So, she had a consultation. It shouldn’t take more than an hour, tops, surely. He settled himself more comfortably on the sofa, quite prepared to wait her out. The printed ink on the sheets in his hands blurred before his eyes as his mind wandered.
He’d known there was something up with Ali on Sunday night. Even when they’d made love, she’d been different. Although she’d been no less involved in what they were doing than usual, there’d been a degree of desperation about her he’d found hard to define. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why, or even when, things had changed. Everything had been going so well. They’d been happy, hadn’t they? So what the hell had gone so terribly wrong?
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he checked the screen, diverting the incoming call to his voice mail. There was only one matter he was prepared to deal with right now, and that involved the person sitting in the office on the other side of that wall.
Deb came out of Ali’s office and closed the door behind her again, then flung him another look that told him in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t happy about him being there. Well, she could be unhappy about it. This was too important for him to be ruffled by her behavior.
It was coming up on forty minutes when he heard Ali’s door open again, followed by her voice thanking the couple for choosing Best for Baby. He knew the precise moment she realized he was here. Her face suddenly paled, and the smile that had been on her face disappeared. She appeared to quickly gather herself together, but he discerned a faint tremor in the hand she offered her clients as she said goodbye.
“I’ll leave Deb to get your full contact details and we’ll forward you a proposal for your baby’s nursery by the end of the week. Have a great rest of your day,” Ali said to the glowingly pregnant woman and her slightly distracted-looking husband.
Ronin waited to see what she’d do next. He expected her to come toward him, but instead she turned on her very high heel and went back into her office. Before she could shut the door, he was there.
“You don’t want me to make a scene in front of your new clients, do you?” he said, his voice pitched only for her hearing.
For a second he swore she was considering it, but then she held the door wide and said, “Come in.” As she closed it, she continued, “This had better be quick. I have an onsite appointment I need to head out to very shortly.”
He studied her carefully, noting the strain around her eyes and the continued lack of color in her cheeks. Quick? She wanted quick? He wasn’t going anywhere until this was sorted out. Fury and frustration vied for equal dominance as he shoved his hand in his suit pocket and dragged out her note. He held it up between them.
“This was your idea of saying goodbye?” he demanded. “I think we both know I deserved more than that.”
“Not used to being turned down?” she answered glibly, moving behind her desk as if the expanse of wood and paper could protect her from his questions.
“It has nothing to do with that and you know it,” he persisted. “You don’t spend a night together like we had and then simply up and leave the next morning with this pathetic piece of—”
“Please,” she hissed, interrupting him before he could tell her what he really thought of her note. “Keep your voice down.”
“Then tell me why, Ali? Why did you leave?”
“Look, isn’t it enough for me to say that I feel we can’t see each other anymore? We rushed into things. It was all just too much.”
Too much? It had felt just right to him, and he’d have wagered his very substantial salary that it had felt pretty damn good to her, too. Confusion over her choice of words clouded his thoughts, feeding the anger and frustration that had been building in him since he’d read her short, cold note. He didn’t like feeling this way. It was foreign to him. He fixed things. He was organized and logical. He liked life clear-cut, and this was anything but.
The only thing Ronin knew for certain was that he wanted her back. It was the solution to a problem he couldn’t even fully define. From the day he met Ali he’d been acting out of character. He’d reached for things with her that he’d never dreamed of sharing with anyone else. But even acting out of character had felt right, with her.
She’d literally rocked his world and made it a better place after everything around him had gone to hell in a handbasket. Mentally, he’d committed to her. Physically, he’d committed to her. Surely she could see that.
When he remained silent, fighting with the thoughts that swirled uncharacteristically in his normally linear mind, she continued.
“Ronin, I have an appointment. I have to go. Please respect my wishes. I don’t want to see you again.”
Her lips had moved and the words had come out, but he remained unconvinced that she meant them. It was time to regroup, he decided, to give her some space and sort out his next steps. He needed to get his own head straight rather than going off at her half-cocked.
“This isn’t over yet, Ali,” he said as he turned to leave.
“It has to be,” she answered, a quaver in her voice.
He couldn’t bring himself to reply, but he did as she’d bade him and left her office. Ignoring Deb, who jumped from her seat as if she’d been given an electric shock, he exited the offices. All the while, he felt himself forming a new resolve. He’d get to the bottom of what had scared her away. It was what he did. He had always solved the most intricate of problems, eventually.
And he would again, because—in this matter, even more than anything else he’d achieved in his life to date—failure was simply not an option.
Fourteen
Ali headed for home with a heavy heart. This week had been a tough one. It had been busy, which was fantastic for business, but it had been lonely, too. Every aspect of her job had her dealing with happy couples, who just reminded her every day of what she’d walked away from with Ronin. Now, it was Friday evening and she had an entire empty weekend to look forward to. She couldn’t even visit family, as her sisters and their husbands and children had headed away on a Pacific Island cruise with her parents.
She had, of course, been invited to join them on the cruise, but she’d had to decline. She’d already booked her non-refundable tickets to Hawaii before her family had found out about the special price promotion, and she couldn’t justify the cost of the cruise or the time away from the office when she’d just gotten back from her own holiday. She wished now she’d found some way to make it work to go with them. She’d known their trip was coming up, but she hadn’t expected to feel so alone when they left.
Deb, too, had plans for the weekend. A lovely romantic retreat with her husband. An unreasonable pang of envy hit Ali in the stomach. Everyone, it seemed, was happy but her. “Get over yourself,” she grumbled aloud as she parked her car and then took the stairs to her second-story apartment. The bottle of wine she had in a grocery bag would go a long way toward making up for company tonight, she decided, along with the magazine, the antipasto selection and the half loaf of French bread she’d picked up at the same time. Tomorrow, and the rest of the weekend? Well, she’d tackle each hour, each minute, as it came.
She began to ferret around in her handbag for her front door key, her head bent and not looking where she was going, when a deep male voice arrested her in her task.
“Can I take those for you?”
Ronin! What was he doing here? Since his visit to her office on Tuesday she’d all but convinced herself that her plea had finally sunk in with him and that he’d accepted she didn’t want to see him anymore. Her body called her a liar on that score the instant she lifted her head. His hair was spikier than usual, as if he’d been running his fingers through it repeatedly, and the stubble on his jaw was longer than she was accustomed to seeing. Her skin tingled as she remembered just how it had felt when those whiskers had rasped along her inner thigh or over her breasts.
She slammed the door closed on her wayward thoughts. She’d turned her back on that part of her life. On him. What the hell was he doing here?
“I thought I made myself clear,” she said, still juggling her shopping bag in her attempt to find her house key.
In response, Ronin relieved her of her groceries as she finally wrapped her fingers around the missing keychain.
“You did. I’d like to talk. That’s all.”
Every nerve, every cell in her body tensed at his words. Talk? When had they really just talked? Perhaps the last time had been when they’d had that lunch on Waiheke Island. Before he’d gone to Vietnam. Before Joshie had come home. At the thought of the infant boy her insides twisted sharply. Her arms ached with the need to hold him again—but he wasn’t hers to hold, she’d told herself that. Convinced herself she’d get over it. If Ronin would only leave her alone, maybe she’d actually begin to believe it, too.
She sighed. “Fine. Come in, then.”
Ali flipped on the overhead light only to have the bulb blow out. Muttering under her breath, she used the light from her cell phone to guide her to the other side of the room, where she flicked on an occasional lamp. With its burnished shade, it cast a warm and cozy glow about the room. Too cozy. All they needed were some candles and, with her wine, the scene would be set for seduction. Except she didn’t need to seduce Ronin. Though he was clearly upset with her, she could feel the chemistry between them hadn’t diminished one bit. She knew he was hers for the taking if she was willing to put in a little effort, but she didn’t want him.
Liar. The voice inside her head slithered from her mind’s darkest recesses. The same voice that clearly held sway with the part of her brain that created the dreams that had found her waking, several times each night, wracked with frustration and sorrow combined.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” she forced herself to ask. “Some wine perhaps?”
“Sure, a glass of wine would be nice. Thank you.”
He handed her the grocery bag and sat down on a sofa she’d found at a bargain price at the local thrift store. It was comfortable, even if the color, a virulent chartreuse green, was a little hard on the eyes.
Ali busied herself in the kitchen, pouring each of them a glass of the imported Australian Shiraz she’d bought. She eyed the antipasto and French bread. What the heck, she thought, and quickly sliced some bread and laid all the ingredients on a long ceramic platter. She had to eat anyway. Might as well be a good hostess at the same time.
She brought the items through to the small sitting room and, once she’d offered him his wine and something to eat, sat down opposite Ronin.
“You said you want to talk,” she started. “So talk.”
Ronin leaned forward and put his wine on the coffee table untouched. He rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands loosely together. Ali waited for him to start, but when he remained silent she felt the atmosphere between them thicken and become awkward. Eventually he spoke.
“I’ve been trying to make sense of why you left.”
“Ronin, we’ve been through this—”
“No, we haven’t. All that’s happened is that you wrote a note and said you were leaving, then when I came to see you, you told me you didn’t want to see me again. Why?”
Ali closed her eyes and shook her head slightly. She didn’t want to go through this. Couldn’t he just accept that things were over? People broke up all the time. They moved on. Period. Why wouldn’t he let her go?
Maybe because he loves you? The idea came out of the blue. Her lungs squeezed closed and she struggled to draw in a breath. She didn’t want him to love her. He couldn’t, or at least he wouldn’t when he knew she wasn’t what he really wanted. But could she bring herself to tell him?
“Ali?” he prompted.
She opened her eyes. “Ronin, sometimes things just don’t work out. We have to accept that and move on.”
“Don’t work out? What part of us wasn’t working out? Were you unhappy with me, with Joshua? From what I could tell everything was fine until my parents came around on Sunday afternoon. Even then everything was great...” He hesitated a moment, as if working something out in his mind. “Right up until Mum showed you the album. Was that what it was? Was there something in there that upset you?”
Everything in her wanted to tell him to get up and leave right now. She didn’t want to discuss this. Didn’t want to strip herself totally bare and admit the truth to him. But if she didn’t do it now, she realized, he would keep chipping away at her until he unraveled the ball of knots that was her past, her pain.
“Ali, I want to fix this. How can I make it right for you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong?” he said, more gently than she’d ever heard him speak before.
Oh how she wished it could be that simple. That she could just tell him and have him wipe every slate clean so they could start anew. But over the past few years, she’d learned to be a realist. Some things were simply unfixable. She cupped her wineglass in her hands and took a deep breath.
“It’s nothing you can fix. It’s me.”
“C’mon, Ali. At least give me a chance.”
She looked at him, at the intensity and integrity reflected back at her in his eyes. He really believed that he could make a difference? She hated to burst his bubble of confidence. But maybe that was what it would take for him to take that step back and release her to her solitude.
“I guess I should start at the beginning, then,” she said with a deep sigh. “I first met Richard, my ex-husband, in high school—we were both sixteen. We were pretty much inseparable right from the start. He was so different to the other guys. He wasn’t about the here and now, he always had his future clearly in his sights. Part of that future was to have a big family. He was an only child and his parents were in their forties when he came along. His arrival had come as a bit of a shock, I think. I got the sense that it was a fairly lonely childhood for him, though his parents loved him very much. Anyway, he had a plan already mapped out, even when he was sixteen. He knew exactly what he wanted from life and nothing would deter him from his course.”
“He sounds focused,” Ronin commented.
“Oh, he was. Very much so. I liked that, especially since our goals were so similar. I’m the youngest of four girls and my older sisters were already marrying and starting families when Richard and I started dating. Being a wife and mother was all I ever wanted, really. I didn’t want to be a highflier in business. I wanted to create a world filled with the kind of warmth and love that my parents had given to us girls. The kind of world my sisters were creating with their partners for their families. Anyway, once Richard graduated from university he got work as a business analyst and he was very good at it. We married and started trying for a family straightaway.”
Ali paused and took a long sip of her wine. This was harder than she’d thought it would be. Relating the bare bones of what had been both the happiest and the most devastating time of her life without injecting it with the emotions that bubbled so close to the surface was enough to have her heart racing with the strain.
She looked across at Ronin, who had leaned back against the back of the sofa and was watching her carefully, his relaxed pose encouraging her to continue.
“Anyway, long story short, we had trouble conceiving and Richard was frustrated that his plans, our plans, had stalled. When we discovered the reason why we were having trouble, he changed. He began to withdraw from me, refusing to talk about what the news meant for us as a couple. I thought he just needed time to get his head around the fact that his grand life plan had to be reevaluated, but that we’d be able to go forward on a new track after that. I thought he loved me enough to see us weather through it all.”
Her voice cracked on the last few words, and she struggled to pull herself together. She thou
ght she’d learned to control the hurt and sense of betrayal that had remained as the legacy of her marriage, but hard on the heels of her discovery last Sunday—on seeing that gloriously happy photo of Richard with his new bride—she’d realized any control she’d thought she’d had was merely a front. The hurt still cut like a razor, still made her bleed inside.
She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts and continued. “Anyway, one day he came home from work and said he loved someone else who had made him happy again, and he wanted a divorce. In her he saw a new chance to live his dream, to create the future and the world he wanted more than he wanted me. I was blindsided. God, I was such a fool.
“For months he’d been having an affair with a woman he’d hired to redecorate his offices at work. He’d been falling in love with her and out of love with me. I should have realized. I knew how focused he was, how determined he’d always been to reach his goals. I should have realized that once he saw I couldn’t give him what he dreamed of, he’d want out.”
Ali looked at Ronin again and could see him processing what she’d told him. She could pinpoint the moment when the pieces fell together to make a whole.
“Richard was R.J.?” he asked.
She nodded. “I had no idea he’d remarried, no idea he’d been about to become a father. I hadn’t even heard he was dead.”
The thought that he’d been on the verge of realizing his greatest goal in life, only to have it snatched cruelly away, made her feel an ironic sense of loss on his behalf.
“I’m so sorry you had to find out that way. No wonder you weren’t yourself after seeing the album. And I think I understand why you were so angry when you thought I was married, but—” he shoved a hand through his hair “—I still don’t understand why you ran. We could have talked about this. Yes, the situation is unusual, and I understand if it changes the way you view Joshua and me, but we can hardly be held accountable for what R.J. did. You’re feeling hurt now, but once the initial shock has passed, I’m sure we can work through it.”
The Child They Didn't Expect Page 14
