The Morning After the Night Before: Love & Lust in the city that never sleeps! (22 page)

‘You sound just like him.' He nodded towards the shrouded figure at the centre of all the nursing attention.

Carla grimaced. ‘God forbid.'

He turned and caught her eyes. ‘Listen—'

‘Don't. I know what you're going to say.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because it's what I'd say if I was in your position. Dragged back from freedom to take the rudder. That you're sorry our father is such a Neanderthal. That you're sorry that he passed over every girl in the family to leave everything to the only boy.'

‘I
am
sorry, Carla.'

‘I know. Because you're a good person. And because it's not your fault Mum finally managed to make a Y chromosome.'

His eyes fell shut.

‘We're proud of you, you know that? Me and Katie and Mags. Dad couldn't see it but I knew what you were doing over there.
We
knew. And we were cheering for you every time you got promoted. On your own. No matter what happens you will always know you earned that fair and square.'

One thing in his life worked out, anyway.

‘And Dad will never, ever get it,' Carla went on. ‘He'll go to his grave being secretly surprised at the success you're going to make of running the corporation but giving himself all the credit. But you are the man you are
despite
him, not
because
of him. Always believe that.'

He swallowed back any response. With a throat as thick as his and the week he'd just had he was liable to blurt out everything to his big sister. But he curled his fingers through hers and let their firm pressure do the talking.

They went back to watching the medical hustle and bustle.

‘Anyway,' Carla sighed deeply, ‘I came up here for a reason, Harry. There's someone here for you, in the study.'

He swore. ‘Another journalist? Let them wait.'

Carla watched him sideways. ‘Someone from the London office. Looking for a handover.'

The same London office that he'd lied to for five years? The London office who'd be thinking back over those years looking for the slightest offences they might be punished for when he took over the big seat. The same London office who'd be struggling right now after a week with no one at the helm of their finance department.

‘I guess I owe them that, at least.'

He followed his sister down the ornate, timber staircase and trailed her clicks across the expensive, polished floors. The same floors they used to slide along on pillowcases, back when the pillowcases were bigger than they were. And when both their parents were out.

Carla stopped just short of the study, kissed his cheek and excused herself quietly. ‘See you for lunch.'

Everything was whispers. Everywhere in the house.

As if they were mourning in anticipation.

He cleared his throat loudly by way of a butler's introduction and pushed the study door open. Maybe he could get this done in an hour…

His feet stumbled to a halt.

Izzy stood, like some kind of mirage, in the last place he ever imagined seeing her. His father's study. Glancing around at the opulence as if it were a foreign civilisation she'd just uncovered.

Every muscle in his body did the full fight-or-flight clench.

Except for his heart; that swelled to twice its size just for seeing her. In that split second before his mind recalled how he'd been played.

He beat it down with a club.

‘Thank you for seeing me, Harry.'

If he'd known it was her he wouldn't have. Betrayal was cancerous enough inside you without having to look it in the eye, too. He took a moment to marshal his voice.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘You need me.' Her tiny hands twisted in front of her, lost.

His pulse thundered. ‘No, I don't. I'm getting by just fine.'

If ‘fine' meant lying awake until he was too exhausted not to fall into a coma. And walking around this house as if he were a ghost, while everyone lived around him in a kind of parallel reality.

‘I don't just mean now. I mean in life.' She took one forward step. ‘You need me in your life.'

His enlarged heart pressed outwards on his ribcage until it threatened to crack.

‘What's so special about you?' he fought. Hating himself, but hating this life his parents led more. Fearing it more than anything. Still disgusted with himself that he'd let it happen to him.

She wavered just the tiniest bit but then rallied. ‘Last week I would have struggled to answer that question, but I've had thirty hours and ten thousand miles to think about it.'

‘And? What's your verdict?'

‘I'm smart. And ethical. And kind. And loyal. But I'm far from perfect.'

He folded his arms tighter across his chest.
If for no other reason than to hide his shaking fingers from her.

She'd already taken so much from him, she didn't get to have that as well.

Izzy crossed to look out of the floor-to-ceiling window onto his mother's extensive gardens, the Australian sun glowing clear through her pale dress. It silhouetted her body dramatically, until he had to move to the side of the room rather than let himself drown in memories of that lithe shape curled around him as they slept.

The last decent sleep he'd had.

‘I broke my father's heart,' she started. ‘The day he dropped me off at Trenton. I'd never seen him cry—ever—no matter how tough things got, financially, he always stayed strong. But he cried that day and I told myself it was just our parting but…it wasn't.' Her chest heaved. ‘I think I broke his heart.'

She turned and paced back across the study, arms curled around her middle. ‘He stood there, in front of our battered old car, and waved me off to the bright, new future I was so excited about. Me in my immaculate uniform that was the first new thing I'd ever worn. I couldn't have moved up those stone stairs faster. I didn't want anyone to see him or the car.'

Her sadness reached out and ebbed around his feet like London fog.

‘You were a kid,' he defended before remembering he shouldn't.

‘I rejected the life they'd struggled to give me. Like it wasn't good enough. And every time I called home with stories of the great experiences I was having at school I compounded the hurt. And I could hear that in their voices. So…I just…stopped calling. I started emailing. Sometimes texting. Eventually nothing.'

She trailed one absent finger along his father's desk.

‘I traded my life for a new one,' she continued, voice rich with bitterness, ‘and never looked back. Because it hurt too much, knowing what I'd done to my own parents. People I loved. Hearing it in their voices; knowing that they let me drop virtually out of their lives because they wanted me to be happy. And because I'd managed to make
them
feel ashamed about our life, too.'

She took a deep breath.

Her dignified pain reached out to him in a way he'd never experienced with anyone. All the deeper because she was trying so hard to mask it.

His feet started moving before he realised
what was happening but he caught himself on the opposite side of the desk. Gripped the edge as if his survival depended on it.

‘You flew halfway around the world to confess about your parents?'

She held his gaze. ‘I let my relationship with my parents wither and die rather than acknowledge my shame at how I'd abandoned them, their love, our life, for a better offer. I adapted, I compensated and made sure I was always distracted from the thoughts. And life was okay. Like living without a limb. It can be done.'

‘I don't understand.'

She stepped around the desk—floated really—and Harry's throat dried as he watched her.

‘I know I can do it with you, too. Just…let you go. I'm really practised at it. It won't be easy but I'll compensate, adapt. And life will be okay again, afterwards.'

The finality of her serious speech infected him. And the meaning of her words coiled like a snake in his guts. ‘Yet, here you are.'

‘Because I don't
want
to let you go. Okay is no longer enough. I'm here to fight for what we had.'

‘Izzy, what we had is over,' he gritted, more an affirmation for himself.

Her chest heaved in that insanely feminine dress. ‘And what if I disagree?'

‘Ending a relationship isn't usually mutual. Someone walks. It's over. That's how it works.'

Flies, in his case. First class. Not that he'd noticed one bit of the comfort.

A smile tickled at the edges of her lips. It did what it never failed to: made his heart squeeze. Except this time the squeezing hurt. Because he'd been so crazy about that smile.

‘Yet, here I am,' she said.

He took a long, fortifying breath. Refusing to be manipulated. ‘I'm sorry you wasted your time—' and presumably money she didn't have ‘—but nothing's changed from the last time we spoke.'

He turned and left the room. And it near killed him to leave her behind.

‘One hour.'

After a week of whispers, Izzy's English alfresco voice fairly rattled through the big old house. He stalled. Turned. Stared. Because—dear God—he wanted that to be true. Even if he knew it didn't make any difference. He'd set his course now.

‘One hour,' she repeated, dignified and strong. ‘That's how long I'd known your secret
when you left. Just one hour. And for most of that I was in a taxi trying to get to you.'

His breath lurched. But he'd been controlling his voice at management meetings way too long. He lifted one shoulder. ‘So you say.'

‘Name one time that I've lied to you.'

‘How would I know?'

‘I guess you wouldn't. I could be as good at it as you.' Her nostrils flared. ‘Would it help if I offered witness statements?'

‘Depends on the witnesses.'

‘Poppy and Tori.'

‘Those girls would die for you. I'm fairly sure they'd lie for you.'

‘You really don't have a lot of faith in people, do you?'

Nope. He really didn't.

Apparently, with good cause.

She looked around the massive study, at the expensive art on the walls. She walked to one piece and stared at it for eternity. ‘Is this where you grew up? This is normal to you?'

‘I told you, I spent most of my time at boarding school.'

‘But this is what waited for you when you came home?'

What the hell was she getting at now? ‘Yes.'

‘And your friends?'

‘Of course, friends.'

‘And girlfriends?'

‘Izzy…'

‘I remember how awed I was by Trenton. The trappings of wealth.'

She looked pretty awed by the art on the wall. A smile fought at the corners of his mouth. ‘That's an original McCubbin. Hardly a trapping.'

She twisted back to him, nodding with interest, but it only took a moment for it to devolve into a scrunched nose. ‘Actually, I don't care. I'm not much into art. I'm just being polite.'

Something silvery and wormlike twisted out of the black mass that was his heart and brought a lightness with it that he hadn't felt since London. But he fought it. Time to start winding this little reunion up. His patience was wearing thin and his resistance even thinner. He'd have to have her perfume scrubbed out of the walls as it was.

‘Is that right?'

She ceased her exploration of the wall art and crossed to stand right in front of him.

‘I can see why people might get dazzled by all this. Friends. Girlfriends.' She watched him
closely. ‘And how that might lead to some…bad situations for you.'

This close, he could see the evidence of the stresses of the past week much more clearly under her eyes. In the whiteness of her lips. He fought against the sense of triumph that she was doing as badly as he was. And not to care.

‘Whereas you're entirely unmoved,' he guessed.

She glanced around again. ‘It's not really to my taste,' she confessed.

‘I don't think it's supposed to be to anyone's taste, Izzy. It's a statement of grandeur.'

‘That statement being how much it cost?'

His snort echoed like a dog bark through the halls. ‘
Costs
, present tense. This estate costs a fortune every year to run.'

‘Lucky you have several fortunes, then.'

Izzy's quick mind was no less sexy than when he'd first met her, and he began to remember exactly why he'd fallen for her. Words had been foreplay between them from the very beginning.

So he withheld any more.

‘I had a lot of time to think after you left. Sitting there on the floor by your lift.'

The image of her, standing at his door, her slim hands reached out, beseeching, while he let
a muscle-bound black-ops specialist physically push her away came back to him now.

Not his finest moment.

Where would all his sisters' pride be then?

He took her arm and turned her for the door and her practised composure finally slipped a little. As though his touch were all it took.

‘Where are we going?' she gasped.

He knew where he was going for even entertaining a conversation with Izzy.
Masochism Central, population: one.

‘Somewhere more private.'

* * *

Izzy let herself be towed out into the bright spring sunlight and around the side of the house to a small sub-garden with hanging willows and perfectly positioned ornate benches. Very pretty. Very old.

Very easy to toss her from the property from here.

He released her and stood, arms folded, like a Roman centurion.

His fingers on her skin had just about broken her. The torment of his flesh on hers, but done with such icy calm. While her head was spinning with the right thing to say. To do.

Izzy struggled to clear her head, desperate not to be intimidated. Or at least not to show it.