Second Chance with the Best Man

by Katrina Cudmore

  Nicolas sat back in his chair, a gleam entering his grey calculating eyes. ‘You don’t seem well. Perhaps you should leave these negotiations to your father and myself.’

  He was about to answer but his father got there before him. ‘Laurent is CEO now. It’s he who has to finalise the contract. I’m only here to facilitate the negotiations.’

  Laurent blinked, startled by his father’s admission. He gave a brief nod of agreement and, for the first time in a very long time, they shared eye contact that wasn’t more than a fleeting glance.

  Nicolas cleared his throat. ‘Has Mademoiselle McGinley returned to England? You seemed particularly close at the wedding.’

  ‘She left two weeks ago, immediately after the wedding.’

  Nicolas shrugged, gave a knowing smile. ‘There’s plenty more attractive women out there keen to date you.’

  Though he was tempted to stand, Laurent remained seated and, folding over his notepad and shutting down his laptop, he said to Nicolas, ‘Considering that you are an old family friend, and our businesses have worked together for the past twenty years, you will get a two per cent contract increase.’

  ‘We need at least eight per cent,’ Nicolas spluttered.

  Laurent stood. ‘Two per cent.’

  ‘Antoine, you can see that Laurent’s offer is unreasonable,’ Nicolas said, looking in appeal towards his father.

  For a moment his father hesitated, his gaze shifting between Nicolas and him, but then with a shrug towards Nicolas he said, ‘Laurent is CEO.’

  His migraine worsening, and wanting these negotiations over and done with once and for all, Laurent stepped forward, thrown by his anger towards Nicolas for so casually dismissing Hannah, thrown by how suddenly he didn’t give a damn about the business. All he could think about was Hannah. It felt as though he were living in a cloud of guilt and panic since she’d left.

  He held out his hand, forcing himself to give Nicolas a conciliatory smile. ‘I look forward to continuing our good working relationship that is so mutually beneficial.’

  Nicolas’s jaw tightened. After a long pause, he reluctantly reached out and shook his hand.

  Leaving his father and Nicolas in the boardroom to discuss a vintage car that Nicolas was trying to persuade his father to sell to him, Laurent returned to his office.

  He was irritably ploughing through his emails when his father appeared a while later.

  ‘You look as tired as I feel.’

  Laurent took in his father, his lopsided smile, the walking stick he was leaning on.

  ‘I’m glad that you’re finally listening to your physio’s advice and using your walking stick.’

  His father made a grumbling noise. ‘I’ve decided I must look after myself now that you need my help with the business.’

  Taken aback, Laurent studied his father and then had to bite back a smile at the teasing gleam in his father’s eye.

  He stood and pulled his visitor chair away from his desk so that his father could easily sit, before returning to his side of the desk.

  ‘Well negotiated,’ his father said.

  ‘If you call giving an ultimatum negotiating.’

  ‘Sometimes people need to have things spelt out loud and clear with no ambiguity.’

  Laurent chuckled at that and his heart lifted when his father joined in. He cleared his throat. ‘Thanks for the support in there.’

  His father’s attention shifted to something outside Laurent’s office window. ‘You’re doing a good job.’ Pausing, he tipped his walking stick against the floor a couple of times. ‘You were born for the role.’

  Laurent stared at his father, who cleared his throat noisily. ‘Your mother said that you were asking about our...hmm...about our...about how we both left home.’

  ‘Your affairs, you mean?’

  His father nodded, and shifted his gaze to a point on the opposite wall, the colour in his cheeks rising. ‘I was very unhappy back then.’

  Laurent was about to interject and say that he didn’t want to hear his excuses, but his father’s guilt-ridden and anguished gaze met his and Laurent remembered Hannah’s advice that he needed to listen to and try to understand his father.

  ‘I couldn’t cope in the role of CEO. I was out of my depth. I felt deeply ashamed and a failure. I met a woman who distracted me from all of that but it was a short-lived affair.’

  With an impatient exhalation, Laurent interrupted, ‘Hardly. It went on for years.’

  His father’s cheeks darkened even further and he swallowed hard. ‘The times you thought that I was away continuing my affair, I was actually in hospital being treated for depression.’

  For a long while Laurent stared at his father incredulously, wondering if he had heard right. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  His father bowed his head. When he eventually looked back up he grimaced. ‘I’d like to say it was only because I didn’t want to worry you, but I had seen your disgust when I returned after my affair—I couldn’t bear to think of you having an even lower opinion of me, so I begged your mother not to tell you.’

  Laurent gave an angry laugh. ‘That makes no sense. You preferred for me to think that you were having an affair rather than tell me that you were unwell?’

  ‘I didn’t want you to think that I was weak.’

  ‘Mental illness has nothing to do with weakness. I can’t believe you kept it from me, robbed me of the chance of helping you. I could have helped. I would have wanted to support you.’

  His father looked at him, perplexed. ‘You would?’

  ‘Of course I would. You’re my father.’

  ‘I thought I had lost my right to expect anything of you. I had let you and François down so badly.’

  Laurent nodded. ‘Yes, you did...but if I had understood how much you were struggling, I would have been there for you.’

  Laurent swallowed when he spotted his father quickly wiping at his eyes and, looking down, studied the wood of his desk where generations of Bonneval had worked. He stared at a long paper-thin scratch in the wood. Hannah had been right. He did need to speak to his father. He lifted his gaze to see that his father, with bowed head, was looking towards the floor, his forehead creased, and wondered at his suffering and the extremes he must have gone to, to hide his illness from François and himself. All because he had feared their reaction.

  His father lifted his head and, when their gazes met, in a flash Laurent realised just how deeply he had missed his father for the past twenty years.

  He rolled his neck, trying to make sense of the fact that his parents’ affairs were only part of the story. It was the feeling of being abandoned and shut out that had done the real damage. They’d never spoken to him before they’d left, explained what was going on, had been vague and distant in their sparse calls home. And when they had returned, they had always been preoccupied, never there for him.

  His father slid a card across the desk to him, a pastel drawing of London Bridge on the front. ‘I received this card in the post yesterday morning. It’s from Hannah, thanking me for taking her on a tour of the House and apologising that she didn’t get to say goodbye.’

  Laurent picked up the card and studied her neat handwriting. She knew all about his parents but still showed them respect. At the wedding she’d slotted into the role of co-host, seeing that he needed support. Time and time again she’d shown her care for him. ‘I really, really care for you.’ He’d panicked at her words, at the time thinking it was because he was averse to any form of commitment, but in truth it was because he was so scared of loving someone, and for them to leave him one day. He wanted to avoid at all costs having to ever face again the same grinding emptiness, the torrent of zero self-worth, the confusion, the self-blame, the panic of his teenage years.

  His gaze shot back to his father when he shifted in his seat and attempted to
stand while saying, ‘I’d like to go home now if that’s okay with you.’

  Laurent went to his side but his father insisted on standing by himself. He escorted his father down to Reception, where the company car was waiting to bring him home.

  At the car, his father once again refused his assistance, but as Laurent went to close the car door, his father leant forward and held out his hand.

  Laurent took hold of it, his heart pulling when his father said, ‘Thank you.’

  On the way back to his office, bewildered, disappointed and exhausted by his conversation with his father, Laurent wondered what had it taken Hannah, given her background, their relationship history, to be so open and forthright with him? And he’d given her nothing in response. He inhaled a long breath, remembering her last words before she’d left, wishing him happiness in the future. He’d closed down on her but she’d still found it in herself to say those words to him.

  Nothing about Hannah said she’d ever hurt him.

  All along he’d thought he wasn’t capable of giving love when in truth it really was about him not being able to accept love.

  Back in his office he realised his father had forgotten Hannah’s card to him. He looked at the handwriting again, loving its precision but also the quiet flourishes at the edges of the letters that spoke of Hannah’s personality. He studied the words again too, that were thoughtful and kind and generous.

  He loved her.

  He’d loved her for such a long time but had hidden his fears behind denial. But twice he’d rejected her. What would that have done to her? Guilt and fury towards himself twisted in his gut. And then a fresh wave of panic had him pull at his tie, open his top button. Would she ever want to talk to him again?

  * * *

  Given the late hour and the fact that it was the school holidays, Hannah’s Friday night train ride home from work to Richmond was for once almost pleasant. She’d found a seat and the man who had come to sit next to her was absorbed by his book, no loud headphones on, no shouting down the phone.

  It was the perfect space for her to daydream about her future. To weigh up the pros and cons of staying in London or moving to Singapore or Granada.

  For close to two weeks now she’d been trying to focus on making a decision, but her concentration was shot and her thoughts kept wandering off into a reel of flashing memories—how Laurent had silently contemplated her as he’d rowed them to the restaurant on her first night in Cognac, him fisting his hand in the air when he’d won the table tennis tournament before running over and high-fiving her, the wonder in his voice when he’d spoken of becoming an uncle, how closed he’d been when she’d tried to tell him what he meant to her.

  The train rattled past row upon row of red-brick houses, most with lights on in the downstairs rooms, given the gloom of the evening due to the low grey clouds hovering over the city.

  Work were looking for an answer from her about the Singapore transfer. She had asked for a week’s extension to consider it further and she needed to give them an answer on Monday. But she was finding it impossible to think straight. The hollowness, the aimlessness, the embarrassment inside her were too overwhelming.

  She stared at the light drops of rain that were starting to splatter onto the window of the carriage, her cheeks reddening with not just humiliation, but the crushing memory of trying to reach out to Laurent and be honest about her feelings for him and then the humiliating realisation that he wasn’t going to respond.

  She pulled her gaze away from the window and studied the page of her notebook she’d divided into three columns—her two possible new lives along with her current position.

  Her current life had so many pros. She liked her team. She liked her apartment. She was well paid and respected in her profession. London was a great place to meet new men. She grimaced at that. She wasn’t going near another man for a very long time. She drew a definite X through London. It was time she moved on. Widened her horizons. Followed a life that felt true and meaningful.

  She stood as the train pulled into Richmond station. And not for the first time scanned the platform for Laurent. Which she knew was crazy but she couldn’t help herself. Or help how her heart went from being positioned in her throat with keen anticipation and sank faster than a pebble in water down to her stomach when she saw that he wasn’t there.

  It had been their thing. The first time she’d agreed to go out for a drink with him, they had arranged to meet at seven the following Friday outside Richmond station when she would be arriving on her regular train home. But on the Thursday he’d been waiting for her, standing on the platform holding the most amazing bunch of pastel-pink-and-lemon tea roses he’d brought all of the way from his supposedly week-long trip to Paris.

  He’d explained with an irresistible smile that he’d cut his trip short because he’d wanted to see her. And for the following ten months that they had dated, Hannah had never known when he would be there waiting for her, invariably with another gorgeous bunch of tea roses. And that unknown anticipation had given her days a sparkle that had had her practically bounce with good cheer through every meeting, every phone call, every mundane task of her job.

  Outside the station she walked along the streets that took her home, a leaden weariness having her walk slowly despite the now persistent rain.

  Stepping out onto the road to cross over to her street, she gasped at the blare of a horn and stepped back onto the footpath as a car whizzed by her, the young female driver and passenger laughing in her direction.

  She stared after the car, her heart hammering, tears springing to her eyes. An elderly man stopped and asked her if she was okay and began to mutter about young troublemakers driving too fast.

  She opened the communal front door to her apartment building with shaking hands. Closing it behind her, she rested against the wooden panels and resolved that, once and for all, she’d consign Laurent to the past.

  Over the weekend she would make her decision on her future. And start mending her heart. She’d done it once before and could do it again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SLOWING TO A JOG, Laurent came alongside Bleu, who had run ahead of him and was now lying flat on the ground outside the chicken coop, staring forlornly in the direction of the hen and her chicks.

  Perhaps he was being foolish but he would almost swear Bleu only wanted to hang out with them. Reaching down, he stroked his coat. ‘Maybe I need to get you a companion.’

  Bleu twisted his head, his gaze as ever trusting and loyal, his tail now wagging over the grass.

  ‘Time for bed, Bleu.’

  Bleu stood and, after receiving his nightly rub that included having his ears scratched, ambled off in the direction of the stables.

  Inside the château Laurent eyed his phone where he had left it on the hallway table. He’d texted Hannah before he’d left work for the weekend and again an hour ago before he’d gone for his run with Bleu.

  He picked up the phone, willing her to have responded to his message saying he would like to talk with her. But there was only a single message from François.

  In the oppressive silence of the château he tried to control his worry and frustration. He wanted to speak to her. Now. Tell her that he was sorry, that he loved her. But he knew he needed to slow down. He had no idea of Hannah’s feelings for him now. In all probability she would never want to see him again.

  He should wait until the morning. Give her the night to think about his message. Some time and space would probably do him good too; he knew he loved Hannah but it felt as if part of him was still trying to play catch-up with that. For so long he’d refused to believe he’d ever allow himself to fall in love, and accepting he’d done just that wasn’t proving easy to reconcile with.

  He walked towards the stairs and lifted his gaze up to the domed stained-glass roof that had so entranced Hannah. Depending on the time of the day and
the level of sunshine, different shades and patterns of light were reflected on the walls and the white marble treads of the stairs.

  He turned back to the hall table. Picked up the phone. Found her number. Squared his shoulders and pressed the dial button.

  It rang out to her voicemail. His heart pulled to hear her voice, clear with precise instructions on what details the caller should leave but also with a warmth that said you were welcome into her world.

  He cleared his throat when the beep sounded, suddenly lost for words. ‘Ah... Oui...? I left you some messages. I think we should talk. Call me back. Any time.’ He was about to hang up but then blurted out, ‘I’m coming to London tomorrow. I’d like to see you.’

  He hung up. Travelling to London had never been his intention. He caught a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror and was thrown by the aloneness of his reflection.

  He climbed the stairs and wondered if she would respond.

  Her answer was there when he got out of the shower, in a succinct text message.

  I don’t want to see you. There’s nothing else to be said.

  He rubbed a towel over his damp hair, his gaze on his bed. Hannah had been so right when she’d said that they had made love there. In truth, their intimacy had always been way more than just a physical act. It had always held a tenderness, an honesty. They had always exposed their true selves to one another during their lovemaking, but he’d been too blinkered by fear and a conviction that he was following the right path in life to recognise that.

  He picked up his phone and called the executive travel agency employed by Bonneval Cognac and arranged his flights. Whether she wanted it or not, he was going to London.

  * * *

  Sunday morning, and Laurent’s taxicab passed by the early morning joggers as he made his way towards Richmond. Once there, he rang Hannah’s intercom, just as he had done endless times Saturday afternoon and evening. He held his breath, the knot of tension in his stomach tightening, willing her to answer.