For freak’s sake, can you hear yourself? Are you insane? What is wrong with you?
He didn’t know. He felt possessed. As though there were two Olivers at war within him—the Oliver who was in love with Mackenzie, who believed in her, who was already planning a future with her, and the Oliver who had been badly burned by Edie’s lies and was still recovering from six years of deceit and betrayal. One part wanted to believe, to trust, while the other wanted to make sure that he would never, ever put his faith in someone or something without being absolutely certain that it wouldn’t turn on him.
Nothing in life comes with that kind of guarantee. Nothing.
Strudel strained against the leash, keen to return home, but he remained staring at Mackenzie’s front door, rooted there by his suspicion and jealousy and doubt.
Headlights flashed across him as someone turned into a driveway farther up the street. It was enough to make him move, and he turned away from Mackenzie’s place and trudged up the driveway to his aunt’s house.
Strudel resumed her spot by the fire the moment they entered, but he was too agitated to sit. He hated the way he was thinking, yet he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t push the ugly image of Mackenzie in bed with Langtry out of his mind.
Langtry touching her. Kissing her.
He thumped his palm against the side of his head, trying to dislodge the picture, but it was stuck there, held in place by pride and anger and hurt and self-doubt.
Call her. Call her and listen to her voice and remind yourself of who she is and who you are.
Relief flooded him. He could totally call her without coming across as some kind of possessive, jealous stalker. Even though that was how he felt right this second. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and dialed her number. The phone rang. He moved to the window so he could see her place.
The phone rang, and rang. His grip tightened on the handset. He stared at her house, willing her to pick up. Finally, it went through to voice mail.
What the...?
He glared at her empty, dark kitchen window, a sudden, violent rage ripping through him. What was she doing that she couldn’t answer the phone? What were they doing? How could she do this to him?
For long seconds he stood raging at the window, literally shaking with the force of his own fury. He wanted to smash the glass in front of him. He wanted to pick up the nearest chair and hurl it through like a cowboy in a saloon fight. He wanted to kick holes in the wall and tear pictures from the walls and drag the house down around his ears.
He didn’t.
He stood and shook and endured his own terrible anger. Then he forced himself to walk into the kitchen. He sat at the table and clasped his hands in front of him and tried to get a grip on his own sanity.
He didn’t know where all this anger had come from, but he knew it wasn’t about Mackenzie. This was all for Edie and himself. This was about his failed marriage, not the woman he’d fallen so precipitously and recklessly in love with. Trouble was, at this moment in time, he couldn’t for the life of him separate the two things.
He dropped his head into his hands, fingers pressing against his skull. A single, hot tear ran down his cheek and dropped onto the table.
For the first time he admitted to himself that the past five months had been damned hard. The hardest of his life. Dealing with Edie, keeping up appearances for all his friends and his business partner and his brother. Assuring everyone that he was a bit messed up but that essentially he was okay.
On one level, it was true. But on another, it was a thin, fragile lie.
He’d believed in his marriage. Even though he could see now that it had been flawed, he’d believed in it and invested in him and Edie. And she had smashed it all to pieces, destroying parts of him in the process.
In the midst of that chaos he’d met Mackenzie, and the world had seemed good again. He’d fallen, hard, eating up the happiness and certainty that she seemed to bring.
But nothing in life was certain. Certainly, people weren’t.
He had no idea how long he sat at the kitchen table. A long time. He grew colder and colder. At some point, Strudel joined him, curling up at his feet. Finally the need for heat forced him to his feet and into the living room. He stoked the fire and threw on another log and stood staring into the flames, feeling depleted and exhausted and oddly numb.
When the fire was blazing again he grabbed a blanket and stretched out on the couch. Strudel jumped up to lie across his legs and he drifted into almost-sleep, his thoughts chasing themselves in circles, indistinct images flashing across his mind’s eye.
He must have eventually drifted off properly, because when he woke it was very dark, the only light the glow of the embers in the fire grate. His neck was sore from being crooked at an awkward angle on the arm of the couch. He sat up slowly and circled his shoulders, then his neck. Then he stood and placed the screen in front of the fire.
“Come on Strudel, bedtime.”
He wasn’t sure what made him check out the front window before he headed for bed. Some innate, primitive instinct, perhaps.
He pulled the curtain aside enough to see into the street, expecting to see nothing but empty road where the Ferrari had been.
The big red sports car was still there, its paintwork shining dully in the moonlight.
Oliver stared at it for a long moment as an echo of his earlier rage and jealousy rippled through him. He closed his eyes.
He believed in Mackenzie. He really did.
But he couldn’t do this.
His brother had been right. It was way, way too soon for him to be throwing himself headfirst into a serious relationship. Even if he was crazy, madly in love with Mackenzie. Even if he felt as though life was full of possibilities when he was with her.
There was too much pent-up emotion pushed down inside him. Too much ugliness. He was nowhere near ready to trust again. Nowhere near ready to place his heart and happiness in the hands of another human being. Even if that person was Mackenzie, whom he admired and loved and desired.
Maybe especially if it was her, because if she failed him, if she was even now lying sated in her ex-husband’s arms...Oliver couldn’t guarantee his own sanity. He really couldn’t.
He didn’t have it in him to risk that kind of betrayal and unhappiness again. Not at the moment. Maybe that made him a coward of the highest order, but so be it.
He turned away from the window and walked to the kitchen. Even though he’d put the fire screen in place, he wanted to be sure the fire was out so he poured a jug of water onto the ashes. Smoke and steam billowed up the chimney. Once he was satisfied that the fire was extinguished, he went to the bedroom and packed his bag. It didn’t take long, no more than ten minutes. It took a little longer to collect his tools from around the house, but within half an hour he’d checked the shed, locked the back door and the windows and loaded the car. His mind carefully, thankfully blank, he ushered Strudel into the backseat, then went to secure the front door.
The car engine sounded loud in the stillness of the early hours. He reversed into the street and drove away, not once looking back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MACKENZIE WASN’T SURE what woke her. A sound out in the street, maybe Mr. Smith moving around out in the hallway. She sat up in bed, blinking in the darkness. Only then did she register the dark outline of a figure in her bedroom doorway.
“It’s just me,” Patrick said. “It’s bloody cold out on the couch.”
“Then grab another blanket from the hall cupboard. You know where they are.”
“I was thinking I could maybe get in with you. Share some body heat.”
She didn’t need to see his face to know that he was wearing his winsome, cheeky little-boy-lost expression. She wasn’t exactly surprised by his approach. She’d been expecting it from the moment he’d pointed out that he’d drunk too much wine with dinner to be safe driving home.
“As if, Patrick.” She didn’t bother hiding her exasperation.
“We’ll just spoon, I swear. I know you’ve got something going on with what’s-his-name next door.”
“Go spoon with Smitty on the couch. He’s good at the kind of spooning you’re talking about, by all accounts.”
She waited for him to go, but instead he entered the room. The bed sank as he sat on the corner.
She sighed heavily and reached out to flick on the bedside light.
He was wearing nothing but his jeans, the fly wide-open, his hair mussed and endearingly ruffled. His body was camera ready, with clearly defined abdominal muscles and hairless pectoral muscles.
She guessed she was supposed to be overcome by desire at the sight of his gym-honed physique. Or something like that.
She pulled the covers higher so that her shoulders were warm. “I’m not going to sleep with you, Patrick.”
“Okay. I respect that.” He studied her, his expression pensive. “I miss you, Mac. That’s really why I came down today. I wanted your advice, but I miss you.”
Not so long ago, she might have been moved by his confession, even though she understood that it came from a place of self-interest and was bound to end in nothing but unhappiness for both of them. Tonight, she felt nothing beyond a tinge of sadness that Patrick still clung to something that had never worked.
“Did you miss me when I was in hospital? When I was in rehab for all those months?” she asked.
“I know I was a shit, not coming to see you. But you have to understand, seeing you like that...it was bloody hard, Mac. I didn’t feel as though I had anything to offer you. So I stayed away, because I figured you didn’t need to take on my grief and whatever as well as your own.”
“Big of you.”
His gaze dropped to the floor. “You’re angry with me.”
She thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I am. But mostly disappointed. At the very least, I thought we cared about each other as friends.”
“We do. Jesus, there’s no one else in my life like you, Mac. You’re up there on a pedestal, all on your own.”
“And yet you couldn’t put aside your own stuff to be there for me when I needed you.”
It wasn’t a question.
He flicked a look at her and she saw that his gaze was anguished.
“I’m sorry, Mac. I know you think I’m a selfish, pointless bastard, but I do love you. More than anyone or anything.”
She believed him, but his love was not the same as her love. Her love was all-encompassing and forgiving and resilient. Her love would have demanded that she sleep night and day by her lover’s side if he’d been in a life-threatening accident. If Oliver had been torn apart and crushed by flying metal, she would have moved heaven and earth to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that he was loved, that they would get through whatever lay ahead together. Then she would have followed through on her promises, because his happiness meant more to her than her own.
She stilled as she registered the thought, a little stunned by the insight she’d suddenly gained into her own feelings.
She was in love with Oliver. Profoundly so.
“What?” Patrick asked.
She shook her head. She wasn’t about to tell him she was in love with Oliver—Oliver should be the first person to hear those words, not her ex-husband. It was nothing to do with Patrick. At all. He was the past, and Oliver was the future.
An almost unbearable happiness swept through her as she absorbed the truth of the realization. It didn’t matter that Oliver lived in a different city in a different state. She could move, or he could. It was irrelevant. The important thing was that they’d found each other in this tiny sea-swept town on the edge of nowhere. Amazingly. Impossibly.
She glanced at the clock, wondering if it was too early to go next door and slip into Oliver’s bed.
“Another private joke, I take it?” Patrick said.
“Just private.”
Patrick’s gaze was searching. “You’re serious about this Oliver guy, then?”
“Yes.”
Patrick dropped his gaze to the floor. “I always knew it would happen sometime. That you’d meet someone else.”
He looked lonely and sad, sitting there in his seducer’s clothes. A beautiful, confused man who didn’t know what he wanted.
“It’ll happen for you, too, Patrick. If you want it to.”
His head came up. “You think I didn’t want it with you?”
She chose her words carefully. This wasn’t about them, after all. They’d been finished for a long time. “I think that we never really understood each other.”
His mouth thinned, his expression becoming bitter. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“You don’t?”
“I think that if you’d put half the energy into our relationship that you put into your career, we’d still be married.”
She managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Barely. Patrick had always considered her career the enemy, but it was an old battle and a pointless one and she wasn’t prepared to go there yet again.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” he said. “You can’t see it.”
“Patrick, I don’t want to get into this stuff. It’s late, I’m tired...”
Patrick stood.
“You’re a great producer, Mac. You know why? Because you’re fearless. You know what you want and you don’t stop until you get it. You don’t let anyone or anything get in your way. But you never believed in us like that. You always held back. Always.”
He left the room. Mackenzie stared at the empty doorway, feeling more than a little sideswiped. She’d put off Oliver tonight to help Patrick out—and this was her thanks? An unsolicited, sulky critique of her commitment as a wife.
She turned out the light and turned onto her side and told herself not to let him get to her. He’d wanted something from her and he hadn’t got it and he’d simply been striking out. She was not going to lie here and stew over what he’d said. She refused to play into his hands so readily.
Except...
On a very basic level, he was right. She had always held back with him. Even at the very height of their relationship, in the heady days when they’d decided to get married and were making plans for the future, she’d always made sure there were options available if she needed them. She’d loved Patrick, but she’d never felt safe with him. She’d never felt as though he would be there, no matter what. And so she’d always kept a small part of herself in reserve. And when push had come to shove, when she’d finally acknowledged to herself that they were fundamentally incompatible, she hadn’t gone to the mat to save her marriage.
Patrick was definitely right about that.
She stared at the wall and wondered what would have happened if she had fought for her marriage the way Patrick said he wished she had. If she’d insisted on them having counseling, if she’d pushed him to talk to her more, to share with her more, and to be prepared to listen to her and really engage. Would they have survived? Would they still be together now?
Her gut said no. Mackenzie didn’t believe that people were doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over, that personalities were intractable and behaviors immovable. But she did believe that the fundamentals of most people remained the same throughout their lifetimes. People who were generous usually remained generous, unless life taught them not to be. And people who saw the world through the prism of their own needs first and foremost would always be that way.
Patrick was one of those people. It was simply the way he’d been conditioned. And maybe that would shift for him if he met someone who took him outside of himself...or maybe not. But certainly that person had not been her, and she had not been prepared to fight for both of them. Because that was what it had come down to. Patrick said he’d wanted her to fight for them, but he hadn’t been in the trenches, either.
She closed her eyes. This was all ancient history, and while she was mildly pissy with Patrick for dumping on her like that, she wasn’t going to lose sl
eep over it. It simply wasn’t worth it.
* * *
WHEN MACKENZIE WOKE again it was daylight and she could hear someone moving around the house. For a moment she let herself hope that it was Oliver, that he’d let himself in and was doing something sweet and lovely like making her breakfast.
She knew better, though. She pulled on her robe and walked out to find Patrick making himself breakfast in her kitchen. She eyed the crumb-covered counter and the many coffee cups and reminded herself he’d be gone soon.
“Good morning,” he said. He shot her an assessing look.
“If you’re wondering whether or not I’m going to rip your head off, relax. Game, set and match to you.”
“Ah. You don’t even want to play anymore.”
“No, I don’t.”
She wanted to play with Oliver. And she wanted to play for keeps.
She walked to the French doors, pushing the curtains wide so she could see Oliver’s place. There was no movement next door, however. She wondered if he was still in bed.
She glanced at the time and saw it was nearly eight. A perfectly civilized time to call.
She grabbed her phone and discovered the battery was dead. Typical. She padded into the study and plugged it in, waiting for it to come to life. After a minute or so it did and she saw she’d missed a call from Oliver last night.
He was such a sweetie. He’d probably been calling to say good-night. She smiled to herself as she hit the button to return his call. She hoped he was still in bed. She would make him toast and come join him, Patrick be damned.
The phone switched to voice mail almost straightaway. She pulled a face, disappointed, and waited for the beep so she could leave a message.
“Hi, it’s me. I was kind of hoping I could come over and make you breakfast. Call me, okay?” She ended the call to find Patrick watching her.
“Sorry if I’m in the way,” he said.
She shrugged her good shoulder. “It’s fine.”
“Sorry if I was out of line last night, too.”
“Yeah, well. Did you decide what you’re going to do about the movie?”
“I’m going to take it. If I can buy the time from my contract.”
The Other Side of Us (Harlequin Superromance) Page 24
