United States of Love: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance

by Sue Fortin

  ‘No!’ Mark shouted the word. People at a nearby table turned round to look briefly. His next words were quieter but still as forceful. ‘I’m not agreeing to a divorce.’ With that, he stood up and marched out of the pub.

  ‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ asked Zoe as they came to a stop outside Anna's house later that evening.

  Anna shook her head. ‘No, I'll be okay, but thanks anyway.’ She looked towards the house which was in total darkness. ‘Either Mark's not back yet or he's asleep. Either way, I'm glad. I have no intention of getting into a row with him tonight about anything, least of all a divorce.’

  ‘It's about time you divorced him anyway,’ said Zoe. ‘Neither Nathan nor I can understand why you’ve never pursued it.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ replied Anna ruefully, well aware how keen they were for her to divorce Mark. ‘It's just, well, it's like admitting you've failed at something. When you get divorced you even get a certificate to prove that you've been a total failure. It's been easier to ignore it than to confront it. Not only that, but I've never felt it necessary.’

  ‘So you definitely don’t want to get back with Mark?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘It won’t work. We’ve tried before but it never has. I don’t know why this time would be any different. I was going to speak to Mark but I wasn’t quite ready. It just sort of came out tonight.’

  ‘It's amazing what a new love interest can do for you,’ smiled Zoe, ignoring Anna’s protests that Tex wasn’t a love interest nor could possibly be one. ‘Oh look, this must be my taxi. Thanks for tonight. I really enjoyed getting out for a couple of hours, although I am seriously knackered now.’

  Fortunately, Mark was asleep on the sofa when Anna crept in and upstairs. As she reached the landing, she could see the flickering light of the TV coming from under the door of Luke's room. Anna gently knocked on the door. No answer. Luke must have fallen asleep watching it. She crept in and switched off the television.

  ‘I wasn't asleep,’ came Luke's voice, slightly muffled by the duvet.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I thought you were. Do you want the telly back on?’

  ‘No,’ said Luke abruptly, sitting up and flicking on his bedside light. ‘Dad said you were out with a man.’

  Anna eyed her son carefully. Impossible to tell what he was thinking.

  ‘What else did he say?’ she asked, giving an inward sigh. Mark had obviously come home and stirred things up already. Luke shrugged. Anna chose her words carefully. ‘I went out with Zoe and we briefly met my boss, his wife, my client and another woman.’

  ‘Dad didn't seem to think it was just that. I think he was a bit upset to be honest, seeing you with another man.’

  ‘It wasn't exactly like that,’ said Anna patiently. She sat down on the edge of Luke's bed. ‘You know we’ve always been honest with each other. If there was anything significant to tell you, then I would.’

  Luke nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘There may well come a time when I meet someone else. I wouldn’t like to think I’ll be on my own forever.’ She rested her hand on Luke’s shoulder. ‘Your dad could just as easily meet someone too.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Now you really should go to sleep, it's late. I'll see you in the morning. We can always talk more then, when we're not so tired.’ She gave Luke a hug and a kiss. ‘Night. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too, Mum.’

  Saturday morning was tense, the atmosphere between Anna and Mark positively Arctic.

  ‘This is pleasant. Not!’ said Luke, sitting down at the table. ‘What's that saying about cutting the air with a knife?’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ commented Mark as he continued texting without looking up. An awkward silence followed and then Mark spoke again, this time more brightly. ‘Hey, Luke, fancy going to watch Chelsea play Wigan tomorrow? A mate of mine's got some tickets. It's at Stamford Bridge. We can meet him and his son there.’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Luke without a moment's hesitation. ‘That would be brilliant. Cheers, Dad.’

  Anna couldn’t help feeling slightly peeved at Luke’s enthusiastic response to Mark’s suggestion. She then checked herself. She wanted Luke to have a good relationship with his father, so she should be pleased they were getting along.

  ‘That will be nice,’ she forced herself to say.

  ‘It will be brilliant. I'm going out now,’ said Luke, getting up from the table. ‘Going to meet Jacob. See you later.’

  Anna waited until Luke was safely out of the house before she spoke.

  ‘Mark. Can we talk?’

  ‘Before you say anything, can you just listen to me first?’ Mark put his phone down and pushed his plate to the middle of the table. ‘I know I’ve been a shit in the past and I am sorry. You know that, don’t you?’

  Anna nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’ She knew that Mark was sorry, he had always been sorry, but ultimately it had never changed anything. He had continued to behave the same.

  ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking while I’ve been in the States,’ Mark continued, his fingers twitching. ‘At first, I was glad to be away. Things were so difficult between us, it was a relief to be several thousand miles away. But I never stopped thinking about you, Anna, never stopped loving you. I’ve missed you. I meant what I said when I first came back. I’ve changed. I’m not like I used to be. I’ve grown up. I really want us to try again.’

  He looked and sounded so sincere, Anna felt she could almost believe him, but she knew they couldn’t go back to how things had been. That was too awful to contemplate. Maybe Mark had changed, but so had she.

  ‘When you first went to America, I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage,’ said Anna gently. ‘I hadn’t been on my own since I was nineteen. I was devastated our marriage was in the state it was, it was the last thing I wanted. But after you left, I discovered I was more capable than I thought. I like where I am now and I don’t mean in the physical sense. I don’t want to go backwards. Us getting back together would be doing that. I just want to go forwards, and that means divorce. I’m sorry, Mark.’

  Anna stood up and rinsed her cup in the sink. She felt awful saying that but it was true and she had to be honest with Mark. She couldn’t let him think there was any chance of them getting back together, that wouldn’t be fair.

  Mark came and stood beside her. ‘I'm not agreeing to a divorce. You'll have to divorce me.’

  ‘Why are you being so difficult? Why do you want to stay married?’ Anna waited for a response but was met with silence. She looked thoughtfully out of the window at the buddleia bobbing in the spring breeze, before adding defiantly, ‘I'll get some advice. I'm sure I have grounds for divorce whether you agree to it or not.’

  ‘Do you really want to drag our marriage through the courts? Do you really want Luke to find out all the details? Do you really want it splashed across the papers?’

  ‘What are you on about, the papers?’ Anna turned to face him. ‘The newspapers aren’t going to be interested in a divorce between an ex-footballer and his wife. Remember, I pre-date the WAG scene. No one's interested in me.’

  ‘No, but they might be a bit more interested when they find out the co-defendant is making a name for himself in the restaurant world, has a Michelin star, and is hoping to open a restaurant in Arundel.’ Mark spoke with a coolness that made her shudder involuntarily. ‘Yes, Anna, the papers might take a bit more of an interest then and I don't know how that will affect his business. Wouldn't want it to have a negative effect, would we? And in case you're wondering how I know all about Mr Garcia, it's amazing what you can learn from a file being left lying around on the table for anyone to read. That and Google.’

  ‘I can't believe you did that!’ Anna cried. ‘You've been looking at my work files. They are confidential.’

  ‘If they were that private you should have put them away.’

  Anna took a deep breath. ‘Mr Garcia is a client. Nothing else. Besides, that sort of news isn’t
really headline is it?’

  ‘True, but there is a bit of a hoo-ha about his restaurant. You know, locals opposing it. This will just taint his reputation a bit further.’

  ‘You need to do your homework better, Mark. Most of the locals are for the restaurant now. Anyway, it’s all publicity and will only get people talking about the restaurant all the more. In fact, people will be dying to see who this notorious chef is, so your plan may well backfire.’ Anna couldn’t keep the triumph out of her voice. Now she had him on the back foot. She took another deep breath, hoping to install some confidence in herself before she spoke again. ‘I don’t want you living here anymore. There's plenty of bed and breakfast places around or you could go and stay with one of your friends. But I think your staying with me has run its course.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Mark. ‘It's my house and I'm not leaving. Besides, I don’t think Luke will be happy if you kick me out.’

  ‘Don't you dare bring Luke into this,’ Anna snapped. She fought hard to keep her breathing under control so she didn't stammer over her words. ‘You've done enough damage. Don't you even think about trying to set me up as the bad one. I've always been very decent about you to our son. I've never once run you down to him, so don't you try and play games with me and make out that I'm letting him down. I did everything I could to make our family work. I didn't ruin our marriage.’

  ‘No, but you ruined my career.’ There was a hard, callous tone in his voice. He stood up, towering over her. ‘Because of you, I had to give up football.’

  ‘That's so unfair,’ cried Anna. ‘I was only driving because you were too drunk. I didn't even want to go to that party but you insisted. If I'd known before it was only because you were shagging the hostess, I would never have agreed to go in the first place.’

  ‘And if you hadn't been so bloody miserable and insisted that we had to leave the party because you were worried about being late for the babysitter, then we could have stayed the night and I could have driven back the following morning. Safely. But no, we had to leave, didn't we?’

  ‘We had to leave because you were so drunk you were practically fawning over Melanie Wilson in front of her husband. You made it so obvious that you and her were at it.’ Anna held on to the side of the worktop. ‘Anyway, that's typical of you, that you can only think about yourself. That car accident put me in hospital for five days, killed our unborn baby and meant that I could never have children again. Don't you think I've relived that evening over and over again. Thinking if only? What if? Wishing I could change what happened. Don't you think both of us have suffered because of that night? It was a combination of events and decisions. So don't you dare lay all the blame at my door.’

  Anna was fighting back the tears now. She had always felt guilty about the car accident even though she knew it wasn't her fault. The car had slid on wet mud at a sharp bend in the road. Sliding across the tarmac. Careering through the fence. Rolling over and over down the embankment. The hedgerow at the bottom of the slope catching the broken and battered BMW. It had been an accident. A dreadful accident with awful consequences, but an accident nonetheless. The tears were stinging her eyes and she blinked hard to keep them from falling. ‘You can't blame me for everything, Mark. You can't punish me forever.’

  ‘I’m not punishing you, Anna.’ Mark exhaled deeply. ‘Anna, please, I’m sorry. I don’t want to argue, I don’t want to upset you. And I don’t want to divorce you. In fact, I refuse to divorce you. I love you.’ Mark rested his hand lightly on her back. ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ She shrugged his hand away and rushed from the kitchen, seeking solace in her bedroom.

  Anna sat silently on the edge of her bed, trying to catch her breath, concentrating on regaining her composure. On hearing the front door close, she went to the window, tipping the blinds so she could see out. She saw Mark pause as he closed the garden gate and then look up at her. Did he know she would be watching? He gave a half smile before walking down the road, heavy-footed and head bowed. It wasn’t until he was out of sight that Anna’s resolve finally gave way and she sank to the floor, letting the tears fall.

  The tears weren’t just from the pain of the past that had been brought back to the surface – the pain of her broken marriage, her lost child and lost chance of more children – she cried for the frustration and anger Mark had invoked within her, and for the hurt she seemed to be inflicting on him now. All the times she had wanted to hurt him, to make him suffer, to crush his love as he had done to hers, and now that the tables seemed to be turned she didn’t feel any satisfaction whatsoever. Just sadness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tex checked his watch again. It was nearly eleven and Anna would be arriving at the premises any minute now.

  Despite his best attempts over the weekend to dismiss any thoughts of Anna from his mind, he had found it a futile exercise. It had annoyed him more than he cared to admit when her husband had turned up on Friday night. The way Mark had put his arm around Anna’s shoulder with such familiarity, and the fact that Anna didn’t move away, had irked him further. It was a surprising feeling that sat uncomfortably with him. He knew he hadn’t been very magnanimous towards her when he’d left the pub, barely saying a word, and now he felt regretful.

  Then to top it all, he had arrived at the restaurant this morning to find that the main door and windows had been damaged. Several of the small leaded windowpanes had been smashed and the front door had been daubed in green paint with the words ‘Yank Out’. Had it been senseless vandalism he might have not been so concerned, but the fact that ‘Yank’ referred directly to him was unsettling.

  The sound of knocking at the door and his name being called out sliced through his ruminating. She was here.

  Walking out into the main hall of the old church, Tex drew breath at the sight of Anna, and realised he was involuntarily casting a barely disguised appreciative eye over her. She was wearing a white t-shirt that clung in all the right places, with a crewneck, pale pink cardigan and a tailored black skirt which finished just on her knee. Her slender legs, encased in skin-toned glossy nylon, looked gorgeous and her high black heels gave her an extra couple of inches in height.

  ‘Hey, there. How ya’ doin’?’ said Tex, regaining his equanimity and going over to her, kissed her on each cheek. He felt the tension in her shoulders.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Anna replied.

  She sounded very businesslike today, Tex thought, and felt like kicking himself. Having got her to relax and open up a bit last time she was here, now, after his behaviour on Friday evening, the barrier was back in place.

  ‘What happened to the front of the building?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Vandals.’

  ‘That’s terrible. Why would anyone do that? Have you managed to sort someone out to clean it off? I can organise it, if you need me to.’

  For now, Tex decided to bide his time before apologising about Friday. ‘Thank you, but I’ve arranged it already.’

  ‘Is it just this place that’s been attacked?’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  ‘So they’ve singled you out. Who do you think would do that?’

  Tex shrugged. ‘Local competition. Local people. Who knows?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think any of the locals would do it, not after the party, and if you think it was the tea rooms, then you are seriously out of touch.’

  She seemed riled by his suggestion that the tea rooms, as competition, might be involved, so he let it go. Perhaps now was a good time to mention her brother. She had given him one of Nathan’s business cards the other day over lunch when Tex had said he really ought to check out the local gym.

  ‘I… erm… spoke to your brother this morning.’

  Anna looked at him in surprise. ‘My brother? What for?’

  ‘To ask him if he could give me a couple of mornings each week to keep me in shape. A bit of jogging, gentle exercise.’

  ‘Oh, ri
ght. What did he say?’

  ‘He’s coming over tomorrow.’ He smiled at her. Was she pleased? Had he done enough yet to win her over? ‘Would you like a coffee?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘Don’t you want to get on with finding somewhere to live? After all, you are having to pay Jamie for my time here.’

  ‘I could tell you what I’m looking for over a coffee. Let’s go to the coffee shop by the river,’ suggested Tex, keeping his sigh of frustration in. She wasn’t making it easy for him, that was sure. Maybe she’d feel more relaxed on neutral ground. He rested his hand on her back to shepherd her towards the door and noted that she increased her pace just enough so that he couldn’t maintain contact.

  Ten minutes later they were seated in the Riverside Coffee Pot positioned by the River Arun, looking out towards the three-arched bridge that spanned the water.

  ‘So, what are your requirements?’ asked Anna, retrieving a notebook and pen from her bag. She didn’t look up as she spoke. ‘Number of bedrooms? Location? How much do you want to pay? How long do you want the tenancy for?’

  Tex decided to play it straight for now, keep things on a business keel until the time was right.

  ‘Two bedrooms. Needs to be here in Arundel. Can be a house or an apartment. Parking is a must, as is internet connection.’ He paused, waiting for her to write these points down. ‘I am flexible on the rent and I want the tenancy for at least six months.’

  ‘We could begin by looking online, or we could go to the estate agents this morning,’ said Anna, taking a sip of her tea, still avoiding eye contact. ‘It might be easier to go direct actually, as not all estate agents keep their webpages up to date, especially where rentals are concerned. Stride & Hunter Lettings would be a good one to start with as they are quite up-market, with some very exclusive properties to let.’

  Tex watched her gaze flit to the window and then back to her notebook, pen poised. ‘Okay, I will take your advice.’