‘The same,’ he paused and watched her for a long moment, ‘could be said for you, no doubt.’
Maisie blinked several times, as if it was a completely new concept she’d been presented with.
‘I…’ She stopped and cleared her throat. Then she propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. ‘You know, I’ve been living from day to day with Susie, so it hadn’t really occurred to me.’
He finished his meal and placed his napkin on the table. ‘Well, there’s no urgency about it.’
She opened her mouth to say ‘So time has told you that being married to me doesn’t suit you, Rafe?’ but changed her mind because she really didn’t need to be hit on the head with it, did she?
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly instead. ‘I-Oh, there’s Susie. I’m trying out a new routine in the hope that she might just start to sleep through the night.’ She looked rueful.
He smiled briefly. ‘Just one thing, Maisie.’ He waited until he got her full attention. ‘Don’t disappear on me.’
Discomfort caused her cheeks to warm slightly but then she looked at him steadfastly.
And he had to acknowledge to himself that her brush with life in the raw had added maturity and character to her so that now there was a third persona, or perhaps only one now. A blending of Maisie and Mairead that was-well, he thought, he wouldn’t go into that.
‘No, I won’t, I promise,’ she said. ‘Will you excuse me? She’s really starting to sound desperate.’
The next two days were dreadful for Maisie.
She was forced to admit that she’d been living in another bubble for the last three months, cushioned, insulated, from her feelings for Rafe and the pain they brought her.
But that bubble had well and truly burst with this news and she was back on the rack. Even Susie sensed her agony and became fractious and weepy. And a new screw had been added to the rack-the thought of him with a mistress…
I’ve got to do it, Maisie thought desperately after a sleepless night walking the floor with Susie. I’ve got to somehow make him see I can’t go on like this. I need to confront my demons, I need to get out now. No long-drawn-out disengagement, I couldn’t stand it, and I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks.
To make matters worse, although at least Rafe had been spared that long, interrupted night because he’d stayed in the apartment, she was running out of time. He was due to go overseas the day after next which meant she only had one night left to talk to him.
As it happened, she didn’t even get that. She had a purely routine doctor’s appointment early in the afternoon the next day and when she got home there was a message from Rafe on the answering machine saying that something had come up and he’d had to advance his travel plans, so he wouldn’t be seeing her before he left. He’d added that if she had any problems to get in touch with Jack. His last words were, ‘Take care of you two, Maisie Wallis.’
She was galvanised into a flood of emotion as the machine clicked off. A thoroughly old-fashioned and wifely burst of temper for one. Something was always coming up and the man could never be a suitable husband or father because he was a machine! An emotion that conveniently ignored how it had worked in her favour in the past, how it had taken the burden of his presence off her…
But that was immediately replaced by a sense of panic. She couldn’t live the next month in the agony of indecision she was going through. She couldn’t go away, she’d given her word!
Perhaps he hasn’t left yet, she thought suddenly, and was galvanised into action rather than emotion this time.
She flew into the kitchen to find Grace and begged her to look after Susie for a couple of hours.
Grace, a great fan of the baby and with plenty of experience to call on anyway, was only too happy to oblige. She even advised Maisie to take her time. ‘I’ll make her a bottle if things get desperate. Off you go!’
Maisie flew, speed-dialling on her mobile phone at the same time.
But Rafe’s number, as often happened, was on the answering service. She cut the call without leaving a message and called Jack Huston.
‘Jack-has he left yet? Sorry, it’s Maisie here.’
‘No, I think he’s still at the apartment, Maisie. Is something wrong?’
‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘No! Just something I forgot to mention to him, Jack. I tried his mobile but it’s on answer. I-It’s not that important.’ She hoped she sounded convincing.
‘Try the apartment landline,’ Jack advised.
‘Thanks, I will!’ She rang off and did just that. The line was engaged.
She ground her teeth in frustration then realised it meant he must still be there. She jumped into her car and set out for the city without much thought for speed limits.
She tried the number again while she was stopped at a traffic light but it was still engaged. Then she concentrated on her driving and pulled into the building forecourt with a screech of tyres.
The manager came out and she begged him to park her car for her. As she jumped out in a flurry of legs and red curls bobbing, he told her she’d just missed Rafe.
‘On his way to the airport,’ he added, ‘and in a hurry by the look of it. You might catch him, Mrs Sanderson, but,’ he raised an eyebrow, ‘you know that Ferrari.’
Maisie felt herself collapse internally like a pricked balloon. ‘Oh. Oh,’ she whispered and closed her eyes. She knew that under normal circumstances she wouldn’t catch him; she knew that even if, on the slenderest chance, she did, it would not be the time or place to explain herself.
‘Well,’ she opened her eyes to see the manager looking at her a little strangely, ‘I will go up for a while.’ She couldn’t think what else to do.
‘Fine. I’ll put your car down in the garage. You OK?’
With an enormous effort, Maisie turned on a full-voltage smile. ‘I am. I really am.’
Once upstairs in the penthouse, she sat down on the coral settee and looked around dazedly.
Then she took her mobile phone from her bag, stared at it then put it on the coffee-table as it suddenly occurred to her, from nowhere, that it was the same bag she’d taken when she’d left Raby Bay the night before Susie was born. And the letter she’d written to Rafe was still tucked into the zipped pocket, forgotten until now.
She pulled it out and read it, and for some reason it brought on a bout of painful weeping.
When the tears finally subsided, she pushed it back into her bag and she went to wash her face. She passed Rafe’s study on the way and something prompted her to linger in the doorway then wander in.
The desk was tidy but his personality was printed everywhere, the high-flying businessman who controlled two empires, upon whom many jobs depended.
The man who didn’t take those responsibilities lightly.
The man who had taken responsibility not only for her but also his cousin’s baby.
The man for her?
She picked up a business magazine from a side-table because his face was on the cover-and shook her head.
She stared at the picture. It was all there, everything that did so much to her, despite the formality of his suit and the background of the Sanderson Minerals boardroom. From his thick hair, his grey eyes and an unsmiling, eyes-slightly-narrowed expression.
It was like having an arrow plunged into her heart, and she felt tears threatening again as she held the magazine to her breast for a moment. Then she started to put it back on the table, but the file that had been underneath it caught her eye because it bore her name.
‘MAISIE’S HOUSE’, she read.
She put the magazine aside and opened the file to find all the details of the renovations that had been done. There was also a marina berthing bill for the Amelie and three keys she recognized-the RQ gate key, the boat’s engine key and its door key. They looked like the originals, so Jack must have had copies made, she guessed.
She stared at them mesmerised then took a deep, yearning breath. She would li
ke nothing more than to be on board the boat, not going anywhere, of course, but sitting there, thinking…
She picked up the keys and slipped them into her pocket. She tidied the file and put the magazine back on top.
There was little activity on finger H at the marina. It was a windy weekday afternoon and there were even whitecaps in the harbour.
But the seagulls were active and the air was salt-laden as Maisie sat on the stern of the Amelie, shivering and with her hair blowing in the wind but not noticing as she thought long and hard.
Did she need to explain anything to Rafe? What would it achieve other than placing a burden on him?
Sonia’s excuse, she thought and flinched, but this was different…
This was a solution-her return to her former life-he’d proposed himself, anyway, and all she needed to do was accept it, although she’d work her way towards it as soon as she could.
It spelt out, so there could be no misunderstanding, Rafe’s intentions for her.
She shivered-she’d left Raby Bay in slim navy trousers and a light ivory jumper and hadn’t even thought to take a jacket.
The Amelie was in great condition-she’d checked it all out, and she had no doubt the house would be the same, yet it depressed her terribly. Rafe Sanderson never did anything in half-measures, not even the way he made you fall in love with him, not even the way he parted from you.
She stood up abruptly and locked the boat. She climbed down onto the jetty and started to walk away but turned to look back. The berth beside the Amelie was empty, so there was a clear stretch of water between her and it, and as she leant against a concrete pier pole she was partially obscured.
She sighed. There was nothing for it but to spend at least the next month at Raby Bay until Rafe came home-and that made her think of Susie, so she reached into her bag for her phone to give Grace a call. It wasn’t there. She froze then clearly remembered leaving it on the coffee-table in the apartment.
‘Damn,’ she whispered and whirled round to run up the finger towards the gate, only to bump into a man coming in the opposite direction-Rafe, looking impossibly tall and immeasurably dangerous in the moments she had before the impact caused her to topple off the finger into the water.
He did everything he could to save her but it was no use, then he dived in after her.
‘I-can-s-swim,’ she tried to say as she came up spluttering and he surfaced next to her.
He took her in a lifesaver’s grip. ‘Have you ever tried climbing out of a marina berth? It’s an invitation to get scratched to pieces on barnacles. So just shut up and do as I tell you!’
A few minutes later they were standing on the back of the Amelie, having used its ladder to pull themselves out of the water, and history was repeating itself as Maisie tried to catch her breath and push her streaming hair out of her eyes.
‘You idiot!’ he stormed at her, ignoring his soaked condition entirely. ‘You also promised you wouldn’t do this!’
‘D-do what?’ she stammered. ‘It was an accident, maybe I wasn’t looking where I was going but-’
To her amazement, he took her dripping figure in his arms and held her so close, she could feel his heart beating heavily.
‘Not that! I mean taking flight so no one knows where you are but they do know you’re upset about something.’ He held her away as water streamed down his face, and continued savagely, ‘Remember the last time it happened and the consequences?’
Her throat worked. ‘That was entirely different. I was-I was running away, I’m not-’
‘I know you were,’ he overrode her. ‘I know you got a terrible shock because you can never forget Tim Dixon, and the way he died probably brought back the best of him for you. I know I should never have left you.’
She stared up at him. His hair was plastered to his head, there were droplets on his eyelashes, but nothing hid the grimness in his eyes.
‘You-you believe that?’ she asked with her eyes wide and shocked.
‘Of course. What else is there to believe? But while I know I have to let you go, it’s going to be on my terms, Maisie, so no more frights.’
Her voice sounded strange to her as she said, ‘You got a fright?’
‘Yes. Grace, when she stopped to think about it, thought there was something a bit odd about you. Jack was convinced you were distressed about something-he virtually pulled me off the plane. You weren’t answering your phone.’
She closed her eyes. ‘How did you find me?’ she whispered.
‘I couldn’t think of anywhere else to look but the house and your boat, since we were talking about them only a couple of days ago, so I took a chance. What set you off this time?’ he queried harshly.
‘Rafe,’ her mind was whirling but it swooped on one of the things he’d said that didn’t make sense, ‘what did you mean when you said you knew you had to let me go?’
‘Maisie…’ For the first time it was no longer the hard, angry man in charge, as the lines and angles of his face settled into lines of weariness.
And he released her suddenly. ‘Someone once wished this on me so it could be poetic justice, but you, of all people, should know what it’s like to want someone you can’t have.’
She froze. ‘But-but you can’t! I mean-what about your cousin, what about the kind of person that made me, what about-?’
He smiled drily. ‘In the end, none of that mattered. Only you mattered. What kind of a person did it make you?’ He shook his head. ‘I suspect there was wonderful material to work with anyway but it fired you into solid gold for me. Your spirit, your endurance through what life threw at you, that spark of vitality that I only ever once saw quenched in you…’
He paused then went on with an effort. ‘I was watching you the other day while you were on the patio with Susie. And it struck me that if anyone had told me a girl and her baby meant more to me than anything in the world, that she was the difference between darkness and light for me, I wouldn’t have believed them. But it happened.
‘And it happened,’ he went on, ‘with a girl I’d barely ever laid a hand on.’
Maisie swayed a little where she stood. ‘But you still believed I was in love with Tim?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ he said tiredly. ‘When the news of his death came as such a shock it sent you into early labour.’
‘No.’ She shook her head so droplets flew. ‘It could have been the accident or-it could have happened anyway.’
‘Stress can-’
‘Perhaps,’ she interrupted, ‘but I’m the only one who knows what was really stressing me out.’
He searched her eyes with a frown in his. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m the only one who knows that I said goodbye to Tim Dixon in a little hut in Tonga because I was no longer in love with him, because I never had been. Yes, it came as a shock, his death, and it was sad.’ She tipped a hand. ‘Sad for Susie, sad because it was an untimely death, but devastating? No, not for me.’
‘So what…?’ His words hung on the air.
‘It was you I was stressed about. I-it hit me that day that I just couldn’t go on any longer, living with you, loving you but knowing there was no hope.’ Her throat worked.
‘But,’ he paused, ‘that night in the Tree House, you seemed to be looking for excuses for Tim. I’ve never forgotten that and what it could mean.’
Her mind flew back and she saw the candles again, their wine glasses, and heard the murmur of the sea on the beach. ‘I was, but only because whether I liked it or not he’s always going to be part of Susie so I wanted some mitigating circumstances for him. Something so as not to view him with utter contempt for her sake, that’s all.’
His face didn’t change. ‘When?’
She hesitated. ‘When?’
‘Did you fall in love with me?’
She closed her eyes. ‘When it was the last thing in the world that should have happened to me-almost from the beginning.’ Her lashes lifted. ‘When I loved nothing better than
to be with you, when I felt safe, yes, but so much more, yet all the time I kept saying to myself-this can’t be happening to me, but not only that, he could never want me.’
‘Oh, Maisie,’ he breathed.
But she went on, ‘And that same day, the day Tim died, was the day Sonia told me all about why she was the way she was, because of your parents’ marriage, and it seemed to explain why you could be cynical about love and all the trimmings. It just-it was too much on top of the misery I was already going through.’ Tears beaded her lashes.
‘Maisie,’ this time he reached for her but only took her hand, ‘yes, I was cynical. That’s why I was starting to suspect only an arranged marriage was going to work for me. My parents put themselves through hell, and Sonia and I followed.’ He sighed. ‘But you gave no sign of distress until I told you about Tim. You were-bright and breezy.’
She managed to smile but twistedly. ‘If you had any idea how exhausting it was, keeping myself bright and breezy…’ She shook her head. ‘I think that might have been another factor. I was mentally so tired.’
‘Maisie-’
‘No, please let me go on,’ she begged. ‘I could never find the words to explain to you-I didn’t even know if it mattered to you-but Mairead was me responding to my music, the one area where I could shut everything else out…then I found in-in-’ she rubbed her face ‘-in dire circumstances like Sonia’s soirée, well, the only way I could cope was by extending that bubble a bit. I don’t suppose I’m making any sense but-’
‘You are,’ he said very quietly. ‘Can I tell you how it happened for me?’
‘Yes, please,’ she whispered.
‘Everything that had ever plagued me disappeared when I saw you in that hospital bed. That’s when I knew none of it carried any weight at all. That you were paramount to me and it was going to be sheer hell living without you.’
He raked a hand across his jaw. ‘In fact, everything came together, Maisie, Mairead, they merged and became,’ he paused, ‘the only girl in the world for me. But that’s when the agony really began.’
From Waif To His Wife Page 15
