Make My Wish Come True

by Fiona Harper

  The look in his eyes was pure gratitude, but Juliet wasn’t foolish enough to get caught up in his web again. She stepped away from under the shade of the tree and into the searing sunshine.

  ‘Go home, Marco. But do more than this. Be more than this.’ And then she turned and walked to the end of the beach, stood on the rocky breakwater and stared out into the ocean.

  She heard him leave, heard the shuffle of the sand beneath his feet. Even though she felt a strange kind of sympathy for him, she didn’t turn round, didn’t call after him. There was a time to give and a time to stop giving, and Juliet’s time was now.

  * * *

  JULIET MOVED HER FOREARM to cover her eyes and shifted position slightly on the sunlounger. She was vaguely aware of the squealing of children splashing in the shallows, the call of the seabirds circling high above the beach and the fizz of the waves against the shore. Her book lay forgotten on the sand beside her and her cocktail was going warm.

  The only thing that was spoiling her blissful sunbathing session was the woman on the sunlounger next to her. She kept fidgeting and fussing, pulling things out of her bag and tucking them back in again. Why couldn’t she just lie down and relax like everyone else?

  Eventually, Juliet gave up trying to doze and picked up her book. She’d been on page one hundred and eighty-six the last time she’d put it down, and she stayed on page one hundred and eighty-six for the next twenty minutes.

  Deep in her subconscious things started to float free and rise to the surface.

  Surface.

  Everything had a surface, didn’t it? But it was the sum total of the thing. Sometimes, like an iceberg, it was only the tiniest visible part.

  That’s why she’d been blinded by Marco—his surface. If someone could have tailor-made a man to fulfil her secret fantasy, they couldn’t have come up with anything better than Marco Capello. She should have realised that he’d been too good to be true. No man was that generous in real life—except maybe Will. Good old Will. Somehow, she felt as if she had betrayed him.

  She could have been more cross with Marco if she hadn’t realised she was guilty of doing exactly the same. She gave good ‘surface’, didn’t she? Always pretending everything was lovely, always pretending everything was fine, when really underneath it was all one big horrible mess. But it least in her case, the negative consequences were only for herself.

  But as Juliet tried to read a long paragraph at the bottom of the page for the sixth time, she started to question the accuracy of that assumption. Didn’t her constant need for perfection have all sorts of tiny consequences?

  What about the distance between her and Violet? What about Polly’s insistence on everything being right and just-so? If their mother hadn’t been quite so uptight, maybe they’d have been better off.

  And then there was Gemma.

  And Greg. Maybe the downfall of their marriage wasn’t entirely his fault. Maybe, if she’d admitted she was struggling, instead of just trying to be more and more perfect for him, they might have been able to reclaim some lost ground.

  It was strange, now she was in St Lucia she could look back at the Juliet in Tunbridge Wells, thousands of miles away, and see her with much more clarity than she had been able to when she’d been up close and personal and living her life. No wonder she’d driven herself to the verge of a breakdown.

  The woman next to her sat bolt upright and twisted round to look in the direction of the main pool. ‘You don’t know what time aqua aerobics is, do you?’ she asked Juliet.

  ‘Two o’clock,’ Juliet replied.

  ‘Thanks.’ The woman sighed and shoved her feet into her flip-flops. ‘That’s another forty minutes... I think I’ll go and have a wander around the shop.’

  Juliet watched her go, then put down her book and stared out across the gently rippling turquoise sea.

  She had finally achieved it, that perfect state of relaxation. And she had another three days to exist in this blissful Nirvana now she’d attained it. The only problem was, now that she’d slowed down enough to think properly, she knew exactly what was missing from her perfect holiday.

  Her kids.

  A break from them had been necessary—for them and for her—but two weeks was too long.

  And she had a life waiting for her. Possibly a chance to rescue her relationship with her sister. She’d realised a lot about herself, and Gemma, since she’d been away. Surely she could put some of that new understanding to use to help them make a fresh start?

  And then there was Will. The one solid figure on her horizon. Not a fantasy, but a real man. It was time to get off the fence about him and, surprisingly, even after the rather spectacular implosion of her romance with Marco, she realised she was ready to put fresh seeds into her love life too. Greg wasn’t the only one who could move on.

  From her position on the sunlounger she looked up at the palm fronds above her head, waving in the breeze. Everything was bright and warm and cheerful. Back in Tunbridge Wells it was still that lazy week between Christmas and New Year when everything slowed down and people stayed inside their houses with the fire on, cosy and happy. And despite the glorious warmth on her skin, Juliet wished for just a little nip of frost on her nose.

  St Lucia had been wonderful—a revelation—but it was time to go home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  JULIET’S KITCHEN WAS CLOSE to sparkling. Gemma had scrubbed and cleaned and swept. Maybe this was why Juliet filled her life the way she did. It didn’t actually help, not really, but it was a hell of a lot better than just sitting and moping.

  Violet sloped into the kitchen and put a glass and a plate into the dishwasher. ‘Hey, Auntie Gemma. You okay?’

  Gemma nodded and threw her cloth down on the work surface, sighing.

  Violet tipped her head on one side and looked at her. ‘Boy trouble, huh?’

  ‘Yup.’

  The worst kind.

  Violet walked over and hugged her aunt loosely. ‘I understand,’ was all she said, and Gemma had to agree that she probably did understand. It would be easy to say she was too young, she didn’t know how this felt. But heartache tasted the same at every age.

  She pulled away and muttered, ‘Nothing a few tequilas wouldn’t solve.’ And then she remembered who she was talking to and quickly added, ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Violet laughed and walked away.

  Gemma had been lying, of course. She didn’t think tequila was the answer to this problem. She didn’t think it would dull the throbbing ache in her chest.

  She missed Will, which was totally stupid. He’d only been gone for two days. Not even that if you counted the hours. Which she had.

  She’d seen his car pull out of his drive on the twenty-seventh and somehow she’d known he wasn’t just popping out to get some milk from the supermarket. He was Staying Away. From her. It didn’t help that she knew it was the right thing to do.

  She shook her head and went back to wiping crumbs off the work surface. It was too quiet in the house this morning. The boys had gone to play at Juliet’s friend’s house, Polly was deep into reading her new Guinness Book of World Records, and Violet only wandered out of her bedroom when she had to. Gemma went back to cleaning. She had to fill the empty silence with something.

  When she realised she was wiping down an already spotless kitchen counter she sighed and flopped into one of the chairs surrounding the table. This shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t be feeling like this. She’d had plenty of long-distance relationships due to the nature of her job, often had spent weeks—sometimes months—away from the man in her life, and yet she’d never felt this...empty...before.

  It was then that she heard a noise at the far end of the conservatory. She looked up, and everything around her started to spin. The one stable point was the man standing outs
ide the French doors, looking very much like he wanted to come in.

  Will. He’d come back for her. She could tell that just by the grim intensity of his expression, the way he seemed to be pulling her towards him by the sheer force of his presence. How had she ever thought him average and boring? Had she been blind?

  Slowly, she got up and walked through the kitchen, down to the double doors at the end of the conservatory and turned the key so he could come in. Instead of opening the door for him, she stepped back and let him do it himself.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, as he crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘You went away.’ Wow. Startling powers of observation, Gemma.

  He was looking at her intently. ‘To my sister’s. And now I’m back.’

  Her stupid heart jumped up and down and clapped its hands.

  ‘Why?’

  They both knew this was a bad idea. That’s why he’d gone in the first place.

  He stepped forward, filling the space in the front of her until all she could see was him. ‘To tell you I can’t stay away any more, Gemma. I can’t run away from this...from you. I just need to know if you feel the same way too.’

  Hadn’t she once thought that Will didn’t know how to go after what he wanted, the woman he wanted? Boy, had been wrong. She didn’t say anything, didn’t move, but she her eyes must have given her away, because she saw warmth flood his, and she knew she’d agreed.

  He reached for her hands and held them. His fingers were cold at the tips, but warm everywhere else. ‘After Sam left me I closed down. Even before she left things weren’t that good. The more “out there” she got, the more I felt I had to be her anchor, to be the steady one.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘The boring one.’

  Gemma shook her head, but he carried on.

  ‘So I decided I needed a different kind of woman. Someone safer, easier. Less challenging.’

  Not words she heard the men in her life often use about her, unfortunately. Crazy, complicated, high-maintenance... Those she’d heard in abundance.

  ‘I was wrong,’ Will said. ‘I need someone who’s impulsive, creative...free-spirited to balance me out. I need you, Gemma.’

  His plain, unvarnished words lit something inside her, but she shook her head and pulled her hands out of his, walked back into the kitchen as far as she could go, until she met the cabinets under the window that looked out over the drive.

  Will followed her. She should have known he would. He was just as stubborn as she was. ‘I know it’s not going to be easy, that there are going to be obstacles...’

  One huge, Juliet-sized obstacle, Gemma thought.

  ‘But I want to take that chance,’ he finished.

  Large sticky tears began to roll down her cheeks as she turned to look at him. Oh, she wanted to say yes so badly, to jump into his arms and kiss him senseless, but she couldn’t. And she had to make him see why.

  ‘All my life I’ve unwittingly usurped my sister,’ she told him. ‘I came in and took the lion’s share of our parents’ love and attention—especially my mother’s. I had the opportunities she was denied. There are so many things...’

  So many ways that she hadn’t even realised. Little things. Stupid things. But they all added up to make a bigger pattern.

  She shook her head. ‘If there is even the slightest chance that you and Juliet might have got together, I can’t do it, Will. I can’t be the selfish one again. This time I have to think of her first.’ She dragged the heel of her hand across her cheek and sniffed. ‘Tell me the truth. Was there? A chance?’

  Will wasn’t smiling any more. ‘Yes.’ He looked away. ‘But I don’t think it would have worked out in the long run. I think it would have fizzled out.’

  The tears started up again. ‘Then I can’t do it. I won’t.’

  Will’s control snapped. Up until now she’d sensed he’d been giving her space, keeping a few feet away because that was what she’d silently asked for, but now he stepped in and placed a hand on either side of her face, and while looking into her eyes he wiped the fresh salty tears away with his thumbs. ‘She doesn’t make me feel the way you do, Gemma.’

  And then he was kissing her. This time it wasn’t hot and frantic. It was deep and slow and tender, and she recognised it for what it was. Will understood. That only made the tears flow harder. This was the one man she really didn’t want to hold back from, that she really didn’t want to run from, but she had to.

  So she kissed him back, savouring every touch of his lips, every fluttering sensation that his arms round her, his hands on her body produced, knowing that this very well might be the last time. She was selfish enough to want to make the most of it, to make it count. In that respect she was very much still the old Gemma.

  A sudden noise from the doorway into the hall made them still. Gemma let her hands fall from where they’d been round the back of Will’s head to his shoulders, but she kept her eyes closed and rested her forehead against his. ‘Not now, Polly... Just give us a moment, will you?’

  ‘It’s not Polly.’

  A cold, sick feeling spiked through Gemma. It was like being impaled on a giant icicle. Slowly, she pulled away from Will, felt the cold air rush in between them, and then she turned her head. When she’d gathered up enough courage, she opened her eyes.

  And there, standing in the doorway, was Juliet.

  * * *

  JULIET LOOKED AT HER sister wrapped around her next-door neighbour. Both were frozen in position, leaving Juliet with a tableau that set her insides on fire. That bliss-like state she’d achieved in her final days in St Lucia evaporated.

  ‘You’re b-back,’ Gemma stuttered. ‘You’re not supposed to be here for another three days.’

  ‘Well, it’s just as well I decided to come home early. That was all very enlightening,’ she said, looking from one to the other.

  Gemma’s hands slid off Will’s chest and he stepped away. ‘How long have you been standing there?’ she asked shakily.

  Juliet knew what Gemma was really asking: How much did you hear? She made a careless little gesture, pulling the corners of her mouth down. ‘Oh, since about “She doesn’t make me feel the way you do,’’ I reckon that was long enough.’

  Will stepped forward. ‘Juliet, I...’

  She raised her chin. ‘I think you’d better get out of my house,’ she said evenly.

  But Will didn’t move. He just stared back at her, jaw squared. Juliet knew that look. He was getting ready to defend her sister. Traitor. She was only just keeping a lid on her anger, but now it started to bubble dangerously high, threatening to pop the lid off her iron self-control.

  Gemma laid a hand on his arm. ‘Will, it’s okay... I think Juliet and I need to talk...on our own.’ His head snapped round and he transferred that intense gaze to Gemma. She nodded gently. ‘Really.’

  The silence was thick around them as he took one last long look at Gemma and then left. Juliet listened to his footsteps and waited until she’d heard the front door both open and close again before she turned to her sister.

  She surprised herself with how cool and rational she sounded, especially as she dearly wanted to rip Gemma’s head off.

  ‘How could you?’ she whispered.

  Gemma shook her head and tears were streaming down her cheeks. Normally that would have tugged at Juliet’s heartstrings, but she discovered that a bit of her was now cold and dead. She didn’t feel anything but the slow, poisonous rage building inside.

  Gemma swiped at her cheeks with her hands, and then her words came out in a rush. ‘It’s not what you think! I didn’t try...’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t try to do, Gemma! The fact is, you did it. You’ve been rehashing the same excuse your whole life, I didn’t mean to..., It wa
sn’t my fault..., and that works until you’re about the twins’ age, but at thirty-five I don’t think it holds much weight.’

  Gemma closed her mouth. Juliet could almost see the sentences whirring round her sister’s head. She also saw Gemma entertain then reject every single one. In the end all she said was, ‘I’m sorry.’

  That should have made Juliet happy. She’d been waiting for a straight apology from Gemma for years now, but she found she just didn’t care. The last piece of whatever had connected the two of them had broken the moment she’d come into her kitchen and found Gemma poaching the man who’d liked her first, and she wasn’t sure it was the kind of thing that could ever be mended. In a strange way, it was quite liberating.

  ‘I thought that maybe we could start to repair things between us when I got home,’ she told Gemma, ‘but I don’t think that’s possible now. You obviously have no consideration for me or my feelings, and I can’t do this one-sided thing any more. It’s unhealthy, and I need to think of myself for a change.’

  The look of horror in Gemma’s eyes was almost comical. Her chest heaved and she shook her head. But before she could open that lying mouth of hers, Juliet cut in first. ‘I think you’d better leave too.’

  ‘Juliet... If you’d just let me explain!’

  ‘You can explain all you want, but when it boils down to it, you still had your tongue down Will’s throat when I came in, and nothing’s going to change that.’

  A momentary look of shame washed over Gemma’s features, but then she set her jaw and her eyes glittered.

  ‘So, this is it... You’re finally free, Gemma. I’m cutting you loose. I don’t want your obligatory visits any more. You don’t have to buy the kids guilt presents or make pity calls. I don’t want anything you have to give me.’ And she moved out of the doorway and looked pointedly towards the hall.

  ‘Now?’ Gemma said. ‘You want me to leave right now? We can’t even...’

  ‘Yes, now,’ Juliet said, feeling stronger and more in control of her life than she had done in years. ‘I’m going to go and say hi to my kids and then I’m going to take them to Pizza Express for lunch, and when I get back I would like you to be gone.’