t been able to. But she could protect Forde from more hurt by exiting his life. Once the divorce was through she would move again, far away, perhaps even abroad, and in time he would meet someone else he could commit to. Women fell over themselves to get his attention and he was a passionate and very physical man. Whatever the cost in the present, this was the right thing to do for the future. And there could be no more incidents like last night.
Her mind irrevocably made up, Melanie felt slightly better. She had to be cruel to be kind. It was the only way.
Forde awoke suddenly with the presentiment that something was wrong. For a moment he couldn’t reconcile where he was and then he remembered, turning to see that the place next to him in the bed was empty. The house was quiet and still, no sound from the bathroom or downstairs, and he let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
Glancing at his watch, he saw it was gone nine o’clock and he swore softly, cursing the fact he hadn’t woken before her as he swung his feet out of bed, running a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. Damn it, this was exactly what he’d wanted to prevent. But maybe she was having breakfast in the tiny courtyard garden they’d sat in the night before?
As naked as the day he was born, he took the stairs two at a time, but even before he opened the back door and looked into Melanie’s tiny garden snoozing in the sun he knew she wasn’t around. The small house was devoid of her presence, as if the heart of it was missing.
Cursing some more, he retraced his steps, and this time, as soon as he entered her bedroom, he saw the note on top of his clothes, which she had folded neatly for him. It was a single piece of cream-coloured paper and, sitting down on the side of the bed, he began to read it.
His stomach muscles contracted, as though a cold, hard fist was squeezing his gut. So nothing had changed. After all they’d shared last night, the fire, the passion, she was still intent on divorcing him.
Screwing the paper into a ball, he flung it across the room before getting to his feet and reaching for his clothes. He needed to get out of her house fast before he gave in to the crazy urge to break something.
Once downstairs again he relocked the back door and left by the front one, which had a Yale lock, slamming it hard behind him. His Aston Martin was waiting for him in the small car park and after sliding into the car he sat, the door wide open and his hands on the steering wheel.
Where did he go from here? This morning had been a repeat of so many mornings when he’d awakened from erotic dreams of their lovemaking and reached out for her across an empty expanse of bed, only for reality to slam in. But this morning had been different. Last night had been real. She’d been silk and honey in his arms, her body opening to him and accommodating him perfectly as he’d thrust them both to a climax of unbearable pleasure. But it wasn’t just his body that burnt for her, hot and fulfilling though their lovemaking had always been. He wanted her, his Nell.
He watched a black cat saunter across the car park, stopping for a moment when it noticed him, its green eyes narrowing before it dismissed him as unimportant and continued with its leisurely walk. The cat that walked alone, he thought fancifully. Like Nell. She’d come to the same conclusion about him as that damn animal, whereas he needed her in every part of his life. He wanted to share waking up together at the weekend and reading the Sunday papers in bed while they ate croissants and drank coffee, watching TV with a glass of wine after a hard day’s work while the dinner cooked, going to the theatre or to a film, or simply taking a long walk in the evening arm in arm. In the early days they’d done all those things and they had talked about anything and everything—or so he’d thought. Now he realised there was a huge part of her psyche she’d kept from him.
He started the car, frowning to himself.
He’d known she’d been damaged by her earlier life when he’d got to know her, of course. He’d just underestimated the extent of the damage and that had been fatal. Or maybe his ego had ridden roughshod over any concerns he might have had, telling him he would be able to deal with any difficulties in the future.
He nosed the powerful car out of the car park and onto the road beyond, deep in thought. But all that was relative now. One thing was for sure, she wouldn’t have responded to him as she’d done last night if she didn’t still care for him, deep down somewhere. And when he’d asked her if she loved him she hadn’t said no. Admittedly, she hadn’t said yes either …
He’d call her tonight, as she’d suggested. Everything in him wanted to come back here and bang
on the door till she let him in so he could convince her how much he loved her, but something told him that would accomplish nothing. He’d played the waiting game for months, hadn’t he? He could play it a little longer. But this time on his terms. She wouldn’t go back on her word, she’d work at Hillview and he knew how fond she was of his mother. That was the reason he’d suggested this in the first place.
Well, he conceded in the next moment. Not the only reason. It was true his mother’s heart wasn’t good since the hip operation but she hadn’t been quite so…difficult about the garden as he’d led Melanie to believe. But Hillview’s grounds did need a complete overhaul and his mother, albeit with a very pointed glance at his and Melanie’s wedding portrait, which still kept pride of place over the mantelpiece in her sitting room, had said she wouldn’t allow a stranger in to do the work. He knew his mother was with him one hundred per cent; she’d loved Melanie like a daughter and grieved for her daily.
He’d drive back to the house, shower and change his clothes, and go to the office after a pot of strong black coffee, and ring Melanie tonight. And he had no intention of fooling himself the road to getting her back was going to be easy, he just knew it was a road he’d keep walking until… He shook his head. There was no until. He’d walk it. End of story.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT HADN’T been a particularly exhausting day, not compared to some, but when Melanie walked into the cottage that evening she felt bone-weary. Try as she might she’d been unable to think of anything else but Forde all day, endless post-mortems addling her brain until she barely knew which end of her was up. If James had asked her once if she was OK, he’d asked her a dozen times. She wondered what her very able assistant would have said if she’d told him she was verging on a cataclysmic nervous breakdown, she thought wryly, going through the nightly routine of taking off her boots on the mat and then heading for the stairs. Laughed, most likely, because he wouldn’t have taken her seriously. James thought she was the ultimate cool, collected, modern woman. Everyone did. Only Forde had ever understood the real her.
She mentally slapped herself for the thought. None of that. If she was going to take up the threads of this new life again—threads that had nearly been broken last night—then she had to control her mind. Simple. Only it wasn’t.
After turning on the taps for a warm bath, she went through to the bedroom, steeling herself to glance at the bed. It was rumpled and very, very empty. A shaft of physical pain made her wince. Grimly, she stripped off the covers and dumped them in her linen basket for a wash, opening the windows wide to let in the perfumed night air. It was her imagination that she could still smell Forde’s unique scent—a mixture of the expensive aftershave he favoured and his own chemical make-up, which turned into an intoxicating fragrance on his male skin.
It was as she was slipping off her jeans that she noticed the little ball of paper in a corner of the room where it had clearly been thrown. Her note. Oh, Forde, Forde …
She shut her eyes for a moment but tears still seeped beneath her closed lids. What must he have felt like reading it? But she couldn’t go there. She mustn’t. Walking across the room, she bent and picked it up. She didn’t straighten the paper out but held the little ball in one hand, stroking where he’d touched with one finger, guilt and shame washing over her.
She continued to cry all the time she was in the bath, but after she’d washed her hair and dried herself, she splashed her hot face with cold water and took stock. No more crying. She was done.
She pulled on an old pair of comfortable cotton pyjamas and looped her damp hair into a high bun, before going downstairs and fixing herself something to eat with the groceries she’d collected on the way home. It was hard to force the food down; she was on tenterhooks waiting for Forde’s call, but she managed to clear her plate and her full stomach helped to quieten her jangling nerves some.
The call came at eight o’clock.
‘Hi.’ His voice was cool and steady. She expected him to ask how she was or mention her ignominious flight before he awoke that morning, but, Forde being Forde, he didn’t do the expected. ‘We need to iron out the details for you to work at Hillview. You said you had some conditions?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice came out as a squeak and she cleared her throat. His rich, smoky tones had brought a whole rush of emotions she could have done without. ‘But before I start, are you sure Isabelle will want me around after—after everything?’
‘After you walking out and demanding a divorce, you mean?’ His even voice belied the content of his words. ‘Quite sure. My mother has always taken the view that what goes on between a couple is their business and theirs alone. You know her, you should realise that. Now, your conditions?’
Melanie felt she’d been thoroughly put in her place, and her voice was crisp when she said, ‘Firstly, in spite of what you’ve just said, I shall need to come and see Isabelle and discuss whether she wants me to do the job. If she does, then I’ll take it, but all the arrangements will be between myself and your mother. I don’t want you involved.’
‘Can you see my mother letting me be involved?’ he asked drily.
‘What I mean is—’
‘What you mean is that you don’t want me around, popping in for a visit, things like that?’
It was exactly what she meant. ‘I can’t stop you visiting your mother,’ she prevaricated awkwardly, ‘but in the circumstances it would be better all round if you tried to avoid doing so when I’m there, I guess.’ ‘Noted.’
Oh, hell, this was going worse than she’d imagined. ‘Of course if there’s a crisis of some kind with Isabelle’s health—’
‘I’ll be allowed on the premises,’ he finished for her.
‘Look, Forde—’
‘Next condition,’ he said politely.
Melanie took a deep breath. She was not going to let him get under her skin. ‘James and I are working on a job at the moment and there’s another lined up straight afterwards, which cannot wait, but it won’t take long. We were due to begin a fairly substantial project mid-September but I’ve been in touch with the people concerned and they’re happy to delay a while. In fact they’ve said they’d prefer the work doing in the spring because—’ She faltered; too late she wished she hadn’t begun the sentence. ‘Because the lady is expecting a baby at the end of October and hasn’t been too well lately. Her husband feels it would have been a little stressful for her. So, we’ve a space for Isabelle if she wants it.’
‘Business is good by the sound of it.’
She swallowed hard. ‘Yes, yes, it is.’
‘One thing I must make clear, and this isn’t to be shared with my mother. I intend to pay for the work, my Christmas present to her, but as she’s somewhat proud at the best of times I shan’t mention it until the job is finished. With that in mind, there will be no need to worry about getting anything but the best in materials and so on, but you might like to quote her a substantially lower price than is realistic. Once you’ve priced the job and given me an estimate, you have my word I will pay in full whenever you wish. Understood?’
She took a moment to consider his words. She had intended to do the work at the very lowest margin she could manage, but if Forde was paying it would mean she could price it the same way she would do for anyone else. And she could understand why Forde was keeping it a secret until it was a fait accompli. Isabelle was extraordinarily proud of her successful son but had always refused to accept a penny from him, declaring Forde’s father’s death had left her mortgage free and with a nest egg in the form of a life assurance her husband had taken out some years before he’d died. Having had Forde late in life at the age of forty-three, Isabelle also had a very good pension from the civil service where she’d been employed all her working life before leaving to become a full-time mother when Forde was born.
Melanie cleared her throat. ‘I understand. It might be helpful to me if payment for the bulk of the materials I use could be given as the job progres
ses. Cash flow and so on.’
‘Fine. When can you talk to her?’
‘Tomorrow evening?’ Better to get it over with.
‘Good. I’ll ring her tonight and tell her I’ve suggested you for the work and you’re agreeable, depending on the job when you assess it, and you’ll be in contact tomorrow. OK? Anything else?’ he added crisply.
It was totally unfair, not to mention perverse, but his businesslike tone was making her want to scream. Last night they’d indulged in wild, abandoned sex and she’d slept in his arms, and he was talking as though he were discussing a contract with some colleague or other. Keeping her voice as devoid of emotion as his, Melanie said, ‘I don’t think so at this stage.’
‘Goodnight, then.’ And the phone went dead.
Melanie stared blankly across the room. ‘You pig.’ But at least she didn’t feel like crying any more. Throwing something, yes, but not crying.
Isabelle picked up the phone on the second ring the next evening, and was as gentle and courteous as she’d always been. So it was, promptly at two o’clock the following Sunday afternoon, normally her housework and catch-up day, Melanie presented herself at Forde’s mother’s fine Victorian house situated some ten miles or so from the home she and Forde had shared.
She was so nervous she was trembling as she rang the bell, but it was a uniformed nurse who opened the door rather than Isabelle. The woman showed her into Isabelle’s comfortable sitting room where a wood fire crackled in the grate despite the warm weather, for all the world as though she were a stranger rather than her patient’s daughter-in-law, which led Melanie to believe the nurse wasn’t aware she was Forde’s wife.
Isabelle confirmed this the moment the nurse had shut the door, leaving them alone. ‘Hello, my dear.’ Forde’s mother was sitting on a sofa pulled close to the fire and she lifted up her face for Melanie to kiss her cheek as she’d always done in the past, before patting the seat beside her. ‘Sit down. I didn’t tell Nurse Bannister who you were. She’s a nosy soul and always poking her nose into this and that. Thank heaven she’ll be leaving at the end of next week and not a day too soon. I can’t wait to have my house back to myself.’
