The Couple Behind the Headlines (22 page)

It didn’t upset her nearly as much as she’d have thought. Did that mean she would really give up everything she’d worked for, everything she wanted, for love? She let out a long shuddery breath as the idea took root in her head and spread. It seemed she would.

For a moment she felt her heart soar. And then, as reality snapped her back, it plummeted right down to the floor. What did it matter? Any question of giving anything up was
utterly and heartbreakingly irrelevant because she wouldn’t be doing anything of the kind, would she?

Feeling strangely cold, and not just because she’d turned the water off, Imogen plucked her towel off the hook and roughly dried herself.

Realising she was in love with Jack left her nowhere and meant precisely nothing for her plans to go to the States because whatever brainstorm she might have had, whatever heady conclusion she might have come to, the fact remained she’d fallen in love with a man who didn’t know the meaning of the expression. Whose heart had remained intact for years and in all likelihood would for years to come. A man who’d promised her nothing, who’d offered her nothing but an extended fling on his terms.

An icy kind of numbness spread through her body as she pulled on her clothes and ran a brush through her hair. The whole thing was completely hopeless, wasn’t it? Even if Jack should turn up and tell her that his offer was still on the table—which was
not
likely—it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference. He’d never be able to offer her anything more than a fling, and a fling, however extended and whatever the terms, would never be enough for her. Therefore she had to get over him, because what alternative was there?

Steeling herself against the pain, Imogen shoved her things in her bag and slung it over her shoulder and left.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

O
F COURSE
it would be a damn sight easier to make a start on getting over Jack if he weren’t parked outside her house, leaning against the bonnet of his car with his arms crossed, looking dark and haggard and utterly gorgeous.

Imogen stood frozen to the spot a few feet from her front door, her pulse leaping all over the place as she stared at him. Wow, she thought dazedly, if she’d needed any confirmation that she was in love with him she had it. Her heart was almost bursting with it, and she was suddenly feeling hotter and more breathless than she had during her workout. Every inch of her itched to race up to him and hurl herself into his arms, which only went to prove how very vulnerable she was right now. With her recent self-discovery—and all its implications—so fresh in her mind, she felt raw and exposed and deeply unsettled.

Why was he here? What did he want? And why was she just standing there like a lemon?

This was a situation she’d imagined a dozen times but now it was actually happening she found she had no idea how to handle it. Swallowing back the ball of panic that lodged in her throat, Imogen tried to figure out the best approach. In the absence of anything else she settled for doing nothing and willed herself to calm down. Let him make the first move,
she thought firmly. She might be crazy about him but he was the one in the wrong.

After what felt like aeons, Jack pushed himself off his car and slowly walked towards her. With every step he took everything around her—the row of mews houses, the cobbled street, the faint rumble of traffic—became increasingly blurry until he stopped in front of her and everything but him disappeared completely.

‘Hi,’ he said, and her stomach flipped at the lopsided smile he gave her.

‘Hi.’ Imogen shifted her weight from one foot to the other and resisted the urge to give herself a good kick as she did so, because, lopsided smile or no lopsided smile, her stomach had no business flipping. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I wanted to talk.’

‘Haven’t you said enough?’

At her cool, detached tone, Jack flinched and she made herself ignore it because as far as she was concerned, cool and detached was an excellent way to handle this.

‘Not nearly,’ he said. ‘May I come in?’

And have him invading her space and scrambling her senses once again? ‘I don’t think so.’

He rubbed a hand along his jaw and nodded briefly. ‘OK, well, I guess here is as good a place as any.’

‘For what?’

‘The apology I owe you.’

Imogen shrugged as if she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. ‘An apology? What for?’

Jack frowned. ‘What I said about your father pulling strings to get you into university … It was unforgivable.’

And despite her best efforts she couldn’t help her pathetically weak heart softening a little. ‘Oh, that,’ she said and then jutted her chin up in an effort to counterbalance the melting that was going on in her chest. ‘He didn’t, you know. I had
to write three essays, take a couple of exams and get endless references. It wasn’t easy.’

‘I know.’

‘Why would you think he had?’

Jack sighed. ‘I didn’t. Not really.’

‘Then why say it?’

‘I asked you to stay. You said no. I didn’t like it.’

She stared at him in surprise. Had her refusal hurt? Had it really mattered that much? She reran their last conversation, this time from his point of view, and felt an instant stab of shame. She’d been so busy concentrating on how she’d been feeling that she hadn’t considered his feelings at all, had she? In all honesty she hadn’t thought he had any. But of course he did. Who didn’t? So if her rejection of his request that she stay
had
hurt, then that certainly made sense of his reaction. And if that
was
the case, then what other feelings might he have?

Imogen’s heart began to pound as her fragile steeliness crumpled and a kernel of hope cracked open inside her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t be.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Why would you?’

‘I should have thought.’

‘It was selfish of me to ask you not to go. But anyway, I overreacted.’ He gave her a funny little smile that made her heart squeeze. ‘As you may have guessed, I have a slight issue with rejection.’

‘Why?’

‘People I care about have a habit of leaving me.’ He took a deep breath and shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘My mother, all those nannies, and now you …’

Imogen’s breath caught in her throat and her heart skipped a beat. ‘You care about me?’ How much? she was desperate to know, but didn’t dare ask.

‘Of course.’ He smiled and looked so deeply into her eyes
that she went dizzy with hope. ‘Which is why I’ve come up with a solution that I think could be workable.’

A solution that could be workable? As his words sank in Imogen blinked and her heart rate slowed right down. The phrase ricocheted around her head and rearranged itself in a dozen different ways. But whichever way she looked at it a workable solution didn’t sound like the answer to all her recently acknowledged dreams and it didn’t sound like the declaration of love she’d secretly been longing for.

Bewilderment and disappointment ripped through her with such force that her knees nearly gave way. ‘Oh?’ she said, because that she was all she could manage.

‘Yes,’ he said, completely unaware of the tumultuous effect his words had had on her if the dazzling smile he gave her was anything to go by. ‘I’ve been thinking about this. You won’t be studying all the time. There are long weekends. Holidays. And I often have to travel to New York on business. We might rack up the air miles and our phone bills would probably be astronomical, but we could make this work.’

For a moment all she could do was stare at him. Helplessly gaze into those gorgeous blue serious eyes as something inside her fractured.

Oh, what an idiot she was. Had she really expected a declaration of undying love? A heart-wrenching profession he couldn’t live without her? How could she be so deluded? Jack might have thought he’d upped his game and presented her with the ideal solution, but really all he was proposing was a fling on
equal
terms.

Agreeing to it would be the mark of insanity. It would mean having to live with the emotional turmoil of dizzying highs and crushing lows. There’d be the rush of the novelty of it in the beginning, but then gradually when other things began to crop up—as they surely would—and they stopped crossing the Atlantic so often, she’d have to deal with the distressing
fizzling out of it and the inevitable agonising end. And she’d be left heartbroken.

As Jack would never be able to give her what she wanted and as she wasn’t prepared to accept anything less than everything, there was nothing to be done, she realised with depressing finality. The only consolation she had was that at least he didn’t know how she felt.

‘So?’ he asked, giving her a smile that looked surprisingly uncertain.

With self-preservation now uppermost in her mind, Imogen took a deep breath and said, ‘No.’

For a second he just blinked at her, as if unable to believe she’d turned him down again. ‘No?’ he echoed, the smile vanishing and his jaw tightening. ‘Why not?’

‘I’m sorry. I just can’t.’

‘I think I deserve a bit more than that, don’t you?’ he said, suddenly looking so aloof that she wished she could box away all her concerns, say yes to his suggestion, and make him smile that gorgeous smile again.

But she ignored the temptation and said coolly, ‘Look, Jack, let’s face it. It’s a nice idea, but it wouldn’t work.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘If we did embark on a long-distance affair, we’d be apart more than we’d be together.’ She paused, then looked him straight in the eye and went for the easy way out. ‘And I don’t know if I could trust you.’

Long seconds of silence passed. ‘What?’ he said softly, his air of detachment vanishing as his expression turned thunderous. ‘What the hell makes you think you couldn’t trust me?’

Imogen forced herself not to flinch at his anger, and hardened her heart. ‘Well, for one thing, you’re not exactly known for your staying power when it comes to relationships.’

‘I’ve never had one,’ he snapped.

‘Precisely.’

‘What’s your point, Imogen?’

‘Do you really think that absence makes the heart grow fonder? Because I don’t. Don’t forget,’ she continued doggedly, ‘I went out with Max for months, Jack, and he was having an affair with my best friend right under my nose. With what you’re suggesting we’d be thousands of miles apart for days on end and that means that there’d be even more of a risk.’

‘I’m not Max,’ he said, sounding as though he were gritting his teeth.

‘Maybe not, but give me one good reason I could trust you.’

Even though she’d only brought up the whole trust thing as a way to hide what she really had an issue with, it now seemed of paramount importance. All she needed was one tiny glimmer of proof that he was serious about this. That he more than cared about her. That she was good for more than an extended fling and that he could be in this for the long haul.

But he blinked. Hesitated.

And in that brief nanosecond of uncertainty, as she saw the shadow that flitted across his face, everything inside her shattered.

‘You can’t, can you?’ she said, her voice breaking beneath the pain and disappointment flooding through her.

‘Do you see me demanding proof that
I
can trust
you
?’ he said flatly, and then his voice turned colder, harder, infinitely more cynical. ‘You know, you really need to get over the whole Max thing. It’s pathetic.’

‘And you need to get over your phobia of commitment,’ she fired back, all the emotions churning around inside her surging up to voice what was
really
at the heart of this. ‘History doesn’t have to repeat itself.’

‘Exactly.’

As they stood there bristling at each other it struck her that they were at a stalemate. Jack had taken as many steps forward as he was able to, and she certainly wasn’t going to take any when it would achieve nothing but her own humiliation.

‘Well, you can rest assured that for me it won’t,’ she said, and then added with a bitter laugh, ‘Who knows? When I get to the States, I might find a nice American who
can
give me what I want. Who I
can
trust.’

Jack’s expression was stony, his eyes unreadable, his body tense. ‘Then they’re welcome to you.’

And with the devastating knowledge that this was it and there really was nothing left for her here now, the fight and the hope drained out of her. ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said dully.

He stepped back, so icy and distant that she wondered if she’d ever known him. ‘Don’t worry. I’m going. I must have been mad to come here in the first place.’

‘Then I doubt you’ll be wanting an invitation to my leaving party.’

‘I can’t think of anything I’d want less,’ he said, and with that he threw her one last unfathomable glance, swivelled on his heel and strode back to his car.