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‘Maya, listen…’ Blaise was saying. ‘You deserve the best man that’s out there. Someone who can be the real hero I sense you need. But that man isn’t me.’ Regretfully he shook his head, dropping his hands in a futile gesture to his arrow-straight hips. ‘I don’t want you to go, and I’m not looking to replace you with anyone else—I swear it. But neither do I want to lead you on and make you hope for something that I’m just not in a position to deliver.’
‘Because you refuse to let a woman get close enough to even try? What you’re telling me is that you’d rather just “adore” as many women as possible and let the chance or possibility of something more enduring…something more meaningful…pass you by? That sounds like a pretty lonely, not to mention empty existence to me, if you don’t mind my saying so. Not that you give a damn what I think! And by the way…you’ve got me all wrong.’
With her heart pounding loud enough in her chest for her to hear every unhappy beat, Maya squared up to Blaise without flinching.
‘I’m not looking for a hero. All I want is a man who’s willing to spend the rest of his life with me because he loves me. I’m not looking for perfection. Just someone a little flawed, like myself, who’ll be as accepting of my less than perfect qualities as I would be of his. We’d work together to try and overcome them. And finally I want someone who doesn’t believe the grass is greener somewhere else—who is happy with what he already has. I want a man with the innate capacity to be loyal, as I would be loyal to him. I’m going out for that walk in the fresh air now, and when I get back I’ll be packing my bags.
She turned at the door, jerking her head towards the office she’d been occupying. ‘By the way, you’ll find the work I did this morning on my desk. You’ll have to hire somebody else to type out the rest, but I’m sure as long as she does what you want, is easy on the eye and obliging, you’ll hardly even notice that it’s not me!’
New York, six weeks later
‘Want to go for a beer or a cocktail somewhere?’ Shrugging into his cashmere coat in the theatre foyer, amid the crush of well-wishers and the congratulatory smiles of satisfied patrons, critics and colleagues, Blaise felt distinctly uneasy as his diminutive agent gave him one of her slow ‘I’ve got you taped’ assessing glances.
‘That lonely apartment you’ve been living in for the past month getting to you already?’ she probed, her small, cropped blonde head erect, hazel eyes narrowed like a cat about to pounce on some poor unsuspecting mouse.
‘I can get as much company as I need whenever I choose,’ he snapped back, glancing round as a pretty redhead squeezed deliberately by him—one of the ensemble actresses in the production—giving him both a coy and invitational smile before reluctantly disappearing through the rotating theatre doors when he didn’t respond.
‘That’s hardly in dispute, darling,’ Jane replied, eyes rolling. The edges of her scarlet painted mouth softened somewhat. ‘But when your mind is fixed on one particular person’s company alone not even Angelina Jolie herself could fill the gap. Heard from her at all since you came to New York…? Your sad-eyed raven-haired little temporary assistant, I mean?’
‘No.’ Appalled at how bleak he sounded, Blaise shifted from one lean hip to the other. ‘She has no idea that I left the UK a month ago. But then why should she? After she left I didn’t keep in contact. It was only after spending two impossible weeks in Northumberland trying to work on that damn play alone that I decided I finally couldn’t stand it and came here.’
Reaching for his usual acerbic humour to deflect any further near-the-knuckle questions from Jane, he defensively squared his jaw.
‘Are you thirsty or aren’t you? Even the most faded blooms appreciate the odd drink of water to stop them from shrivelling up and dying, so I’m told!’
She whacked him with her shiny patent leather designer handbag—hard.
The foyer had emptied quickly, and outside on the sidewalk umbrellas were hurriedly opening to face the downpour that was spilling from the skies onto the somewhat chilly New York night.
‘Faded bloom, my backside! At least I’m going back to my hotel to the man I’ve been married to for twenty years and who still thinks I hung the moon! Whereas you…’
Rubbing his arm where she’d hit him, Blaise scowled. ‘Whereas I am apparently destined to walk into the sunset alone…boo-hoo. No doubt you think I deserve it.’ He shook his head as if to shake off the deepening sense of gloom that made him feel heavy as concrete.
