The Secret in His Heart

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘No, Connie. I can’t do it. I can’t offer you the job because I’ve already offered it to the other woman. I offered it to her yesterday and I can’t retract it. And anyway, I’ve spoken to the board and they’ve agreed. They’re interviewing her now, as we speak. I’m really, really sorry.’

  So was she. If only she’d thought this through sooner, mentioned it earlier—but she’d thought she’d had time, and she hadn’t. Her time had run out, and it was over.

  Just as well, perhaps. She’d get away, leave him behind her, start again. Good idea. Maybe one day it would feel like it.

  She got to her feet, her legs like rubber, her eyes stinging.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s not your fault. I understand. I hope it works out well. Goodbye, James.’

  And she walked out of his office, through the department—why hadn’t she agreed to coffee outside in the park?—and out of the doors.

  Her frustration and anger at herself for not doing this in time sustained her all the way back to his house, and then she opened the gate to be greeted by Saffy wagging her tail, waiting to be let out of her run.

  The run James had made for her out of the kindness of his heart.

  Damn.

  She let Saffy out, went into the cabin and started packing. There wasn’t much, and it didn’t take her long. She took the kettle and the toaster, because she’d need them, and all her clothes and bits and pieces, and she stacked them as tightly as she could in the car.

  Saffy’s crate went in next, packed around with as much as possible, until she was left only with a box or two of things in the spare bedroom. She’d got rid of a lot of the stuff, and this was all that was left that was still unsorted.

  Well, she wasn’t doing it now. She was getting the hell out of here before James came home, because she really didn’t think she’d be able to hold it together when she saw him again.

  She’d been doing so well, and now she felt lost again.

  Don’t think about it!

  She scooped up the last two boxes, carried them downstairs and out to the car, and with a little repacking she even got them in. She could hardly see out of the car, but that was fine. She had wing mirrors. She’d manage.

  Wherever she was going.

  Where was she going? She had no idea, none at all, and it was already lunchtime.

  Back towards Nottingham?

  She had friends down in Cornwall, but that was too far and she couldn’t expect them to help. But there was nobody in the world who’d tolerate Saffy in the way that James had.

  Nobody else who’d build her a run and not mind when she stole the fillet steak or trashed the sheets with her muddy paws or ate his favourite trainers.

  There was only one option open to her, and it broke her heart, but in many ways it was the right answer.

  She’d leave Saffy with James.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HE HAD THE day from hell.

  He couldn’t leave, but Connie’s face was etched on his mind and he was hardly able to concentrate.

  What had he done? He could have told her about the other applicant, could have offered her the chance, but he’d wanted her out of his life because she was upsetting it, messing it all up, untidying it. He’d been trying to make life easier for himself, because the thought of having her working there with him indefinitely, driving him mad on a daily basis with her crazy pyjamas and her lace underwear, was unthinkable.

  And now she was going, and he realised he didn’t want her to. He didn’t want her to go at all. And she’d said goodbye.

  Hell. He had to go home to her.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket, called Andy and drummed his fingers until he answered.

  ‘I need a favour. Is there any way you can cover for me? I need to go home urgently.’

  ‘What, now? No, that’s OK, I think. Lucy’s here.’ He heard him talking to Lucy, then he came back. ‘That’s fine. I’ll come now. Give me ten minutes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, but Andy had gone, without prevaricating or asking any awkward questions. Still, ten minutes was a long time and he just hoped to God nothing kicked off in the meantime which meant he couldn’t leave.

  He was there in five.

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he promised.

  ‘Don’t worry. Just go.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He drove home on the back roads because there was less traffic, his heart in his mouth.

  ‘Please be there, please be there, please be there—’

  She was, her car on the drive, the door hanging open. He pulled up beside it and swore. It was packed to the roof with all her worldly possessions. Except Saffy. There was a crate-shaped hole in the back, but no crate, no dog, no sign of her.

  She must be taking her for a last walk, he thought, but her keys were in the ignition, and his heart started to race.

  Where was she?

  The cabin was locked, the curtains open, the bed stripped. The house was unlocked, though, so he searched it from top to bottom, but there was nothing. No clue, no sign, no hint of what was going on. He even looked under the beds and had to stop himself from being ridiculous, but—where had she gone?

  ‘Connie?’

  He yelled her name, again and again as he raced through the house, but all that greeted him was silence. So he rang her, and her phone rang from the car. From her handbag, lying there in the gap between the two front seats, squashed in.

  Had Saffy run off at the last minute? Unsure what to do, where else to look, he locked her car, pocketed the keys and went up onto the sea wall. Nothing. He could see for miles, and there was nothing, nobody.

  Nobody with a sandy-coloured, leggy dog with dangling ears and a penchant for stealing, anyway.

  He looked the other way, went up to his attic for a higher view of the river wall, but there was nothing there, either. All he could do was wait.

  So he did. He made himself a cup of tea that he felt too sick to drink, took it out onto the veranda and waited.

  And then he heard it.

  A sob.

  Faint but unmistakeable, from under him.

  The kennel. Idiot! He hadn’t searched the kennel!

  He took the steps in one, crossed the run in a single stride and ducked his head through the entrance. ‘Connie?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave her,’ she said brokenly, and she started to sob again.

  ‘Oh, Connie. Leave who? Why?’

  ‘Saffy. James, where can I take her? How can I? I don’t even have a home—’

  Her voice cracked on the last word, and he squashed himself into the crowded kennel, dragged Connie into his arms and wrapped her firmly against his chest.

  ‘Crazy girl. You don’t have to go anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, I do. I have to make a life. I have to start again, make something of my future, but I can’t do it with this stupid great lump of a dog, so I was going to leave her here, because I thought, you promised Joe you’d take care of me, and he loved Saffy too, and I know you do, so I thought maybe you could look after her instead, but I can’t leave her—’

  The sobs overwhelmed her again, and he pressed his lips to her hair and held on tight. His eyes were stinging, and he squeezed them shut, rocking her gently, shushing her, and all the time Saffy was licking his arm frantically and trying to get closer.

  He freed a hand and stroked her. ‘It’s OK, Saffy, it’s all right,’ he said, his voice cracking, and Connie snuggled closer, her arms creeping round him and hanging on.

  ‘Oh, Connie, I’m sorry,’ he said raggedly. ‘So, so sorry. I don’t want you to go, and if I’d only known you wanted the job I could have done something, but I’m not letting you go anywhere like this. Come on, come out of here and blow your nose and have a cup of t
ea and we’ll talk, because this is crazy.’

  ‘I can’t just stay here,’ she said, still hanging on to him and not going anywhere. ‘You don’t need me, you don’t want me...’

  Oh, hell.

  ‘Actually, that’s not true,’ he admitted quietly. ‘I do.’

  ‘You do?’ She lifted her head, dragging an arm out from behind him to swipe a hand over her face. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Neither do I, but I know I can’t let you go. I can’t do what you came here to ask me. I’ve dug deep on this one, and one of the reasons I just can’t give you a baby and then step back is because my feelings for you are very far from clear.’

  She went utterly still. ‘I don’t understand.’

  His smile felt twisted, so he gave up on it. ‘Nor do I. I don’t know how I feel about you, Connie. I know I want you. You have to know that, up front, but you’re a beautiful woman and it’s not exactly a hardship. But whether that has the capacity to turn into anything else, I don’t know. We’ve both got so much emotional baggage and Joe may be an obstacle that neither of us can get over, but I just know I can’t lose you forever without giving it a try, seeing where it takes us.’

  She said nothing. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, just clung on to him, her eyes fixed on his face, but her breathing steadied and gradually some of the tension went out of her.

  ‘Connie?’

  She tilted her head up further, and in the dim light he could see the tear tracks smudged across her face.

  ‘Can we start by getting out of here?’ she said. ‘It’s all a little bit cosy and I’m not sure about the spiders.’

  He gave a hollow chuckle and unravelled himself, standing up as far as he could and ducking through the doorway, and she followed him out, Saffy squashing herself between them, her eyes anxious.

  Poor dog. She felt racked with guilt.

  She put her hand down to Saffy and found his there already. He turned it, and their fingers met and clung.

  ‘Did you say something about tea?’ she said lightly, and he tried to smile but it was a pretty shaky effort. She didn’t suppose hers was a whole lot better.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I like.’

  ‘I’ll make it. You go and wash your face. I’ll see you in a minute.’

  She looked awful. Her eyes were so red and puffy they were nearly shut, and her cheeks were streaked with tears and dirt from being in the kennel, and her clothes were filthy.

  What on earth did he see in her? He must be mad. Or desperate.

  No. He was single by choice. A man with as much going for him as James wouldn’t lack opportunity. And he wanted to explore their relationship?

  She closed her eyes and sucked in a shaky breath. This was about so much more than just giving her a baby. This was everything—marriage, a family, growing old together—all the things she might have had with Joe, but had lost. The things he might have had with Cathy and their baby.

  He was right, they had a hell of a lot of emotional baggage, but if they could make it work—

  She let herself out of the cloakroom and went back to the kitchen.

  ‘Out here,’ he called, and she went and sat next to him, exactly over the spot where he’d held her while she’d cried, and Saffy leaned against their legs and trapped them there.

  ‘Do you think she’s telling us we can’t go anywhere until this is sorted?’ she asked, a little hitch in her voice, and James gave a quiet laugh.

  ‘Maybe. Seems like a sensible idea.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She sniffed, still clogged with tears. ‘So—what now?’

  ‘Now? Now I suggest we unpack your car, settle Saffy back in and then I go back to work. I called Andy in, but I can’t really leave him there for hours. Just—promise me you’ll be here when I get back.’

  ‘I’ll be here. Where else can I go?’

  ‘If you really want to, I’m sure there’s somewhere. And for the record, I would have had Saffy for you. Not because of Joe, or you. Just for herself.’

  Her eyes filled again and she blinked hard and cleared her throat. ‘Will you please stop making me cry?’ she said, and he hugged her, his arm slipping naturally around her shoulders and easing her up against his side.

  ‘Oh, Connie, what are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m totally confused now. I thought you didn’t want a relationship, I thought you were happy on your own.’

  ‘Not happy,’ he corrected softly. ‘Just—accepting. I couldn’t imagine falling in love like that again, and maybe I never will, but maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. Maybe we’re both so damaged that we can’t ever love like that again, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be happy with someone else, someone who doesn’t expect that level of emotion, someone who can accept our scars and limitations. Maybe it would only work with someone equally as hurt, someone who could understand.’

  Which would make them ideal for each other.

  Would it work? Could it work?

  She took a deep breath. ‘I guess there’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘Shall we unpack your car?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘You go back to work. I won’t go anywhere, I promise.’

  He went—reluctantly—and she sat a little while longer, trying to make some kind of sense of the developments of the day.

  She didn’t even know how she felt about a relationship with him. It had seemed so unlikely she hadn’t ever really let herself consider it, but—a couple? Not just an affair, but a real relationship?

  She tried to get her head around it, and failed. Unrequited lust she could understand, but happy ever after? Could he do it? What would he be like as a partner? People who’d been single a very long time found it hard to be part of a couple, to give and take and compromise.

  Could she? Joe had been away so much she’d been pretty self-sufficient. Could she cope with someone having a say in her life?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said out loud. Saffy lifted her head and stared up at her, and she rubbed her chest gently. ‘It’s OK, Saff. We’ll be all right. We’ll find a way.’

  She wasn’t sure how, if this thing with James didn’t work, but it seemed they were still friends, at the very least, and she wanted to make sure that continued. It had to. Friends, she’d learned over the years, were infinitely precious. She only had a few, and James, it seemed, was one of them. The best.

  She eyed her car. She ought to unpack it, really, but she’d stripped her bed and put the sheets in the washing machine; they were done, so perhaps she should hang them on the line before she started?

  ‘Oh, Saffy, we’re OK, the pawprints came out. That’s a good job, isn’t it?’ Saffy wagged her tail, tongue lolling, and Connie shut her back in the run and emptied the car.

  There was no point putting the stuff that had been in storage back in James’s spare bedroom. There was so little left—had only ever been so little of any consequence, really—that she put it into the cabin with everything else.

  And all the time there was a little niggle of—what? Anticipation? Apprehension? Excitement?—fizzing away inside her. Should she cook for him? If there even was anything in the fridge. She wasn’t sure. She’d look later, she decided, after she’d sorted herself out, but by the time she’d unpacked her things, hung up her clothes, found her washbag and had a shower, he was home.

  And the butterflies in her stomach felt like the images she’d seen of bats leaving a cave in their thousands.

  * * *

  She’d put her stuff in the cabin.

  All of it, by the looks of things, because the car was empty and there was no trace of her possessions in the house. He went up to his bedroom to check, and it was untouched since he’d changed his clothes before he’d gone back to work.

 
He stood there, staring at it, and tried to analyse his feelings. Mixed, he decided. A mixture of disappointment—physical, that one, mostly—and relief.

  His common sense, overruling the physical disappointment, pointed out that it was just as well. Too early in their relationship to fall straight into bed, too easy, too fast, too simple. Because it wasn’t that simple, sleeping with Connie. Not after Joe.

  Inevitably there would be comparisons. He knew that. He wasn’t unrealistic. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to be compared to his best friend. He didn’t want to be better in bed, but he sure as hell didn’t want to be worse.

  He swore softly, sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the picture of the estuary that Molly had painted here in this room.

  The Eye of the Storm.

  Was that what this was? The eye of the storm? The lull before all hell broke loose again in his life?

  ‘James?’

  He heard her footsteps on the landing, and went to his bedroom door. She was wearing jeans and a pretty top, and from where he was standing he had a perfect view of her cleavage. ‘Hi. I’m just going to change, and then I thought we could go out for dinner if you like.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘I’ve just looked in the fridge and it’s none too promising.’

  He chuckled. ‘Give me ten minutes. I’ll have a quick shower and I’ll be with you.’

  A cold one. He retreated, the updraught through the stairwell wafting the scent of her perfume after him, so that it followed him back into the room. He swallowed hard. Damn his common sense. Just then, the other side of the coin looked a lot more appealing.

  * * *

  Dinner?

  As in, supper at the pub, or dinner? Formal, dressy, elegant? Because jeans and a floaty little cotton top wouldn’t do, in that case.

  But he came down the stairs bang on time in jeans and a crisp white cotton shirt open at the neck with the cuffs turned back, and she relaxed. She didn’t feel ready for a formal dinner. Not yet. Too—what? Romantic? Laden with sexual expectation?