The Single Mom and the Tycoon

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘I’ll make some tea,’ she said, and he nodded.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll just get dressed and phone the airport.’

  So this was it. He was going. Now. Tonight.

  She felt sick, but there was nothing she could do about it. He came into the kitchen as she poured the tea into the mugs, and she turned and looked at him.

  ‘I’ve got a car coming in half an hour. I’m on the six o’clock flight.’

  ‘What about Charlie?’

  He swallowed hard. ‘Tell him goodbye from me.’

  She nodded. ‘OK. Um—your tea.’

  She pushed it towards him, but he didn’t touch it. Instead he held out his arms, and she went into them and stood there, feeling the hard, solid warmth of his body against hers, so familiar now, so very dear.

  ‘Make love to me,’ she whispered. ‘Please? One last time.’

  They went to the cabin, to the place which had become their sanctuary, and, shutting the door, he led her to the bed and undressed her swiftly. There were no preliminaries, no subtleties, no flowery words and phrases. They reached for each other in a desperate silence broken only by gasps and groans and, at last, a sob she couldn’t hold down any longer, and he folded her against his chest and held her tight.

  ‘I can hear a car,’ she said at last, and he pulled on his clothes, bent and pressed a hard, swift kiss to her lips and, picking up his bags, he headed for the door.

  ‘I’ve left the keys of the Saab on the chest of drawers. Can you give them to Dad, please—ask him to keep it for when I’m over here.’

  She nodded. ‘Go. Go on. Don’t keep him waiting.’

  ‘Say goodbye to Charlie for me.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And—thank you,’ he said, his voice rough with emotion. ‘Thank you for everything.’

  She couldn’t answer and, after a second’s hesitation, he turned on his heel and left.

  She heard the car door shut, then the crunch of tyres as it drove away, and then the silence of the night descended once more, suffocating her.

  Or was that because a sob was wedged in her throat and she couldn’t breathe?

  She tried—let the breath out, sucked it in again sharply to stifle the pain, but it wouldn’t stop, just kept rolling over and over her, and she curled on to her side, dragging the quilt up into her arms and clinging to it as if by holding it, holding the bedclothes which had covered him and carried his scent, she could hold him there in her heart…

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘GOD, mate, you look rough.’

  ‘Don’t, Cal. Really. Just don’t go there.’

  Cal’s smile faded and he looked more closely. Then, swearing softly under his breath, he took his bags from him and led him out to the chopper.

  ‘Get in. I’ll just do the checks and we’re off.’

  ‘Don’t we have any guests?’

  ‘Not on this run.’

  David nodded gratefully, slid into the co-pilot’s seat and buckled himself in. His throat was raw from holding down the emotion that was threatening to tear him in half, and he just wanted to get into the privacy of his lodge and be alone.

  The last—absolutely the last—thing he needed was Cal interrogating him.

  And maybe, for once, his old friend picked up on that, because he flew him straight to the retreat, dropped the chopper down on the helipad and unloaded his luggage without a word.

  ‘Hi, boss!’ Kelly, one of the staff called, waving to him. ‘Good wedding?’

  ‘Great, thanks,’ he said, and discovered that apparently he could lie convincingly because she didn’t accuse him of telling flagrant porkies, just smiled and carried on. So why did Cal have to see straight through him?

  ‘OK, here you go. Is there anything I can get you?’

  Molly?

  ‘No, I’m good. Thanks.’

  Cal gave a soft snort and headed for the door. ‘I’ll stick around till tomorrow. You get your head down and I’ll see you for breakfast before I go.’

  ‘You don’t need to stay—’

  ‘Yeah, I do. You look like you’ve been hit by a truck. I don’t know what the hell’s happened to you, DC, but until you look as if you aren’t going to drive all the guests away, I’m going to cover you. Now get some rest, and I’ll see you in the morning. There’s food in your fridge if you want anything.’

  And drink.

  He discovered that, pulled out a beer, swallowed it in one and stripped off his clothes before heading for the shower. Then he had to find his beach leg, because he couldn’t just strip off and walk into the water, because nothing was that easy.

  He wanted to cry—to howl, to rant, to scream with the pain, but he’d learned over the last three years to deal with that, and this was very little different. So he picked up a towel and went out on to the veranda, turned on the taps, and with the rainforest closing quietly round him like a mother’s arms, he turned his face up to the water and let the silent, scalding tears fall at last.

  ‘Welcome back, boss.’

  ‘Good to have you home.’

  ‘Nice to see you, DC.’

  ‘How was the wedding?’

  ‘How’s your dad?’

  ‘Have a good holiday?’

  How many more of them were there? He didn’t know how long he could go on being polite, and he had no idea where Cal was. Not in his lodge, anyway. The office, probably. He headed up there, and found him on the phone.

  He lifted a finger, ended the call and swung his feet to the ground. ‘How’re you doing?’

  There was no polite way to describe it, so he didn’t bother to be polite, and Cal just laughed.

  ‘Come on, you need caffeine and calories. We’ll take something out on the boat.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘Yeah, there is. I want to know what’s going on, and you’re going to tell me if I have to drag it out of you.’

  ‘You nag worse than Molly,’ he said, his voice cracking on her name, and Cal shot him a keen look, swore and ushered him out the back way to the boathouse. They passed Kelly, and Cal snapped an order at her and propelled him down the path to the boats. They’d just cast off and were heading out to the end of the jetty when she reappeared with a basket.

  ‘Coffee and pastries. Have a nice breakfast!’ she said cheerfully, and Cal opened up the throttle and took them out into the middle of the bay before cutting the engine and letting the boat drift.

  ‘Molly, eh?’

  David stared out over the bay and swallowed hard. ‘She’s a friend of Liz’s—my father’s new wife. I stayed with her.’

  Cal blinked. ‘So—she’s—what? Fifties?’

  ‘No. Hell, no, she’s about thirty, thirty-one? I don’t know exactly. We didn’t talk about her date of birth.’

  ‘Single?’

  ‘Widow. With a boy. Charlie. He’s eight.’

  His throat closed up again, and he reached for the coffee Cal was handing him.

  ‘So—you fell in love.’

  ‘Is it so obvious?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. To me. Kelly wouldn’t notice. She’s lost her contacts.’

  He laughed at that. ‘And the others?’

  ‘They probably just think you’ve been partying too hard. Anyway, they’re used to you looking rough.’

  ‘Well, cheers, I feel so much better.’

  Cal chuckled, then lifted his head and studied him closely. ‘So—since you look as if she’s stolen all the toys out of your pram, I take it this is the real thing?’

  He stared down into the coffee. ‘No. No, it was always going to be just a short-lived thing. We both knew that.’

  ‘Did your heart know? Because it looks like you kept that one a secret.’

  He sighed. ‘She just—got under my skin, you know? I didn’t mean to fall—’ He broke off, looking away and clamping down on that surge of pain until it was back in control. ‘I’ve never been in love, Cal,’ he confessed softly. ‘I didn’t realise it could hurt like this.’
<
br />   ‘You should have asked me. It’s a bummer.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘And what does Molly think of you being in love with her?’

  ‘Molly doesn’t know.’

  ‘Oh, ace. And is she in love with you?’

  He shrugged. ‘She didn’t say. But she wouldn’t come. She says she has to stay in England for Charlie’s grandparents. They’ve lost their son. She says that’s enough.’

  ‘That’s a tough one. I can see her point.’

  ‘So can I. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘Of course if she knew you loved her—’

  ‘It wouldn’t change the facts.’

  Cal sighed thoughtfully, and for a moment they were both silent. Then he went on, ‘And your father? How’s he?’

  ‘Oh, he’s good. Really happy. Except he wants to retire, and Georgie thought he was going to ask me to take over the business.’

  ‘I take it you pointed out that you’re a little tied up already?’

  He smiled bleakly. ‘Oh, yes. It went down like a lead balloon. They want me to move back for good.’

  Cal grinned. ‘Well, you know, any time you want to hand over your side of the business, DC, I’m more than happy to talk terms.’

  David snorted. ‘You couldn’t even manage a staffing crisis without me,’ he pointed out, and Cal grunted.

  ‘It was just Murphy’s law. I would have managed.’

  Then why couldn’t you? he wanted to say, but he didn’t, because it wouldn’t have got any better if he’d stayed longer, and it probably would have been worse.

  Although how, frankly, he found it hard to imagine.

  ‘So—enough about me. Fill me in on what’s been going on,’ he said, and tried very hard to concentrate.

  ‘So how’s the exhibition stuff going?’

  Molly shrugged. ‘Rubbish. It’s odd. I keep painting, but nothing that I was working on before seems to say anything to me, and the new ones—I can’t show them, Liz. They’re—’ Different. Scarily so.

  ‘May I see?’

  She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged again. ‘Sure. Why not?’

  She led Liz up to her studio and opened the door, and she gasped.

  ‘Oh—Molly! Oh, Molly, they’re incredible!’ she breathed.

  She lifted her shoulders helplessly. ‘I can’t seem to paint anything else.’

  ‘But—they’re wonderful. You’ve really captured him.’

  ‘Rather personal, though.’

  They were. He was naked in many of them, but she didn’t paint so figuratively that they were explicitly revealing. She’d used her familiar technique of broken images and overlays, so he was suggested rather than drawn exactly but, nevertheless, the mood, the atmosphere was intensely private, raw sensuality radiating from the images almost tangibly.

  They frightened Molly they were so intense, but she couldn’t seem to paint him any other way.

  ‘Has Georgie seen them?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I didn’t know if she should see her brother like that. They’re a bit—’

  ‘They are—but they’re beautiful. Striking.’

  ‘But I have to earn a living, and I can’t sell these. It would be like selling him—’

  She bit her lip and, with a gentle sigh, Liz took her into her arms and rocked her like a baby.

  ‘I miss him,’ she said through her tears, and Liz’s arms tightened.

  ‘I know you do, my love.’

  ‘It’s so silly,’ she said, easing away and walking to the window so she could stare down at the cabin. She spent hours doing that, pretending he was still in there, or else going in there herself and lying on the bed huddled in his dirty sheets which she still couldn’t bring herself to wash.

  ‘Why is it silly? You love him,’ Liz said softly, and she pressed her fist to her mouth to stop the howl of pain from coming out.

  ‘You know, it’s worse than losing Robert,’ she told her, turning her back on the cabin and meeting Liz’s caring eyes. ‘When he died, I knew he was gone, and there was nothing I could do about it, but this—this is so much worse, because he is alive, and we could be together if only it wasn’t all so hard—’

  ‘He misses you.’

  Her head came up again, and she searched Liz’s face eagerly. ‘Did he say so?’

  ‘No—not in so many words, but your father says he sounds lost. He won’t talk for long, and he won’t talk to me, and George is worried about him. And you. He really hoped you’d find a way to be together.’

  She wrapped her arms around her waist, holding herself together. She seemed to spend most of the day like that, fighting the pain and the nausea, and then at night she’d paint, furiously throwing colour at the canvas until she fell into bed exhausted before dawn.

  There was one picture of him as she imagined him in the shower, water streaming over him with the rainforest as backdrop, another with him sitting on the end of the jetty, one leg hitched up, fishing. In one he was laughing, his head thrown back, the sheer joy of living radiating off him.

  Then there were the pensive ones, sitting on the jetty staring out over the water, standing in the forest with the trees towering above him, walking away from her on the beach.

  And then there were the intimate ones, the ones of him as only she had seen him, his eyes smouldering with passion.

  ‘I can’t show these,’ she said, and Liz nodded.

  ‘No. It wouldn’t be fair. But you needed to paint them.’

  ‘I never painted Robert like that.’

  Liz didn’t reply. Hard to find the right words, Molly thought. She couldn’t.

  ‘How’s Charlie?’

  ‘Sad. Lonely. He really, really misses him. I thought—it wasn’t long enough for us to all feel so much, you know? Not this much. And I can’t begin to explain to him why it all hurts so badly.’

  She bit her lip and met Liz’s eyes. ‘Do you think we should go to him? I mean, it would be the logical thing, because of his business. I can paint anywhere, and Charlie’s too young for his schooling to be disrupted, and anyway, he’s so unhappy, but his grandparents…I don’t know what to do, Liz. I just know I’ll never get over him, but I can’t keep painting him for ever. I have to earn a living.’

  ‘So exhibit these.’

  She felt shocked. ‘No! No, I can’t. It would be wrong.’

  ‘No. It would be very personal, but they’re the best thing you’ve ever done, and you’d be a fool to yourself if you didn’t show them. They’re so compelling.’

  She stared at them. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. And you need to put your prices up. A lot. Ask Georgie and Nick. They like art. And Daniel. He’s a bit of a collector, too. Get their opinion.’

  So she did, and they all told her she’d be crazy not to exhibit them. But there were some she held back, some that were too personal for her to allow even Liz to see. Ones where she’d looked into his eyes and seen right down to his soul…

  She resisted, though, when they tried to get her to put them in a London gallery, so Daniel strong-armed the gallery where she was due to exhibit into hiking the prices and pushing her with an advertising campaign.

  And then it was time, and she put on her beaded dress and went to the private view with George and Liz at her side, and she was stunned by the reaction. And by the number of red stickers on pictures. That would mean they were sold, but—

  ‘There are so many red dots,’ she said, dazed. ‘I can’t believe it—they can’t all be sold.’

  ‘Of course they can, they’re fantastic,’ Georgie told her, hugging her with tears in her eyes. ‘You’ve really made him come alive. Thank you.’

  But all she could think was that there would be enough money for her to go to him, to see if there was any way, any place that they could be together, because without him she was just a hollow, empty shell.

  It was hot in Cairns.

  Hot, and sticky, and she was so tired she didn’t know what she was
doing. If she did, she probably wouldn’t be here, she acknowledged, but with shaking fingers she made herself dial the number she’d got from Georgie.

  ‘Hello, the Rainforest Retreat, what can I do for you?’

  It wasn’t him.

  She hadn’t even thought beyond this point, and now she was stumped.

  ‘Hello? Can I help you?’

  ‘Um—hello. I’m trying to contact David Cauldwell—’

  ‘Oh, he’s out on the dive boat at the moment. Can I take your number and get him to call you?’

  She didn’t know who she was speaking to, but it was a man’s voice so she had a stab. ‘Is that Cal?’

  ‘Yes, it is—is that Molly?’ he asked, and she thought he sounded stunned.

  ‘Oh. Yes. How do you know my name?’ she asked, and there was a strangled laugh at the other end.

  ‘Well, you’re all he’s talked about since he got back, so that might have something to do with it—where are you? Give me your number, or does he have it?’

  She stared at the payphone. ‘Um—I’m in Cairns airport—’

  ‘Cairns?’ he exclaimed, and she heard a chair scrape back. ‘Stay right there, sweetheart, and I’ll come and get you. You go and get yourself a drink and something to eat, and I’ll be there.’

  The phone went dead, and she stared at it for a second before putting it down with trembling fingers.

  Cal was coming, and he was going to take her to David. Today. Now. Shortly.

  Covering her mouth with her hand, she ran to the loo and lost the pitiful amount of airline food she’d managed to squeeze down over the last few hours.

  Ridiculous, she thought, staring at herself in the mirror over the basin. She was white as a sheet, she’d lost loads of weight and she looked dreadful. And she was so nervous! Her palms were sweating, and she scrubbed them down her trousers and closed her eyes.

  Go and get a drink, she told herself. Iced water, and something fruity, perhaps.

  Or perhaps not.

  ‘Great day, David! Thank you!’

  ‘My pleasure, Doug. Have a good evening.’

  His wife smiled. ‘We will. That was fabulous. Thanks.’

  She leant over and kissed his cheek as he helped her out of the boat, then, as he was about to put it back in the boathouse and check over the equipment, he looked up and caught sight of a woman standing on the jetty, and his heart all but stopped.