Her Best Worst Mistake (21 page)

“
I fell down the stairs. I’ve banged
my knee and twisted my ankle.”

“
Violet.”

There was so much meaning in the single word.

“
I’m okay.”

“
You’d better be.”

She smiled as his fierceness.

“
Ten minutes. Don’t
move.”

He made it in eight, pounding on the street door the
second he arrived. She slid down the final couple of steps on her
backside and reached up to let him in. He paled when he saw her.
Crouching beside her, he touched her face.

“
Jesus, Violet.”

“
I’m okay,” she reassured him
again.

He lifted her skirt and examined first her knee then
her ankle. He didn’t touch anything, for which she was hugely
grateful.

His expression was grim when his gaze met hers
again.

“
You realize it’s broken, don’t
you?”

“
I had an inkling.”

“
We need to get you to
hospital.”

He carried her to the car, placing her carefully in
the back seat and arranging his coat to support her ankle.

“
Fifteen minutes, tops, and we’ll be
there,” he said as started the engine.

She lay with her head tilted back, hands fisted in
her lap as she tried to breathe through the pain. He carried her
into casualty and the nurse took one look at her and ushered them
through to a cubicle. X-rays revealed that she had, indeed, broken
her ankle. Her knee was merely badly bruised.

They gave her painkillers and ice for her knee, then
a nurse came to stabilise her ankle with a cast. Violet watched the
woman work, trying to contain the emotion rising inside her. Martin
brushed the hair back from her face and tightened his grip on her
hand. She looked up at him, a single tear sliding down her
cheek.

“
I’m going to have to cancel my
flight, aren’t I?”

He didn’t bother responding. They both knew she’d be
in no condition to walk, let alone fly for quite some time.
Fortunately she already had Andie lined up to cover the shop for
her while she was away, so she didn’t have to worry about the store
for the next week, at least.

They sent her home with a blue fiberglass cast and
crutches. Martin took her to his place and put her to bed. That
night he collected a suitcase of things from her apartment and made
space in his wardrobe for her clothes.

“
People are going to think I did
this on purpose, so you’d be forced to take me in,” she said as she
watched him carefully hang her dresses and coats. There was
something incredibly endearing about the way he made sure they were
hanging just right before he put them on the rail.

“
People are going to think I pushed
you down the stairs so you’d have no choice but to move in with
me.”

She called Elizabeth later that evening to tell her
the bad news. E was hugely concerned and apologetic that she wasn’t
there to commiserate and comfort Violet in person. She sent an
enormous basket of flowers and chocolates to the shop the next day
and Andie dropped them at Martin’s place on her way home. Violet
was staring at them morosely when Martin got in from work that
evening. His gaze went from her to the flowers and back again.

“
Elizabeth?”

“
She’s such a good friend. I don’t
deserve her.”

Martin sat on the side of the bed. “You’re a great
friend to Elizabeth. Even when I was at my most ridiculous where
you were concerned, I understood that.”

“
A truly great friend wouldn’t have
so much as sniffed in your direction.”

“
And where would that have left me?
Sleepwalking my way through my life?”

Despite her guilt and misery, she was warmed by his
words and the way he looked at her. It still felt like a minor
miracle to her that he loved her in the same way that she loved
him. Then she caught sight of Elizabeth’s flowers over his shoulder
and her smile faded.

“
Call her, Violet. If it’s weighing
on you so heavily, call her. I know it’s not what you wanted, but
maybe it’s what you have to accept,” Martin said.

She stared at him, chewing her lip. He was probably
right but she hated the idea of having such an important
conversation over the phone.

“
You can’t put this off forever, you
know that, right?”

She ducked her head, hating that he could see right
through her excuses to her cowardly heart. His hand found her
cheek, his palm cupping her jaw.

“
She loves you, Violet. She wants
you to be happy.”

“
You were hers for six years,
Martin. She was going to marry you. It’s not like I borrowed a pair
of her shoes without permission. I borrowed her life.”

“
It was my life, too. Don’t I get a
say in any of this? A share of the blame? I’m the one who came to
you that first time. I’m the one who kissed you and pushed you down
onto the couch.”

She smiled faintly at his chivalry. “I kissed you,
you idiot, and dragged you onto the couch.”

They argued the toss for a few minutes, which
inevitably led to a re-enactment of original events—creatively
choreographed to allow for her injuries.

Afterward, as Martin lay dozing beside her, she tried
to psych herself up to call Elizabeth. She knew her procrastination
was verging on the pathological at this point and that every day
that passed only made things worse. She really needed to bit the
bullet.

She glanced at her phone on the bedside table, but
didn’t pick it up.

She’d never considered herself a weak person. She’d
walked away from her family when she was nineteen, striking out
into the world with only the feeble funds in her school bank
account to keep the wolf from the door. She’d built up a business
from nothing, created a life for herself. Yet for some reason she
was unable to tackle this situation head on.

“
Give yourself a break,
Violet.”

She turned her head on the pillow. “I thought you
were sleeping.”

“
And I thought I’d succeeded in
distracting you.”

“
Is that what that was?”

“
Among other things.”

She smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. “I don’t like
feeling like this.”

“
Guilty?”

“
Yes. And feeble.”

“
You’re not feeble.”

“
Then why is this so hard for
me?”

“
Because Elizabeth is your surrogate
family.” He said it as though it was perfectly obvious, plainer
than the nose on her face.

She propped herself up on an elbow, arrested. “What
do you mean?”

“
You can’t see it?” he asked, his
grey eyes gentle. “You’ve lost one family already, and Elizabeth
stepped into the breach. She became your sister and your mother and
your father, all rolled into one. You did the same for her, mind.
You helped her survive her grandparents. You two saved each other.
And now you’re afraid that history is going to repeat itself and
that once the truth of what has happened between us has been
revealed, Elizabeth will reject you in the same way that your
father did.”

It was so simple, so obvious. Violet lay blinking
back tears, ridiculously choked up over Martin’s concise take on
her situation. She’d been so sure that she’d dealt with all that
stuff with her father and stepmother, that she had it under control
and yet here it was, raising its ugly head again.

“
Does any of this stuff ever go
away?” she asked after a long beat.

“
In my experience, no. But you get
to know where the bodies are buried, and you learn how to avoid
them and how to cope with them when you can’t avoid
them.”

Violet studied his face in the dim light, then
reached out to run a finger along the bristly line of his jaw.

“
How did you get so
smart?”

“
The hard way. The
same way you got so strong. And you
are
strong, Violet. You’ll survive
this, no matter what happens.”

She loved him for not sugar-coating things, for not
attempting to predict Elizabeth’s response.

“
You think I should call
her?”

“
I think you should stop carrying
all this guilt around and accept that you’re allowed to be happy.
And if talking to Elizabeth is going to achieve that, then yes,
call her.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when her phone
rang. Martin passed it across to her. She took one look at the
caller I.D. and took a deep breath.

“
It’s E.”

It was as though the fates were adding their
encouragement to Martin’s. Telling her that now was the time to
unburden herself.

Martin raised an eyebrow in silent question.

“
Okay,” she said, nodding.
“Okay.”

It was time. Past time. She needed to face the
consequences and move on. Even if it was going to hurt like hell.
She and Martin couldn’t move forward until this was dealt with.
He’d been very careful not to mention his own feelings in any of
their discussions so far, but she knew it chaffed on him that their
relationship was not yet public.

She took the call. “Hey, E.” Her voice came out
strangely, tight and a little high.

“
Violet. Thank God you’re there. I
wanted you to be the first to know—Nathan just asked me to marry
him, and I said yes!”

For a second Violet was speechless. She blinked
rapidly, trying to prod her stunned brain into action.

Elizabeth had flown out to Australia four months ago.
And now she was getting married? It was all way too fast, way too
crazy, even for a woman who had just turned her life upside
down.

“
Violet? Are you still
there?”

Violet gathered her scattered thoughts together and
forced herself to say the expected thing, even though her head was
teeming with doubts.

“
I am. I’m just blown away. It’s
amazing news.” She glanced at Martin as it hit her that this news
might be more than a little shocking to him, too.

No matter what he said, no matter that he was with
her now and that she knew in her gut he was happy, the news that
Elizabeth was marrying someone so soon after breaking things off
with him would have to sting. He wouldn’t be human if it
didn’t.

She reached out and took his hand, aware that her
next words would well and truly give the game away as far as the
topic of her conversation with Elizabeth went. “Have you set a date
yet?”

She watched as comprehension dawned on Martin’s face.
His gaze dropped to the sheet, effectively shutting her off from
his thoughts. She squeezed his hand.

“
Brace yourself—we’re aiming for
June,” Elizabeth said. “I know that sounds absolutely insane, but
my grandparents have decided they want to come down here. They want
to meet Nathan and see where I’m going to live. They’ve booked
tickets for June and we decided that it would be the perfect
opportunity to kill a few birds with one stone.”

“
Right.”

“
It won’t be big or fancy, just our
closest friends and family. I know you’re grounded with your ankle
right now, but it will be all good in eight weeks time, won’t it?”
Elizabeth’s tone was coaxing.

Martin was still staring at the sheet.

“
I’m sure it will be fine. And if it
isn’t, I’ll come anyway.”

What else was there for her to say, after all?
Despite having decided barely five minutes ago that she needed to
confess all, no matter what, there was no way she was going to be
the wet blanket that ruined her best friend’s excitement and
happiness.

And Elizabeth
was
happy. It radiated from every
word she said. Under any other circumstances, Violet would be
beside herself with joy for her friend, but with Martin sitting
pensively beside her and the ever-present guilt making her stomach
heavy, her own reaction was far more compromised and
complicated.

“
Be happy for me, Vi,” Elizabeth
said quietly, obviously picking up on some of Violet’s turmoil
despite the distance between them. “Nathan makes me so happy. This
is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“
I’m thrilled for you, E. You have
no idea how much. I’m just trying to get my head around it all,
that’s all.”

“
I know it’s fast. But it’s right. I
know it in my bones. Have you ever had that feeling, Vi? Absolute,
instinctive certainty?”

Violet’s gaze fell to where her hand still gripped
Martin’s.

“
Yes. I’ve had that
feeling.”

“
I love you so much, you know that,
right? I can’t wait to see you and for you to meet Nathan and to
show you around Melbourne. You’ll love it here.”

“
Email me through the dates and I’ll
book my ticket tonight.”

“
Great. Listen, I have to keep
moving, I need to make a few more calls. Have a glass of champagne
in my name, okay?”

“
I will.”

The line went dead and Violet set her phone on the
bedside table.

“
Are you okay?” she
asked.

Martin lifted his gaze to hers. “I’m fine.”

“
Still, it must have been a shock
for you.”

“
You want the truth? The only time
I’ve thought about Elizabeth in the past few months is in relation
to you.”