Secret Baby, Surprise Parents

Autor:in

Liz Fielding

Gelesen

15,2K

Kapitel

Autor:in

Liz Fielding

Gelesen

15,2K

Kapitel

💓 Friends to Lovers

CHAPTER ONE

GRACE MCALLISTER restlessly paced the entrance to Accident and Emergency, punching yet another number into her cellphone in a desperate attempt to contact Josh Kingsley.

It would be Sunday evening in Australia and she’d tried his home number first. A woman had picked up.

‘Anna Carling.’

‘Oh…’ The sound of her voice, the knowledge that she was in Josh’s apartment answering his phone, for a moment drove everything else from her mind. Then, gathering herself, she said, ‘Can I speak to Josh, please?’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘Grace…Grace McAllister. I’m his…his…’

‘It’s okay, Grace, I know who you are. His brother’s wife’s sister, right?’

The woman was in his apartment and knew all the details of his personal life….

Grace gripped the phone tighter until it was hurting her fingers. ‘Could I speak to him, please?’

‘I’m sorry, Josh is away at the moment. I’m his personal assistant. Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s moving about a lot. Hong Kong. Beijing. Can I pass on a message?’ she prompted when Grace didn’t reply.

‘No. Thank you.’ This wasn’t news she could ask a member of his staff—no matter how personal—to deliver second-hand. ‘I need to speak to him myself. It’s urgent.’

Anna didn’t waste time asking questions, playing the dragon at the door, but gave her a string of contact numbers. His cellphone. The number of his hotel in Hong Kong in case there was no signal. The private number of the manager of the Hong Kong office, since it was evening there. Even the number of Josh’s favourite restaurant.

There was no signal. She left a message asking him to call her, urgently, then called the hotel. He wasn’t there and the manager of the Hong Kong office informed her that Josh had flown to mainland China. Apparently Anna had already called the office and primed the manager to expect her call and again, when she wouldn’t leave a message, he helpfully gave her the number of Josh’s hotel there, and his partner in Beijing.

Beijing? He had a partner in Beijing? That was new since the last time he’d been home. Or maybe not. He hadn’t stayed for more than a few hours and no one had been talking about business…

Calling the number she’d been given, she was told that Josh was out of the city for a few days and that the only way to contact him was through his cellphone.

She felt as if she were going around in circles, but at least it helped take her mind off what was happening at the hospital, even if she was dreading the moment she found him.

This time it rang. Once, twice, three times and then she heard him. His voice, so familiar, so strange as he briefly instructed the caller to leave a message.

‘Miss McAllister…’

She spun round as a nurse called her name. Then wished she’d taken her time.

She’d been trying so hard not to think about what was happening to Michael. She’d only caught a glimpse of him lying unconscious on the stretcher while the emergency team worked on him before they’d rushed him away to the operating theatre and she’d been told to wait.

One look told her everything she needed to know. Her warm, loving brother-in-law had not survived the accident that had already killed her sister.

‘Josh…’ She forced his name out through a throat aching with unshed tears. There would be time for tears, but not yet. Not now. ‘Josh…You have to come home.’

A day, even an hour ago, the very thought of seeing him would have been enough to send her into the same dizzy spin that had afflicted her as a teenager.

Numbed with the horror of what had happened, she was beyond feeling anything but rage at the unfairness of it.

Rage at the cruelty of fate. With Josh for being so blind. For refusing to understand. For being so angry with them all.

She didn’t know what he’d said to Michael.

Remembered little of what he’d said to her, beyond begging her to think again.

All she could remember was his bloodless face when she’d told him that it was too late for second thoughts. That she was already pregnant with her sister’s child. She would never forget the way he’d lifted a hand in a helpless gesture, let it fall, before taking a step back and opening the front door, climbing into the car waiting to take him back to the airport.

The nurse, no doubt used to dealing with shocked relatives, put her arm around her. Said something about a cup of tea. Asked if there was someone she could telephone so that she would not be alone.

‘I’ve called Josh,’ Grace said, stupidly, as if the woman would understand what that meant. ‘He’ll come now.’ He had to come.

Then, realising she still had the phone clutched tightly to her ear as if she might somehow catch his voice in the ghostly static, she snapped it shut, pushed it into her pocket and allowed herself to be led back inside the hospital.

Josh Kingsley looked up at the majestic sight of Everest, pink in a freezing sunset.

He’d come here looking for something, hoping to recapture a time when he and his brother had planned this trip to Base Camp together. Older, a little wiser, he could see that it had been his big brother’s attempt to distract him from his misery at their parents’ divorce.

It had never happened. Now he was here alone but for the Sherpa porters, drawn to make this pilgrimage, take a few precious days out of a life so crowded by the demands of business that he was never entirely on his own. To find a way to come to terms with what had happened.

Now, overcome with the sudden need to talk to him, share this perfect moment, make his peace with the only member of his immediate family he cared about, he peeled off his gloves and took out the BlackBerry that he’d switched off three days ago.

Ignoring the continuous beep that signalled he had messages—work could wait, this wouldn’t—he scrolled hurriedly through his numbers. Too hurriedly. The slender black miracle of computer technology slipped through fingers rapidly numbing in the thin atmosphere. And, as if he, too, were frozen, he watched it bounce once, then fly out across a vast chasm, not moving until he heard the faint sound of it shattering a thousand feet below.

When he finally looked up, the snow had turned from pink to grey and, as the cold bit deeper, he shivered.

Josh would come, but not yet, not for twenty-four hours at the earliest. Now, numb with shock, incapable of driving, she let the nurse call Toby Makepeace. He was there within minutes, helped her deal with the paperwork before driving her home to Michael and Phoebe’s home and their three-month-old baby.

‘I hate to leave you,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be alone.’

‘Elspeth’s here,’ she said, struggling with the simplest words. ‘She stayed with Posie.’ Then, knowing more was required, she forced herself to concentrate. ‘Thank you, Toby. You’ve been a real friend.’

‘I’m here. If you need anything. Help with arrangements…’

She swallowed, not wanting to think about what lay ahead. ‘Josh will be here.’ Tomorrow or the next day. ‘He’ll see to everything.’

‘Of course.’ He left his hand briefly on her arm, then turned and began to walk away.

Elspeth, a close friend of Michael and Phoebe, had answered Grace’s desperate call and stayed with Posie. Now she said nothing, just hugged her and made her a cup of tea and then shut herself in Michael’s study, taking on the task of calling everyone to let them know what had happened. She even rang Michael’s parents—his mother in Japan, his father in France.

Grace had never met either of them—Michael and Josh had only minimum contact with either parent since their divorce—but Elspeth had at least known them, could break the news without having first to explain who she was. Then she stayed to answer the phone, field the calls that came flooding in.

Calls from everyone but the one person she was waiting to hear from.

Friends arrived with food, stayed to give practical help, making up beds in the spare rooms in the main part of the house while Grace did the same in Josh’s basement flat. Even when her world was spinning out of control, she couldn’t bear to let anyone else do that.

Then she set about putting her own life on hold, leaving a message on the answering machine in the self-contained flat she occupied on the top floor, before taking her laptop downstairs.

Sitting in the armchair that had been a permanent fixture beside the Aga for as long as she could remember, Posie within reach in her crib, she scrolled through her schedule of classes, calling everyone who had booked a place, writing the cheques and envelopes to return their fees as she went. Anything to stop herself from thinking.

After that she was free to concentrate on Posie. Bathing her, feeding her, changing her, shutting out everything else but the sound of the telephone.

She’d insisted that she tell Josh herself.

‘It’s night in China,’ Elspeth said, after the umpteenth time the phone rang and it wasn’t him. ‘He’s probably asleep with the phone switched off.’

‘No. My call didn’t go straight to the message service. It rang…’

‘Asleep and didn’t hear it, then.’

‘Maybe I should have told someone in his office—’

‘No. They’ve given you all the numbers they have and if you can’t get hold of him, neither can they.’

‘But—’

‘You’re the only person he’ll want to hear this from, Grace.’

‘Maybe.’ Was she making too much of that? What did it matter who gave him the news?

‘No question. You’re the closest thing he has to family.’

‘He has parents.’

Elspeth didn’t bother to answer, just said, ‘Come and have something to eat. Jane brought a quiche…’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t face anything.’

‘You don’t have the luxury of missing meals,’ Elspeth said firmly. ‘You have to keep strong for Posie.’

‘What about you?’ Grace asked. Elspeth had lost her best friend. She was suffering, too. ‘You’ve been on the go all day and I haven’t seen you eat a thing.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not.’ She lay Posie in the crib. ‘Sit down. Put your feet up while I boil us both an egg.’

‘Do I get toast soldiers?’ Elspeth asked, managing a smile.

‘Of course. It’s my turn to look after you, Elspeth.’

‘Only if you promise to take one of those pills the doctor left for you. You haven’t slept…’

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Not until I’ve spoken to Josh.’

‘But then?’

‘I promise,’ she said. And, because it was the only way to get Elspeth to eat, she forced down an egg, too, even managed a yoghurt.

She had a bath and might have dropped off in the warm water, but Posie was fretful. It was almost as if she sensed that something was out of kilter in her world and Grace put on Phoebe’s dressing gown so that she would have the comfort of her mother’s scent as she held her against her shoulder, crooning softly to her, walking the long night away—waiting, waiting, waiting for the phone to ring.

Finally, when she knew it was day on the other side of the world, she called again. Again, it was the answering service that picked up. ‘Where are you?’ she cried out in desperation. ‘Call me!’ All she got back was a hollow emptiness. ‘Michael’s dead, Josh,’ she said hopelessly. ‘Phoebe’s dead. Posie needs you.’

She covered her mouth, holding back her own appeal. Refusing to say that she needed him, too.

She’d always needed him, but Josh did not need her and, even in extremis, a woman had her pride.

‘Did Grace McAllister manage to get hold of you, Josh?’

He’d flown direct to Sydney from Nepal, stopping at his office to pick up urgent messages before going home to catch up on sleep.

‘Grace?’ He frowned, looking up from the list of messages his PA handed him. ‘Grace rang me?’

‘Last week. Sunday. I gave her the Hong Kong numbers but I knew you’d be on the move so I gave her your cellphone number, too,’ she said. ‘She said it was urgent. I hope I did the right thing.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, reassuring her.

Last week? On Sunday he’d been in the mountains, thinking about his brother. Thinking about Grace. There had been a message alert on his phone, but he’d ignored it….

‘I dropped the damn thing off a mountain. Can you get me a replacement?’ Then, ‘Did Grace say why she was calling?’

‘Only that it was urgent. It’s the middle of the night there now,’ she reminded him as he picked up the phone, hit the fast dial for her number.

‘It doesn’t matter. She wouldn’t have called unless it was…’ He stopped as the call went immediately to the answering machine.

“This is Grace McAllister. I’m sorry that I can’t take your call at the moment. Due to a family bereavement, all classes have been cancelled until further notice. Please check the Web site for further details.”

Bereavement?

He felt the blood drain from his face, put out a hand to grasp the desk. Posie…

It had to be Posie. Small babies were so vulnerable. Meningitis, cot death…After so many years of waiting, so much heartache.

‘Cancel everything, Anna. Get me on the next available flight to London,’ he said, dialling his brother’s number.

Someone whose voice sounded familiar, but wasn’t Michael, wasn’t Phoebe, wasn’t Grace, answered the phone.

‘It’s Josh Kingsley,’ he said.

There was a momentary hiatus and then she was there—Grace, her familiar voice saying his name.

‘Josh…’

It was all it took to stir up feelings that he’d done his level best to suppress. But this last year he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head….

‘Josh, I’ve been trying to get hold of you….’

‘I know. I rang your number. Heard your message,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘What’s happened? Who died?’

He heard her take a long shuddering breath.

‘Grace!’

‘There was an accident. Michael, Phoebe…They were both killed.’

For a moment he was too stunned to speak. His brother was dead. ‘When? How?’

‘Last Sunday morning. I’ve been calling, leaving messages. When you didn’t get back to me I thought…I thought…’

‘No!’ The word was wrenched from him. He knew what she’d thought and why, but it didn’t hurt any less to know that she could believe him so heartless.

But then she already believed that.

She had been so happy that she was having a baby for her sister, couldn’t understand why he’d been so desperate to stop her. And he hadn’t been able to tell her.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘The police said that the car skidded on a slick of mud. It went through a fence and then it rolled. It happened early in the morning and no one found them…’

‘The baby, Grace,’ he pressed urgently. ‘Posie…’

‘What? No! She wasn’t with them. She was here with me. Michael and Phoebe were away for the weekend. It was their wedding anniversary but they left the hotel early. They couldn’t wait to get back….’

Long before she’d stumbled to a halt, he’d clamped his hand over his mouth to hold in the cry of pain.

‘Josh?’

‘It’s okay. I’m okay,’ he managed. ‘How are you coping?’

‘One breath at a time,’ she said. ‘One minute. One hour…’

He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, but in a situation like this words were meaningless. And in any case she would know exactly how he was feeling. They were faced with the same loss. Or very nearly the same.

Grace wouldn’t have to live with his guilt….

Instead, he kept to the practical. He should have been there to deal with this, make the necessary arrangements, but it had been over a week already.

‘Who’s with you? What arrangements have been made? When is the…’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

‘We buried them on Friday, Josh. Your father insisted on going ahead and, when you didn’t call back, no one could reach you…’ He heard her swallow, fight down tears, then she furiously said, ‘Where were you?’

‘Grace…’

He looked up as his PA returned. ‘There’s a car waiting to take you to the airport. You have to leave now,’ she said, handing him a replacement BlackBerry.

‘Grace, I’m leaving now for the airport.’ Then, ‘Keep breathing until I get there.’

Grace let Elspeth take the phone from her as she leaned weakly against the wall.

‘Maybe you could get some sleep now,’ she said gently, handing her the pills the doctor had left when he’d called after hearing the news. ‘You’ve left plenty of milk in the fridge for Posie. I’ll manage if you want to take a rest.’

‘I know.’ She put the pills in her pocket, knowing she wouldn’t take them. She didn’t want to go to sleep because when she woke she knew there would be a moment when she’d think it was just another day.

Then she’d remember and have to live through the loss all over again.

But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she hugged her and said, ‘Thank you.’

‘We’re here, Mr Kingsley.’

Josh glanced up at the façade of the tall Georgian town house that Michael had bought when he had married Phoebe McAllister. It was a proper family home with a basement and an attic and three floors in between. Endless rooms that they’d planned to fill with children.

Instead, they’d got him and Grace. A seventeen-year-old youth whose parents had split up and who, wrapped up in their own concerns with new partners, didn’t want a moody cuckoo in the nest. And a fourteen-year-old girl for whom the only alternative was to be taken into the care of the local authority.

Exactly what every newly-wed couple needed.

They’d taken on each other’s damaged siblings without a murmur. Had given him his own space in the basement, had decorated a room especially for Grace. Her first ever room of her own.

She’d been such a pathetic little scrap. A skinny rake of a kid, all straight lines when other girls her age had been testing out the power of their emerging attraction on impressionable youths. Only her eyes, a sparkling green and gold mix that could flash or melt with her mood, warned that she had hidden depths.

Like her nose and mouth, they’d been too big for her face. And, until she’d learned to control them, they’d betrayed her every thought.

Eyes like that should carry a health warning.

‘Is there anything I can do, Mr Kingsley?’

Josh realised that the chauffeur—a regular who his PA had arranged to pick him up from the airport—was regarding him with concern.

He managed a smile. ‘You can tell me what day it is, Jack. And whether it’s seven o’clock in the morning or seven o’clock at night.’

‘It was Tuesday when I got up this morning. And it’s the evening. But I’m sure you knew that.’

‘Just testing,’ he said, managing a smile.

He’d counted every one of the last twenty-four hours as he’d travelled halfway round the world, coming to terms with the loss of his brother. And of Phoebe, who’d been the nearest thing to a big sister he’d ever had. By turns motherly, bossy, supportive. Everything that he’d needed.

Knowing that he would have to live with a world of regrets for the hard words he’d said. Words that could never be taken back. For holding on to his righteous anger, a cover for something darker that he could never admit to…,

But the hair shirt would have to wait. Grace needed him. The baby would need them both.

He climbed from the car. Grace’s brightly painted ‘Baubles and Beads’ van was parked in its usual place but the space where he expected to see his brother’s car was occupied by a small red hatchback that underlined, in the most shocking way, the reality of the situation.

Realising that Jack was waiting until he was inside, he pulled himself together, walked up the steps to the front door as he had done times without number to a house that had always felt as if it were opening its arms to him. Today, though, even in the spring sunshine, with tubs of bright yellow tulips on either side of the front door, it seemed subdued, in mourning.

The last time he’d been here he’d tossed the keys to both the house and his basement flat on his brother’s desk—his declaration that he would never return. For the first time since he’d moved in here as a seventeen-year-old, he would have to knock at the door but, as he lifted his hand to the antique knocker, it was flung open.

For a moment he thought it was Grace, watching out for him, racing to fling her arms around him, but it wasn’t her. Why would it be? She had Toby Makepeace to fling her arms around, to offer her comfort. At least she had the last time he’d come home on a visit. He hadn’t been in evidence on the day he’d turned up without warning, but then discovering his girlfriend was pregnant with someone else’s baby must have put a crimp in his ardour.

The woman who opened the door was older, familiar—a friend of Phoebe’s. Elizabeth? Eleanor? She put her finger to her lips. ‘Grace is in the kitchen but she’s just dropped off. Try not to wake her. She hasn’t been sleeping and she’s exhausted.’

He nodded.

‘You must be, too,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm. ‘It’s a terrible homecoming for you. I’m so sorry about Michael. He was a lovely man.’ She didn’t wait for him to answer, just said, ‘I’ll go now you’re here, but tell Grace to ring me if she needs anything. I’ll call in tomorrow.’

‘Yes. Thank you…’ Elspeth. ‘Thank you, Elspeth.’

He watched her until she was in her car, then picked up the bags that Jack had left on the top step, placed them inside and shut the door as quietly as he could. Each movement slow, deliberate, as if he could somehow steady the sudden wild beating of a heart that was loud enough to wake Grace all by itself.

He told himself that he should wait.

Go down to the basement flat, take a shower. But to do that, he’d need the key and the key cupboard was in the kitchen.

For the first time for as long as he could remember, he was frozen in indecision, unable to move. Staring down at the hall table where a pile of post—cards, some addressed to Grace, some to him—waited to be opened. Read.

He frowned. Cards?

He opened one, saw the lilies. In sympathy…

He dropped it as if burned, stepped back, dragged his hands over his face, through his hair as he looked down the hall. Then, because there was nothing else to do, he turned and walked slowly towards the kitchen.

He pushed the door very gently. It still squeaked. How many times had he heard Michael promise Phoebe that he’d do something about it?

He’d offered to do it himself, but Phoebe had just smiled. She liked the warning squeak, she’d told him. Liked to have something to complain about once in a while. It wasn’t good for a man to believe he was perfect.

He could have told her that Michael didn’t believe that. On the contrary. But that had been a secret between the two of them and, somehow, he’d managed to smile back.

He paused, holding his breath, but there was no sound and he stepped into the room that had always been the hub of the house. Warm, roomy, with a big table for everyone to gather around. An old armchair by the Aga that the fourteen-year-old Grace had taken to like a security blanket, homing in on it when she’d arrived clutching a plastic bag that contained everything she possessed under one arm, a small scruffy terrier under the other.

The pair of them had practically lived in it. And it was the first place she’d taken the puppy he’d given her when old Harry had died a few months later and he’d been afraid her heart was going to break.

The puppy, too, had finally died of old age, but now she had a new love. Posie. The baby she had borne with the purest heart as surrogate for the sister who had given her a home and who was now lying, boneless in sleep, against her shoulder.

Michael, hoping that if Josh saw the baby he would finally understand, forgive him even, had e-mailed him endless photographs of Posie, giving him a running commentary on her progress since the day she’d been born, refusing to be deterred by Josh’s lack of response.

There had been no photographs of Grace until the christening and then only in a group consisting of Grace, as godmother, holding Posie, flanked by Michael and Phoebe. A happy picture in which everyone had been smiling and sent, he suspected, with just a touch of defiance. A ‘see what you’re missing’ message.

He hadn’t cared about that. He’d only cared about Grace and he’d cropped the picture so that it was only of Grace and Posie. He’d had it enlarged and printed so that he could carry it with him.

Her face had been outwardly serene, but a photograph was just a two-dimensional image. It was without warmth, scent. You could touch it, but it gave nothing back. But then it had been a very long time since Grace had given anything back to him. Keeping her distance, her eyes always guarded on his visits home.

At least he’d had time to get over his shock that, some time in the last year, she’d cut her beautiful long hair into a short elfin style. He’d come to terms with the fact that her boyish figure had finally filled out in lush womanly curves.

But this scene was not a photograph.

This was an intimate view of motherhood as only a husband, a father would see it and he stood perfectly still, scarcely daring to breathe, wanting to hold the moment, freeze this timeless image in his memory. Then, almost in slow motion, he saw the empty feeding bottle that had dropped into her lap begin a slow slide to the floor.

He moved swiftly to catch it before it hit the tiles and woke her, but when he looked up he realised that his attempt to keep her from being disturbed had failed.

Or maybe not. Her eyes were open and she was looking at him, but she wasn’t truly awake. She wasn’t seeing him. He froze, holding his breath, willing her to close them again and drift back off to sleep.

She stirred. ‘Michael?’ she said.

Not quite seeing him, not yet remembering. Still he hoped…

She blinked, focused, frowned.

He saw the exact moment when it all came flooding back, and instinctively reached out to her as he had a year ago. As if he could somehow stop time, go back, save her from a world of pain. ‘Grace…’

‘Oh, Josh…’

In that unguarded moment, in those two little words, it was all there. All the loss, all the heartache and, sinking to his knees, this time he did not step back, but followed through, gathering her into his arms, holding her close.

For ten years he’d lived with a memory of her in his arms, the heavy silk of her hair trailing across his skin, her sweet mouth a torment of innocence and knowing eagerness as she’d taken him to a place that until then he hadn’t known he had wanted to go.

He’d lived with the memory of tearing himself away from her, fully aware that he’d done the unforgivable, then compounded his sin by leaving her asleep in his bed to wake alone.

He’d told himself that he’d had no choice.

Grace had needed security, a settled home, a man who would put her first while, for as long as he could remember, he’d had his eyes set on far horizons, on travelling light and fast. He’d needed total freedom to take risks as he built an empire of his own.

But nothing he had done, nothing he had achieved, not even a hastily conceived and swiftly regretted marriage, had ever dulled the memory of that one night they’d spent together and still, in his dreams, his younger self reached out for her.

It had been unbearably worse during the last twelve months. Sleep had been elusive and when he did manage an hour he woke with an almost desperate yearning for something precious, something that was lost for ever.

This. This woman clinging to him, this child…

He brushed his lips against her temple and then, his head full of the warm, milky scent of baby, he kissed Posie and for one perfect moment all the pain, all the agony of the last twenty-four hours fell away.

Grace floated towards consciousness in slow, confused stages. She had no idea where she was, or why there was a weight against her shoulder, pinning her down. Why Michael was there, watching her. Knowing on some untapped level of consciousness that it couldn’t be him.

Then, as she slowly, unwillingly surfaced, he said her name. Just that.

‘Grace…’

Exactly as he had once, years and years ago, before gathering her up in his arms. And she knew that it wasn’t Michael, it was Josh. Josh who had his arms around her, was holding her as if he’d never let her go. A rerun of every dream she’d had since he’d walked out of her life, gone away ten years ago without a word, leaving a vast, gaping hole in her world. And she clung to him, needing the comfort of his physical closeness. Just needing him.

She felt the touch of his lips against her hair as he kissed her. The warmth of his mouth, his breath against her temple. And then she was looking up at him and he was kissing her as he had done every night of her life in dreams that gave her no peace.

There was the same shocked surprise that had them drawing back to stare at one another ten years ago, as if suddenly everything made sense, before they had come together with a sudden desperate urgency, his mouth branding her as his own, the heat of their passion fusing them forever as one. A heat that had been followed by ten years of ice….

Now, as then, it was the only thing in the world that she wanted.

It was so long since he’d held her.

Not since he’d left her sleeping. Gone away without a word. No, ‘wait for me’. Nothing to give her hope that he’d return for her. Not even a simple goodbye.

He had come back, of course, full of what he’d seen, done, his plans. Always cutting his visits short, impatient to be somewhere else, with someone else.

But she’d never let her guard down again, had never let him see how much he’d hurt her, never let him get that close again. She’d avoided the hugs and kisses so freely bestowed on the prodigal on his increasingly rare visits home, keeping away until all the excitement was over. Making sure she had a date for the celebratory family dinner that had always been a feature of his homecoming—because there had always been some new achievement to celebrate. His own company. His first international contract. His marriage…

Yet now, weakly, she clung to him, drinking in the tender touch of his lips, the never-to-be-forgotten scent of his skin.

Needing him as he’d never needed her. Knowing that even now, in his grief, he would be self-contained, in control, his head somewhere else.

He was holding her now, not because he needed comfort, but because he knew that she did. Just as she had all those years ago.

He’d hold her, kiss her, lie with her even if that was what she wanted. It was how men gave closeness, comfort to women.

That was all it had ever been, even then. When, after years of keeping her feelings to herself, doing a pretty good job of being the teasing friend who criticised his choice in clothes, girls, music, she’d finally broken down the night before he’d gone away—not to university this time, or on some backpacking gap year adventure with his friends—but to the other side of the world to start a new life.

Distraught, unable to express her loss in mere words, she’d thrown herself at him and maybe, facing the risk of the unknown, he’d been feeling a little uncertain, too.

She didn’t blame him for taking what she’d so freely offered, so freely given. It was what she had wanted, after all. Had always wanted. Her mistake had been in believing that once he understood that, he’d stay.

He couldn’t do it then and he wouldn’t now.

He’d comfort her. He’d deal with the legal stuff and then, once everything had been settled, made tidy, the tears dried away, he’d fly off to Sydney or Hong Kong, China or South America. Wherever the life he’d made for himself out there in the big wide world took him. He’d go without a backward glance.

Leave her without a backward glance.

At eighteen she’d been so sure she could change him, that once she’d shown him how much she loved him he would never leave her.

At twenty-eight she knew better and, gathering herself, she pulled back, straightened legs that, curled up beneath her, had gone to sleep so that Josh was forced to move, sit back on his heels.

But, try as she might, she couldn’t look away.

It was as if she were seeing him for the first time in years. Maybe she was. Or maybe she was looking at him for the first time in years instead of just glancing at him as if he was someone to be remembered only when he passed through on his way to somewhere else, forgotten again the minute he was out of sight.

She’d perfected that glance over the years.

Now she was really looking at him.

He seemed to have grown, she thought. Not physically. He’d always been a larger-than-life figure. Clever, with a touch of recklessness that lent an edge to everything he did, he’d not only dominated the school sports field but stood head and shoulders above the crowd academically, too.

He’d had those broad shoulders even then, but he’d grown harder over the years and these days he carried himself with the confidence of a man who’d taken on the world and won. And the close-clipped beard that darkened his cheeks—new since his last brief, terrible visit—added an edge of strangeness to a face that had once been as familiar to her as her own.

But this Josh Kingsley was a stranger.

She’d known him—or thought she had—and for one shining moment he had been entirely hers. But dawn had come and she’d woken alone, her illusions shattered beyond repair.

Older, wiser, she understood why he’d gone. That it had been the only thing he could do because if he’d stayed ten years ago, he would, sooner or later, have blamed her for his lost dreams. It was so easy for love to turn to hate. And nothing had changed.

He was home now, but once everything was settled, tidied away, he’d go away again because Maybridge was—always had been—too small for Josh Kingsley.