by S. A. Gordon
Now the weekend was over, David was probably already on his way back to London and here she was, waiting to meet the perfect man who wasn’t the perfect boyfriend no matter how much she wanted him to be. Something just wasn’t right between them—or it wasn’t right for her. Liam certainly seemed to think they were right for each other but it only took one glance from David—a look that told her he felt more for her than she’d ever really believed anyone could—for her to confirm, over and over again, that she’d rather live a lifetime with the memory of that glance than spend another hour pretending that she wanted to be in a relationship with Liam.
Caitlin didn’t really know what she was going to say to Liam. She wished she didn’t have to say it. But she couldn’t just not contact him again, or ignore him every time he contacted her. It would be rude, for one thing, and they had never been rude to each other. Plus, she was incapable of being that mean.
She’d tossed up whether or not she should tell Liam in a public place, but Lisa was going to be home all night and that had taken care of the location: she certainly didn’t want to break up with him while her roommate looked on.
She felt hands on her shoulders and immediately stiffened, knowing they had to belong to Liam. Part of her wished he had come back from his weekend away with a new love interest. That would be so convenient. But the familiarity of his touch told her that that hadn’t happened.
“Hi,” she heard, then his lips brushed her cheek.
“Hi,” she echoed as he walked around to face her, his skin ruddy with days spent on slopes under clear skies.
“How are you, gorgeous?” Liam said, leaning in to kiss her on the lips. Caitlin kept her lips closed as he pressed against them. He looked her up and down. “Why are you wearing that? It doesn’t suit you as much as the blue dress does.”
Caitlin’s cheeks burned. “Oh,” she said in a noncommittal tone. “Well, sorry you don’t approve.”
“I just want you to be your best.” He grinned and kissed the top of her head. “You know that.”
Frowning, Caitlin nodded. “Yes. I do. So, how was your day?”
“It was great!” Liam said chirpily. “I resussed this guy after he had a heart attack. It was kind of a buzz, actually.”
“That’s … terrific, Liam.” Caitlin smiled weakly.
Liam frowned at her and tried to take one of her hands, which were resting in her lap, but Caitlin held them firm.
“Something’s up,” he said, drawing back, and Caitlin took a deep breath. She might not feel the same way about Liam as he felt about her, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hurt him. She didn’t want to draw this out, either.
“It is,” she said bluntly in response, nodding her head once. “And I don’t want to waste your time here.”
“What do you mean?” Liam said, crossing his arms high on his chest.
“Liam, this isn’t working out with us.”
“What?” he said, sitting forward on his stool. “How can you say that?”
“Wait.” Caitlin held up a hand. “This isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
“Right,” Liam said, and she could see that he was furious. “Sure,” he said.
“I mean it,” Caitlin said, looking at him earnestly. “You are a really wonderful man. You’re everything a boyfriend should be. So if I’m not feeling more strongly about you, the problem is with me. It really is. But I don’t think it’s fair to you to pretend that I love you more than I do—because soon months will become years and then we’ll have been living a lie. You really deserve better.”
“How can you do this?” Liam said, and Caitlin couldn’t tell if he wanted to yell or to cry. “I love you!”
Caitlin sat and looked at him. “I know you do. And I am so lucky that you do. But I don’t love you the same way. I think you know that already. You can’t not know, Liam.”
“But you’re the right woman for me,” he said, grinding his jaw. “I’ve been very clear about that.”
“You have,” Caitlin said quickly. “I guess I …”
“You don’t think I’m the right man for you?” Now he looked like he was sneering and Caitlin flinched a little, wishing she didn’t have to see him react to what she was saying.
“It’s really not that. I’m just not the right woman for you after all. How can I be? You’re … amazing. You’ve got everything going on. I’m just too young for all of this.” Caitlin wondered if he could hear her flailing for an excuse.
Liam sniffed and looked away. “It’s Julia, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Caitlin said, frowning.
“It’s because she was there that morning. You and I … we made a connection the night before, and then she showed up and … I just don’t think you trust me.” Now he looked wounded.
Caitlin bit her lip—Julia was, indeed, part of the story but only because her presence in the house had driven Caitlin onto the beach, and if she hadn’t gone to the beach she would never have met David. But Julia hadn’t bothered her since. Still, she weighed up whether this would be an excuse that Liam could live with—and maybe it would be kinder to let him live with it.
“It’s not Julia,” Caitlin said, choosing honesty. “I don’t know what it is, but I can’t make myself love you. And you really do deserve someone who can love you.”
“Is there someone else?” Liam looked even more hurt and Caitlin knew exactly what she had to say this time.
“No,” she answered, knowing that it was at least partly true—she and David were by no means together, and they hadn’t kissed since that very first date, months before, so there had been no transgression on her part.
“So you’d rather be on your own than be with me?”
“No—I’d rather not keep pretending that this is something that it’s not. It has nothing to do with me being on my own or being with someone else.”
“No one,” he said, his face setting, “would rather be single if they didn’t have to be.”
“That’s not true. I was single when I met you and I had been for a while.”
“Yeah, and I’m beginning to understand why.” Now his sneer was clear.
“Excuse me?” Her forehead creased.
“You think you’re better than everyone else—you think I’m not good enough for you.”
Caitlin reared back.
“Th-that’s not at all true,” she protested. “Just because I don’t mind being alone doesn’t mean I think I’m better than anyone else. It just means I don’t mind being alone.”
“Only a freak wouldn’t care about being alone, Caitlin,” Liam said, standing up so that he loomed over her. “Being single is for losers. And I can tell you right now that nowhere in my life plan does it say ‘loser.’”
Caitlin was too flummoxed to respond. Life plan? She didn’t even know he had a life plan. Had she been part of his life plan?
“I strongly suggest that you change your mind,” he said, now full of aggression. “You’re not going to meet anyone better than me.”
“Uh … what?”
“I’m rich, I’m good looking and I come from a good family. I’d make an excellent father. I keep fit. I like to travel and I have ambitions.”
Caitlin swallowed. “All that’s great, Liam, but—”
“I need a wife who can achieve with me. I need someone who fits my lifestyle. You fit, Caitlin.”
“Wait—a wife? We’ve barely been dating, Liam.” Caitlin folded her arms protectively across her chest, aware that she’d entered into a dialogue she wasn’t prepared for.
“I don’t waste people’s time, Caitlin,” Liam said pointedly. “I wouldn’t have started dating you if I didn’t think you were a good candidate for marriage. Now, I know you don’t come from the best background but your looks can get you past that.” He laughed and it was a hundred different tones of hollow. “I can’t believe I’ve invested all this time in you and you wouldn’t even have sex with me. I’ve been patient, haven’t I? I haven’t pushed
you. I was prepared to wait, because I figured the investment would pay off.” He sneered. “Looks like I need to get different financial advice.”
Caitlin glared at him.
“I’ve heard enough,” she said, standing and picking up her purse from the bar. “We are clearly not a good fit, any way you look at this. I’m sorry that I’ve wasted your time, Liam, I really am—I had no idea that you were thinking about … marriage.” She paused and looked at him—his offended expression, his indignant stance—and marveled, not for the first time in her life, how people could seem to be one thing and turn out to be quite another.
“I think you’ll agree, though,” she continued, “that you’d be much better with someone else. Someone of better breeding, perhaps.”
“I decided on you,” Liam said bluntly.
“Well, I didn’t decide on you.” Caitlin’s nostrils flared. “Good-bye, Liam. And good luck.”
She didn’t want to wait for him to say anything else so she turned around and almost sprinted for the door. Her heart was beating rapidly and her mouth felt dry. For a second or two she felt like she was going to be sick. What had just happened? Who had he turned out to be?
As she emerged into the cold night air, she gasped and tears sprang to her face. What if David turned out to be someone else? What if he was so used to acting one way in front of people that his true self—whoever that was—wasn’t revealed until it was too late? Would she even get far enough to find out?
Caitlin started walking home. Taxi after taxi went past but despite the cold she kept walking. She needed the time. She needed the air through her brain. She needed to work out what the hell she was doing with her life and whether she could ever trust any man ever again. And she certainly needed to work out if she had just spun cotton candy out of a fantasy and ended up with nothing but emptiness.
Four blocks from home, she started crying and didn’t stop until she had shut the door behind her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As David’s car swept into the grounds of Kensington Palace and past his sisters’ apartments, he smiled. It was late, so he hoped they were both asleep—although he very much wished that they weren’t and that he could knock on their doors and talk. Just talk. These days he had a powerful need to just talk to these women he had known always and who had, at one stage of their childhoods, talked so incessantly about such inane things that he wished they’d shut up permanently. Now the sound of their voices on the phone was enough to make him feel that all was right with the world. But if they were still awake it would be because the firestorm around Alix’s suitability to reign was still raging and, no doubt, that’s what they would be discussing. Or else Alix would be dealing with matters of state. Things that he should leave her to deal with. He’d talk to them tomorrow.
One person he couldn’t wait to talk to, though, was Caitlin. It was still early enough in the evening in New York that he should be able to reach her. He hadn’t called her just before he left for home because he didn’t want to put any pressure on her—their attraction to each other was clear, but he didn’t want to presume that she was attracted to his lifestyle. Unlike so many other women he’d met, she didn’t seem to be interested in wealth, fame or expensive clothes. She didn’t get her hair styled even once a week, let alone every time she went out somewhere. She wanted to travel but seemed happy not to fly in first class. She was more relaxed about herself than any woman he’d met since … well, his sisters. Alix and Rita had their neuroses but they knew who they were—it was something he had in common with them. Undoubtedly it had helped that they had always known their place in their family and in life in general. There were certain things they’d never had to worry about. It had made them feel secure, despite everything that had happened to them since.
Caitlin hadn’t had the same anchors, though, so he had no idea how she could be so young yet so serene—yes, he thought that was the word. He sensed that, like his sisters, she had neuroses but that made him feel reassured. Anyone who seemed too together was usually putting on a very good act—because who, after all, was free of all personalities quirks and hang-ups? He was far more likely to trust someone who had her vulnerabilities carefully on display—neither completely hidden nor outrageously obvious. And vulnerabilities were different to insecurities—the latter so often lending themselves to selfish actions that were supposedly justified by the person saying that they were “insecure.” It was rubbish. His sisters had more reason than anyone to feel insecure, given that they were young women who had had to grow up in the public eye and have their appearance discussed in the most excruciating detail, as well as having their behavior dissected. He only had to have his behavior examined; his looks merited comment but not criticism. It was another example of the discrepancy in treatment between them and he felt somewhat angry about it each time. His sister was going to be the monarch—it was his belief that her status alone entitled her to immunity from the sort of newspaper commentary that he was fair game for, and which he expected. Alix should be allowed to prepare herself for her role—for her 24-hour-a-day lifetime job—in peace, without worrying about people saying she was too fat or too thin, or that she shouldn’t be allowed to have her hair streaked because a member of the royal family should be “natural.”
With a thud in his stomach, David realized that any woman he married was going to have to put up with that same commentary. She’d have to be just the right weight, just the right shape, just the right coloring—or else she’d need the hide of an elephant. It seemed an unfair set of extremes to navigate.
David climbed the stairs to his bedroom, waving hello to his housekeeper with a beaming smile. He was well aware that he couldn’t run his life without his household being run for him, and he never let his housekeeper forget that he was grateful. It was something his mother had drummed into him from a young age: You don’t have a right to household help; it’s a privilege—never forget that the people who work in your house are making your life easier for you. He kept smiling as he remembered her saying that to him over and over again when he was starting to leave childhood and wont to treat his bedroom like a trash can, believing that “the servants” would just pick up after him. It only happened a handful of times before his mother had told the staff to leave his pigsty as it was. Indignant, he’d run to his mother to complain only to receive a lecture. His bedroom had been neat and tidy ever since.
David dropped his backpack on the ground next to his bed, then pulled out his mobile phone.
“Hello?” he heard Caitlin say when she answered after a few rings.
“Caitlin, it’s—”
“Hi,” she said quickly, brightly, and he smiled and felt his shoulders relaxing.
“Hello. I’m—I’m back in London.”
“I figured,” she said cheerfully. “How was your flight?”
“Fair as flights go,” he said, then paused, feeling suddenly nervous. “Caitlin, I’d love it if you’d join me here. For a weekend. Just so we can see each other again.”
He heard what sounded like a gasp. “Oh,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Why?” she said quickly.
“Why am I sorry or why would I like you to come here?”
“Why are you sorry?”
“You sounded shocked. At what I’d asked. And—and you should be. I have no right to ask. You can’t just drop everything and come here just because I ask you to.”
Caitlin paused. “You can, David,” she said firmly. “Ask me to, that is. I’ve … I’ve broken up with Liam.”
David breathed into the phone. “Then may I speak openly?”
“What do you mean?”
“Caitlin, we’ve talked about everything under the sun except us.”
“Us?” She sounded surprised and David wondered again if he was pushing her too much. But he was sure of what he felt and he was fairly sure of what she felt. He also knew that there was nothing to be gained by not acting on such feelings. Of course he was tak
ing a risk, but in so many ways his heart was the only thing he was allowed to risk. It was his decision to risk it, and he was comfortable with that.
“I could live a long life and never meet anyone else I want to talk to as much as I want to talk to you, or who I want to gaze upon as much as you,” David said. “Given what is happening in my life at the moment, I really didn’t want to not say that to you. Things here could change at any time and I don’t want to get caught up in events and not tell you. But how you respond—of course, that is your decision. I expect nothing from you—honestly.”
David couldn’t hear any noise at the other end of the phone but he thought he could hear his own heart beating a tattoo in his chest. He’d had no idea that he was quite so invested in Caitlin’s answer until he’d put the question to her. He was so exposed now—he could feel it. And as he waited for her to speak he could also feel that he been rash—too focused on what he wanted—to realize that he had not considered what she wanted.
