The Party Starts at Midnight

by Lucy King

  ‘Hi,’ he said when he reached her, vaguely wondering whether it would be a bit presumptuous to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless before he’d heard what she had to say.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, although her smile seemed strained.

  ‘Well?’

  Abby took a deep breath and the tension inside him wound tighter than he’d have thought possible.

  ‘I nearly didn’t come.’

  Leo went still, some sixth sense alerting him to the fact that something wasn’t quite right. What the hell? Hadn’t they got beyond games? ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I thought I could do this, then I realised I couldn’t. But I have to because I may be many things but I’m not a hypocrite.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said with a frown.

  ‘How do you feel about me, Leo?’

  Huh? What? What was this? Hadn’t he already told her? Well, that was fine. If she needed reassurance he’d give it to her. ‘I want you. A lot. More than I’ve ever wanted anyone before.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  No, of course that wasn’t it. ‘I like you. Enormously. I admire you and respect you. I think you’re great.’

  She shook her head, her face sad. ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘How can it not be enough?’ he asked, running his hands through his hair for something to do with them because he was now genuinely perplexed and not a little alarmed.

  ‘It just isn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the thing is, Leo, you don’t want a relationship, and I, I’ve discovered, do. Specifically, with you. A long one. Maybe even the for-ever kind.’

  ‘What?’ he said faintly, not getting—maybe not wanting to get—what she was talking about.

  ‘I’m in love with you, Leo. Totally in love with you. You bring disorder to my order and try as I might I don’t dislike it. You hurt me, and I let it go. You’re the man I can imagine spending the rest of my life with, the only man. So I really, really wish I could have a fling with you but I can’t. It would just be too awful when it finished.’

  If someone had hit him over the head with a branch Leo couldn’t have been more stunned. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak. Could barely remain upright, because, damn, this was not the way he’d expected their rendezvous to go.

  ‘And I know that’s not what you wanted to hear,’ she continued, very calm, very controlled, ‘so I don’t expect you to do or say anything in response. You’ve made your position on the subject of relationships very clear, and that’s fair enough. I understand it. But nevertheless I can’t help the way I feel. So I’m sorry, Leo, I really am, but I think it’s best if we say goodbye.’

  And with that, she walked over to him, gave him a brief, searing kiss on the mouth that blitzed his brain and rooted him to the spot, and, after a couple of moments during which she looked at him as if trying to peer into his soul, was gone.

  * * *

  Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back.

  And though it cost her what remained of her shattered self-control Abby didn’t. She left Leo standing there in the folly after the toughest speech she’d ever had to make, and with every step she took away from him her vision blurred a little bit more and her heart broke into ever tinier pieces.

  But she didn’t look back. She couldn’t. If she had, she’d have run back to him just as fast as she could, told him she’d made a horrendous mistake and embarked on the fling right then and there.

  How she’d got through those awful five or so minutes without falling to her knees and begging him to reconsider his position on relationships she’d never know. But she’d done the right thing. She had. For once. Because she couldn’t change him, and he clearly had no intention of doing so himself. She’d come to believe she was right. Eventually. When she stopped hurting so badly.

  Once clear of the folly she picked up speed and ran through the garden, narrowly avoiding Jake and the look of astonishment on his face as she streaked past, skirted round the marquee, along the walkway.

  And it was only when she made it to the safety of her car, by this time all on its own in the field, that the adrenalin that had kept her going drained away, leaving her with nothing to do other than slump over the steering wheel and burst into tears.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, LEO?’

  At the sound of his brother’s voice somewhere above and in front of him, Leo froze for a second but he didn’t stop. ‘No, I’m not bloody all right,’ he said, gritting his teeth as he heaved on the skiff and with a groan and a creak it moved another foot down the ramp.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘It looks like you’re planning to take a boat out onto the lake,’ said Jake dryly, ‘but you can’t be doing that because if you were you’d have completely and utterly lost—your—mind.’

  ‘Then I’ve lost my mind.’

  ‘It’s half past one in the morning.’

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  ‘And you suddenly have the urge to go for a row?’

  ‘I need to think.’

  ‘Can’t you do that in the house?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Why, what’s up?’

  Pretty much at the end of his tether with himself, Abby, everything, Leo shot up and glared at his brother. ‘Are you just going stand there asking pointless questions or are you going to help me?’

  ‘I’ll do better than help you,’ said Jake easily, clearly not fazed in the slightest by his lousy temper. ‘I’ll join you.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘Well, that’s tough, because you’re obviously in a state, and I’m not letting you go out on that—’ he pointed to the lake ‘—in that—’ he pointed to the boat ‘—alone.’

  Leo shrugged and braced himself for another heave. He didn’t have either the time or the inclination to argue. There was quite enough going on in his head as it was. ‘Fine,’ he muttered. ‘Whatever. Just help me get this sodding thing into the water.’

  Jake strode forward, leaned down and pushed as Leo pulled and two minutes later the boat was afloat and carrying two black-tied passengers, one dark and scowling and pulling on the oars as if his life depended on it, the other just as dark, but concerned and wary as he leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees.

  ‘So are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ said Jake as they glided through the water towards the centre of the dark gloomy lake.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oka-a-ay-y-y, then. I’ll consider myself just along for the ride.’

  ‘As long as you don’t speak,’ said Leo, gritting his teeth and feeling his muscles burn, ‘I don’t care what you do.’

  Jake leaned back and made a point of inhaling deeply and looking around him interestedly, as if it were midday instead of midnight, but seemed to have taken the hint, thank goodness, because at long last he’d shut up.

  And so now he, Leo, could finally think. Finally try and work out what had happened back there in the folly. And what he made of it all.

  Abby had said she didn’t expect him to say or do anything, but how could he have? She hadn’t given him a chance. Not that he’d have known what to say even if she had. He’d been poleaxed by her revelation. Unable to think, let alone speak.

  But now, with the tension seeping from his body, he could. In a minute. When his head cleared. Not that it seemed to be doing so.

  As his muscles burned Leo gritted his teeth. Maybe going through it all out loud instead might make it easier to understand. Maybe his brother might provide the insight he so badly lacked. At least the darkness would provide some sort of protection. He didn’t know if he’d be contemplating this in
broad daylight. He was going to feel pretty stripped as it was. But he had to try something because he was driving himself mad.

  After one last pull, he leaned down on the oars, and levered them up out of the water, leaving the boat at the whim of the breeze.

  ‘The problem is Abby,’ he said eventually, the words sounding oddly loud in the silence of the night.

  ‘I wondered if it might be.’

  ‘Things have been...I don’t know exactly...but, well, developing, I suppose. Not without hiccups, but maybe going somewhere. Slowly.’

  ‘No kidding,’ said Jake, his wide grin very visible in the moonlight and very annoying.

  Leo scowled. ‘It’s not remotely amusing.’

  Jake’s grin faded. Sort of. ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘So half an hour ago I met her in the folly. I thought she was going to tell me she was up for a fling but instead she told me she loved me.’

  There was a moment’s silence, and then came Jake’s soft, ‘Ah.’

  Leo frowned. ‘Why did she do that?’

  Jake shrugged and lifted his hands palm up in the ‘beats the hell out of me’ kind of way. ‘Who knows? But she’s a woman and shifting the goalposts just when you think you know where they are, asking for more when you think what you’re giving them is plenty, does tend to be a speciality of theirs.’

  ‘Tonight I really thought we were on the same wavelength,’ said Leo, shaking his head in bafflement, ‘but you know, I don’t think we’ve ever been on the same wavelength.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like it. But then what man ever is?’

  ‘She’s big into emotion.’

  ‘And you’re not.’

  ‘No,’ he said, waiting for the customary shudder, which oddly enough didn’t come. Although maybe it wasn’t that odd because hadn’t he sort of opened up a bit this evening? And hadn’t it been, well, not too bad? Hadn’t he had a glimpse of how much richer his life could be if he let himself feel, truly feel, and kind of liked it?

  ‘So, at the risk of sounding all touchy-feely,’ said Jake, thankfully cutting into his thoughts because, given that they represented a one-eighty-degree change to the way he’d lived perfectly happily for the last five years, they were faintly disturbing ones, ‘she’s told you how she feels about you, but how do you feel about her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘All right, then. How do you feel in general?’

  ‘Right now?’

  Jake nodded.

  ‘Pissed off. Confused. Like I don’t know which way is up any more.’

  ‘It all seems pretty clear to me.’

  ‘Does it? Really? Because I don’t know what the hell’s going on.’

  ‘Come on, Leo,’ said Jake, a little impatiently. ‘Use your brain and work it out.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Jake let out a deep sigh of what sounded like exasperation. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘If you insist on sticking your stubborn head in the sand, then let me break it down for you in easy—to-answer questions. Only don’t think about the answers too much. Deal?’

  Well, what option did he have? He wanted to know what was going on so that he could do something about it, but he just couldn’t seem to see the wood for the trees. ‘Deal.’

  ‘OK, then. Here we go. Do you like her?’

  Leo nodded. ‘A lot.’

  ‘What do you like about her?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘How would you feel if you never saw her again?’

  ‘Lost.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Desolate. Wretched. Pointless.’

  ‘How would you feel if I told you she was standing on the ramp, watching us?’

  His heart pounded at about two hundred beats per minute and his head swam. ‘Ecstatic. Relieved. Nervous.’ He took in a slow breath, then said, ‘Is she?’

  ‘No. So now how do you feel?’

  He didn’t have to think about it. ‘Crushed.’

  ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At long last,’ said Jake with a grin. ‘Thank God for that. My work here is done.’

  But Leo wasn’t listening any longer. He was too busy reeling all over again because how could he have been so thick? How could he have been so blind? It was so obvious.

  He was in love with her. Of course he was. Deeply and madly. She’d turned his life upside down. Had him behaving totally out of character and doing things that logic and reason utterly defied, and, while it had been baffling him for weeks, now it all made sense.

  He’d spent so long trying to avoid love he hadn’t recognised it. It had hit him with the force of a sledgehammer and like a fool he’d mistaken it for mere lust. But it wasn’t just lust and he didn’t want her for just a fling. He wanted her for ever.

  ‘I’m nuts about her,’ he said faintly.

  ‘Seems that way.’

  As the knowledge took root and spread Leo could feel his entire body fill with emotion. Everything he’d tried to keep at bay for these last few months, last few years, in all likelihood. His heart was thundering with it; his head was churning with it. He felt dizzy, overwhelmed, about to explode.

  ‘I think I need to throw something,’ he said, finally understanding what Abby had meant about releasing the build-up of pressure.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Only there’s nothing here to throw.’

  He glanced at his brother and Jake’s eyebrows shot up in horror. ‘Don’t look at me.’

  ‘I’ve been an idiot.’

  And now that the scales had fallen from his eyes and his deepest fears were bubbling to the surface he knew perfectly well why. The hurt, the failure, the fear.

  And therein lay the problem, he thought, his heart plummeting for a moment as all those feelings of pain and inadequacy rushed back, because he might be in love with Abby but that didn’t mean that everything was suddenly wonderful. That didn’t mean that history wouldn’t repeat itself.

  But nor did it mean that it would.

  So did he dare hope that this time things would be different? Was she it? And was he prepared to take the risk to find out?

  He was, because she was incredible, he adored her, and the idea of not taking the risk, of letting her go, of not having her in his life was simply unbearable so he really had no option.

  ‘I need to go and find her,’ he said, his pulse galloping with the desire to see if he could sort out the mess they were in.

  ‘It’s late. The pub will be closed.’

  ‘There’s a lock-in. I overheard one of the waitresses mentioning it.’

  Jake grinned. ‘Then what are you waiting for?’

  * * *

  ‘And you know the worst thing?’ said Abby glumly, sitting at the bar and staring down into her second shot of tequila. ‘I have the feeling it’s partly my fault.’

  ‘How can it be?’ said Sheila, who stood behind the bar with her hand on the bottle and a clear intention to keep the tequila coming. ‘You told him you loved him, and he just stood there. Silently.’ She sniffed dismissively. ‘Pillock.’

  What with a lousy ex-husband who refused to pay the child support he owed, Sheila, Abby had discovered over the past couple of days, didn’t have all that great an opinion of men.

  Yet despite what had happened back there in that folly, Abby did, especially of Leo, and the problem she had now was that he wasn’t a pillock. He really wasn’t. He was the man of her dreams and unavailable, and in the twenty minutes it had taken her to pull herself together and drive back to the pub, during which her mind hadn’t stopped, she’d come to the miserable, heartbreaking conclusion that she’d utterly screwed things up.

  ‘Maybe I wasn’t being very fair,’ she said, swallowing away the lump in he
r throat and sniffing back the ever-threatening tears. ‘I mean, there he was, expecting me to be agreeing to a fling, and I came out with a declaration of the for-ever kind of love. It’s hardly surprising he was speechless. No wonder he didn’t do anything. He was probably frozen in shock.’

  ‘Could be,’ said the man to her right, who nodded slowly and then drained his pint. ‘Men don’t tend to like surprises.’

  ‘Not even good ones?’ asked Abby.

  ‘Was it a good one?’ said the man to her left, for in the half an hour she’d been in the pub the tales of her woes had gathered quite a crowd.

  ‘Probably not,’ she said sadly. ‘But I can’t go back. I’ve burned my bridges there. I really have.’ She swiped a tear that had dared to spill over. ‘And you know, for him I’d have totally been prepared to pretend not to know how to change a light bulb. I could have done that. I’m sure I could. But the truly, devastatingly ironic thing is I wouldn’t have needed to.’

  Another tear fell and her glass was topped up. ‘Thank you,’ she said and blew her nose.

  ‘No problem,’ said Sheila with a quick pat on her arm. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about but if you ask me he doesn’t deserve your tears. He sounds like all men. Crap.’

  ‘I wish he was,’ said Abby with a shaky sigh. ‘But he isn’t. So he’s not perfect, but, you know what? Neither am I. I’ve always sought out perfection, but it doesn’t exist because, actually, being perfect is a flaw too, isn’t it?’

  Sheila gave her an uncomprehending look.

  ‘What I mean, I think, is that maybe a fling would have been enough. And maybe I ought to go back and tell him. Maybe I should just take what he has to offer because, you know, the alternative, which is never seeing him again, is just about breaking my heart. Maybe I should go now.’ She glanced at the clock that hung over the bar. ‘Or is two o’clock too late? I’m not sure I can wait though.’

  But then there was a hammering on the door and all thoughts of leaving shot from her head because there came a voice from beyond the entrance to the warm, cosy pub, and Abby went so dizzy she nearly fell off her stool.