Her heartbeat leapfrogged. She had given her ring to James and he had promised to return it to Rollo. Given their history, she hadn’t wanted there to be any risk of confusion. Or even the slightest possibility that she might have to see him again.
Although there was no chance of that happening. In his own words, the month they’d spent together had been a month too long.
The pain caught her off guard and, lifting up the condiments, she ran her cloth over the mustard and ketchup bottles, grateful for the distraction of physical activity.
Not that she was going to give in to the pain. She was stronger now. Sadder too. But determined to make her life matter. Which was why, when she’d saved up enough money, she was going to university to study English. She’d always wanted to go to university but had never thought she was good enough, and being an actress had been a legitimate way to disguise that self-doubt.
But she was done with being other people. Now she was going to be herself, and if that meant failing and facing up to her fears, then so be it. There was no shame in trying hard or finding something a challenge. Only in lying to others and oneself.
Her lips curved upwards. It wasn’t quite a smile—she wasn’t there yet—but maybe when David came home tomorrow she’d be ready. Although, knowing her twin, he’d probably already guessed. After all, he knew her better than anyone. As well as he knew himself.
And just like that, her head began to spin, her words raising a memory of another restaurant, a pair of green eyes, and a deeper voice than her own saying softly, ‘You’re different. I know you as well as I know myself.’
‘Are we done here, Daisy?’
She jerked her head up, heart pounding. Her dad was standing in the doorway.
Outside in the street, the traffic lights had changed to green and cars were streaming over the crossroads and somehow it soothed her. Life carried on; her life too, and it was a good life. She had a loving family, a job and now she had a future.
Turning towards her father, she nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m done. Let’s go home.’
* * *
‘What time is David getting here again?’
Daisy groaned. ‘I told you, Mom. He doesn’t need a lift. He wants to get a cab.’
Her mom frowned. ‘And you think that’s okay?’
‘Of course. He caught a train from New York. I think he can manage a ten-minute cab ride.’
Her mother’s face cleared. ‘In that case I’m going to nip across to Sarah’s to borrow her square tin. Then I can make the cake and you can ice it.’
Two hours later, Daisy was sitting at the table in her parents’ backyard, trying to ice a message onto the top of her brother’s favourite triple-layered chocolate-mousse cake.
He wasn’t due home for at least an hour. Which was lucky, she thought seconds later as, glancing down, she saw that she’d made the letters far too big, so there was only room to fit ‘Welcome Ho’ across the top of the cake.
She sighed. Why was she doing the icing anyway? Her skill set in the kitchen was pretty much limited to peeling and slicing.
Dropping the icing bag, she looked up towards the kitchen window. ‘Mom! Mom!’ she yelled. ‘I think you should do this. Otherwise it’s just going to be a mess!’
From somewhere inside the house, she heard the doorbell ring and, rolling her eyes, she cursed softly. Great! It was probably Sarah. Now her mom would chat for hours and then it would be all Daisy’s fault when the cake looked as if it had been iced by a hyperactive five-year-old.
Except it wasn’t a woman speaking. It was a man. Her body stilled. And, judging by the excitement in her mother’s voice, it was not just any man. It was her brother. Damn, David! It was so typical of him to arrive early.
But suddenly she was grinning, her face splitting from ear to ear, and, jumping to her feet, she ran up the steps towards the house.
And stopped.
It wasn’t David walking slowly across the deck.
It was Rollo.
Time had numbed her pain. But now it returned, more acute and intense than ever, together with a panic that seeped over her like melted tar, gluing her body to the spot.
‘Hi.’
At the sound of his voice her skin seemed to shrivel over her bones. It was the voice she heard at night when she slept, and in daytime whenever her mind was idle.
It was a voice she’d learnt to love. A voice that made her want to run and never stop running.
‘How did you find out where I lived?’
Her heart was turning over and over in her chest like one of those mechanical toy monkeys. She wanted to touch him so badly it hurt. To reach out and caress that beautiful face. To hold him close and listen to him breathe. Only she couldn’t. He wasn’t hers to touch or caress or hold. He never had been.
‘I asked David.’
His eyes were fixed on hers, and the expression on his face was nothing like his usual cool self-assurance. He looked hesitant, uncertain, like a man dying of thirst who thought he was seeing water for the first time in days.
She shook her head in shock. ‘I don’t believe you.’ The thought of David betraying her hurt almost as much as Rollo’s sudden reappearance in her life. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘I didn’t give him a choice.’
Anger surged through, washing away the hurt and fear. She stepped towards him, fists curling. ‘What did you do? Did you threaten him?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Why “of course”? That’s what you do, isn’t it?’
He ran a hand over his face and for the first time she noticed the dark shadows under his eyes, the slight hollowness in his cheeks. But she stonewalled the flicker of concern, watching in silence as he struggled for control.
‘I just told him I needed to see you,’ he said finally.
She stared at him, eyes widening with disbelief. ‘You’re joking, right? He knows what you did. He knows you blackmailed and humiliated and abandoned me. He wouldn’t want you anywhere near me.’
Tears filled her throat and for a moment she couldn’t speak, couldn’t even look at him. But, no matter how hurt she was inside, she wasn’t going to let herself fall apart in front of Rollo Fleming.
‘Get out of this yard and stay away from me. And stay away from my family.’
‘Daisy, please. I want—’
She flinched at the rawness in his voice. But as he took a step towards her she backed away, her hand raised up like a shield.
‘It doesn’t matter what you want, Rollo. I can’t give it to you. Don’t you understand? There’s nothing left. Before I met you, I had a home and a job. It was only a room in my brother’s apartment and a job I hated, but it was mine. It was my life. And you forced me to give it all up.’
She was fighting to breathe and, despite the heat of the day, she felt cold—icy cold. And so alone. Just seeing him again reminded her of the pain of his absence. Of how badly she missed him.
She stared at his face. His beauty broke her heart.
Or it would have done if he hadn’t already broken it.
Crossing her arms in front of her chest, trying to contain the pain and the misery, she lifted her chin. ‘I gave you my loyalty and you told me it was worthless. You said being with me was a sacrifice you weren’t prepared to make.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ He shook his head, his eyes suddenly too bright, his voice strained. ‘I wasn’t talking about my sacrifice. I was talking about yours.’
His shoulders rose and fell.
‘What do you mean?’ she said shakily.
‘When you told me at the apartment that I didn’t need to blackmail you...that you would help me get the building... I knew you meant it. I knew you’d be there for me.’
‘So why did you throw it all away, then?’ she stormed at him. ‘We were drinking champagne. Celebrating our engagement and your deal. And then you told James it was all a sham.’
She bit her lip. Even though fury burned like fire beneath her s
kin, she couldn’t stop herself from caring about him. About the promise he’d made and now irretrievably broken.
Some of her anger faded. ‘I’m sorry you lost the building.’
‘You’re sorry?’ He frowned, his mouth twisting. ‘How? Why?’
She looked past him, trying to sift through the tangle of her emotions to something neutral.
‘I know how much it meant to you.’
He nodded, his face distant and shadowed. ‘It’s what I wanted my whole life. But it doesn’t matter anymore.’
With an effort, she forced herself to sound cool, pragmatic. ‘You did your best.’
His head jerked up, and the air seemed to tremble around him.
‘You don’t understand. I don’t care about the deal. I don’t care about the building or about the promise I made. I care about you.’
Her heart lurched, and beneath her feet the ground seemed to lurch too.
‘No. You don’t get to say that. Not here, not now.’
The tears she had been trying to hold back began to fall and angrily she wiped her face.
‘I’m not crying because I care,’ she managed finally. ‘So don’t think I am. I’m crying because I’m angry. With you.’
‘I know. And you have every right to be angry. I treated you so badly.’ His voice cracked and he breathed out raggedly. ‘I wish I could go back and stop myself behaving like that.’
‘You hurt me,’ she raged at him. ‘Humiliated me. Discarded me like I was last year’s overcoat. You didn’t just walk out on your deal. You walked out on me. You left me—’
Suddenly she couldn’t bear it any more. She wanted him gone.
‘Just go, Rollo, please.’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not? Why did you even come here, anyway?’
He reached into his pocket, fumbling inside, and then suddenly she blinked, a flash of gold and green momentarily blinding her.
‘Where did you get that?
It was the ring he had given her. The ring she had returned.
‘From James. He came to see me. He gave it to me. He also gave me a pretty hard time. Told me a few home truths.’ His face was drawn. ‘I deserved them.’ He drew a steadying breath. ‘He told me I was a fool for letting you go. That you stood up for me after I left.’
Her cheeks grew warm, and she looked away. ‘I did. Which makes me the fool, not you.’
‘Daisy...’
He spoke quietly, but something in his voice tugged at her heart and she turned reluctantly, her pulse leaping frantically in her throat.
‘He said you loved me.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘Was that true?’
His skin was stretched tight across his cheekbones.
A shiver passed through her, but she couldn’t lie to Rollo—no matter how much it hurt to tell the truth.
She nodded mutely.
‘And what about now? Is it still true now?’
His eyes bored into her, reaching inside so there was nowhere to hide.
She nodded again.
His chest heaved, and he breathed out shakily. ‘Then marry me.’
His voice was so quiet she could barely hear him. But his words punctured her skin like nails.
She stared at him numbly, her brain frozen. ‘You don’t want to marry me, Rollo. You never did. I was just a means to an end.’
‘At the start.’
His eyes were feverish and she could see that he was trembling, his whole body shaking like a marathon runner.
‘But then it changed. I changed. Only I didn’t know how to tell you.’
His face was tight with emotion.
‘Tell me what?’ she whispered.
‘That I love you,’ he said hoarsely.
And the last of her grief and pain was forgotten.
‘I don’t deserve you, Daisy. But I love you. And I want you to be my wife. For real, this time. That’s why I had to leave. I knew you hated lying to the Dunmores. But you would have kept doing it—for me. And I couldn’t bear that, so I had no choice. Or rather, I had a choice. And I chose you.’
Her heart tumbled over in her chest and a wild, dizzying happiness that was tinged with sadness swelled inside her.
‘It was your dream. You gave up your dream for me.’
He shook his head.
‘My dream’s right here.’
Reaching out, he took her hands.
‘And I have a confession. You were right. After I told James about my father he agreed to sell to me. We signed the contracts this morning. That’s why I couldn’t come before. I wanted there to be no confusion about why I want you to be my wife.’
His expression was so earnest, so eager, that Daisy couldn’t decide if she wanted to laugh or cry. ‘So I’m just a bonus?’
He laughed unsteadily. ‘I’d say yes, but that icing bag looks dangerous!’
She smiled. ‘In my hands it’s a lethal weapon. Take a look at the cake if you don’t believe me.’
His face shifted, grew serious. ‘You’re not a bonus, Daisy. You’re the jackpot. I love you so much. I’ll always love you.’
‘Always as in for ever?’ she said shakily.
Nodding, he gently lifted up her hand and slid the ring onto her finger.
For a moment they stared at one another in silence, like survivors from a storm. Then, fiercely, he pulled her against him, burying his face in her hair, his breath warm and shaky against her throat.
‘I was so scared,’ he whispered.
Gently, she stroked his cheek.
‘Of what?’
‘That James had got it wrong. That maybe you wouldn’t forgive me.’
Her heart swelled protectively. ‘I was scared too. Scared I’d lost you.’
‘That won’t happen. It can’t. You’re part of me. The truest part.’
He held her gaze. The emotion in his eyes was raw, naked, unguarded; and she loved him more than ever for being able to show his vulnerability and need for her.
She rested her cheek against his, soaking in his love. Finally, she sighed.
‘We should probably tell my parents what’s going on. They must be freaking out by now.’ She frowned. ‘I wonder why they haven’t come outside...’
Rollo screwed up his face. ‘That might be my fault. I may have been a little...impassioned when I was trying to explain myself. I haven’t really done the whole parent thing in a long time.’
She bit her lip, a question forming in her mind. Only before she could ask it he pulled her close—so close that she could feel the beating of his heart.
‘I’ve been so angry for so long. With my past. With my mother. You made me face that anger and face my fears. But—’
‘You need to see your mother,’ she said gently. ‘And Rosamund.’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m glad.’ Watching his beautiful mouth curve upwards, she smiled teasingly. ‘I always wanted a sister.’ Her fingers curled into his shirt. ‘But nowhere near as much as I want you.’
And then she pulled him closer and they kissed, losing themselves in each other, in desire, and in longing and need and love.
EPILOGUE
‘YOU ARE KEEPING an eye on the time, aren’t you, Dad?’ Taking one last look at her reflection in the full-length mirror, Daisy glanced anxiously at her father’s face. ‘I don’t want to be late.’
Her father shook his head. ‘You’re not late.’ He paused, his eyes softening. ‘But even if you were, you’d be more than worth the wait. You look beautiful, Daisy. Truly lovely.’
She smiled. ‘You’re my dad, Dad! You’re supposed to think that.’
‘Yes, I am.’ Leaning back against the sofa, her father smiled back at her. ‘But that doesn’t make it any less true. And if you don’t believe me, wait until Rollo sees you.’
Picturing her husband-to-be’s reaction, Daisy felt her skin grown warm. She knew just how he would look at her...the way his green eyes would
narrow and darken. Her heart contracted. Last night he had stayed in Manhattan, and she had travelled to the Hamptons with the rest of the wedding party. And even though it had been less than a day she missed him.
As though reading her thoughts, her father reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘Not long to go,’ he said quietly.
Daisy nodded. Her dad was right. In less than an hour, and exactly one year after they’d met in his office, she would become Mrs Daisy Fleming.
They had decided on a small, intimate ceremony on the beach at Swan Creek. Daisy had always loved the idea of being married barefoot, with just the sound of waves instead of music, but she’d expected Rollo to want some huge high-profile society wedding.
He’d been adamant. The wedding was not for show. Only those nearest and dearest to them would be invited: her parents and David, his mother and Rosamund, and, of course, the Dunmores. And now it was really happening.
She shivered with nervous excitement.
‘Are you cold?’ It was her father’s turn to look anxious. ‘Do you need a cardigan or something?’
Dropping her gaze to her elegant white silk slip dress, Daisy laughed. ‘Honestly, Dad! I’m about to get married. I’m not going to wear a cardigan.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not even cold.’
It wasn’t. A light breeze was blowing in from the ocean, and even though it was early evening the air was pleasantly warm.
‘Must be wedding nerves, then.’ Her father spoke lightly, but there was a glimmer of concern in his eyes.
She shook her head. ‘I’ve never been more certain of anything, Dad.’
And with good reason.
A lot had happened over the last year. In collaboration with James Dunmore, Rollo had renovated his old apartment block into modern but affordable family homes, and Daisy had successfully completed her first year at university. More important, though, he had worked hard to forgive his mother, and together he and Daisy had spent time getting to know her and Rosamund. They weren’t quite a family yet, but there was love and the beginnings of trust.
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