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Back to being single.
Again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STEPPING INTO 200 Harley Street the next morning was amongst the hardest things Lizzie had ever done.
Thankfully the door to Leo’s office was closed and remained so.
She got through the morning as best she could but, of course, Ethan noticed.
‘Are you okay?’ Ethan checked, and Lizzie forced a smile.
‘Of course I am,’ Lizzie said. ‘Mum’s been a bit unwell,’ she offered, and then halted, very aware she was using her parents as an excuse.
When Ethan had gone she sat at the desk in her office and the tears came, not about the row the previous night but because, damn him, Leo was right. Oh, he’d put it terribly, but she was hiding behind her parents. Of course they could have had cake at lunchtime and, yes, she could have had her mother’s surgery rescheduled, of course she didn’t have to stay overnight. It had been the excuse she’d needed to shield her from the full blaze of Leo, the distance between them necessary if she was somehow to protect her heart.
It hadn’t worked, though.
Her heart, for the first time ever, was truly broken.
Ethan heard her tears from behind her closed door and, incensed, marched into Leo’s office.
‘What’s going on with Lizzie?’ Ethan demanded.
‘Nothing, as far as I know.’
‘Come off it, Leo. I know you two are on together—everyone knows.’
‘Were on,’ Leo corrected him. ‘We just finished.’
‘I told you to back off.’
‘And I chose not to listen.’ Leo shrugged, guilt at his handling of things making him more cutting than usual. ‘Anyway, what does it have to do with you?’ Leo frowned. ‘Is there something I’m missing here? Because you seem terribly attached to your little nurse. Did a bit more than dressings go on during the home visits?’
‘You know they didn’t.’
‘Was she taking care of more than your legs?’ Leo jeered, and, war hero or not, injured or not, Leo had his brother against the wall.
‘What does it matter to you?’ Ethan taunted. ‘You just said you two were finished.’ They were stepping into very dangerous territory, the same anger and jealousy that had ripped through Leo when he’d found out that the woman he had fallen hard for had been on with Ethan was coming between them again. ‘Go on,’ Ethan goaded, ‘hit me.’ Leo raised his fist. ‘We both know you won’t.’
‘You’re not worth it,’ Leo snarled, dropping his fist.
‘Backing off, are you, Leo?’ Ethan’s lip curled. ‘Let’s see how you smooth this over. Let’s see you charm your way out of it, or,’ he said, talking now about Leo’s handling of their father, ‘why don’t you pour me a drink?’
Leo nearly did hit him then, but instead he fought with his mouth.
Ethan would have far preferred his fist.
‘You know what, Ethan, for all that you loathe me, your anger’s misdirected. I stopped him—I wasn’t enabling him, I preferred him unconscious at times. Do you really think I wanted that drunk bastard’s temper unleashed on you?’ Leo had him back up against the wall again but this time with words. ‘You’re my brother—my younger brother. Do you really think I’d just step back and let you at him?’
Ethan’s face screwed up in fury but Leo didn’t relent. ‘Hate me all you like, Ethan.’ He thought of Lizzie, there wasn’t a moment that he wasn’t thinking of her but right now it was as if she was in the room, her words replaying, Leo’s truth coming out now. ‘At least you’re alive. You blame me for talking him down or knocking him out with his beverage of choice, instead of letting the whole mess blow up. Would you light the tail of a lion and send someone you love in to deal with it?’
Ethan stood there as Leo said, in the most backward of ways, that he loved him. ‘Would you?’
Still Ethan said nothing, so Leo answered for him.
‘No, you’d do everything in your power to keep someone you love safe. Hate me if you must, get your kicks that way if it suits you. Just know I stopped that drunk from exploding, not because I’m ignorant or a fool. Instead, I played him, I smooth-talked him round, not because I wanted to appease the drunk but because I was trying to protect you.’
‘Okay, I get it …’
‘Sure about that?’ Leo stepped back. He was breathless. He felt as if his head was exploding, not just from all he had revealed but at the taunt from Ethan about Lizzie.
Ethan was a bit stunned himself to find out that behind Leo’s mask there were feelings, and perhaps not just for him. He’d never seen Leo explode like that. Oh, he’d come close, but beneath the vitriol there had been real anguish in Leo’s voice. At least there he could put him out of his misery.
‘Nothing has ever happened between Lizzie and I,’ Ethan said.
‘It doesn’t matter anyway. We’re finished.’
‘Because?’
‘Lizzie’s a bit busy with her parents for the next decade.’
‘She’s not going to change things for someone who’s not going to change.’
Leo gave a bitter laugh. ‘Since when did you get so wise?’
Ethan wasn’t going to answer that question. Instead, he answered the other one. ‘I promise you there has never been anything at all between Lizzie and I. I think of her more like a sister—I care about her because she was there when I was in a dark place.’
‘It’s looking pretty black now,’ Leo said, looking at his brother who worried him so.
‘Yeah, it’s black now but I was in hell then, Leo, maybe I still am. Lizzie used to come over to do my dressings and she’d talk and I wouldn’t answer, but I did listen. She’d tell me about her parents, little things, normal things, real things. She brought me back to a world that I’d forgotten existed.’ Leo wanted to know more but knew better than to push for now—it was the most Ethan had ever spoken about the effects of Afghanistan. ‘You know what? You can’t keep going like this, Leo.’
‘Like what?’ Leo said. ‘You’re the messed up one, remember?’ And then let out a mirthless laugh. He was through talking his way out of it, through fighting it, through pretending that everything was okay. ‘I think it’s far safer for Lizzie that I carry on as I have been, rather than testing my heart out on her. I should have listened,’ he conceded. ‘I should have stayed well away.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TOO LATE, LEO stayed well away.
A pale-faced, red-eyed Lizzie did her best to avoid him as he threw himself back into work and his social life, got straight back on the horse and asked a favourite blonde who knew the rules to join him on Saturday.
And Lizzie did the same.
Or rather she checked herself into the bed and breakfast and spent a weekend trying to assuage the guilt that she’d rather be with Leo than with her parents.
She walked on the beach and remembered getting a text from him, recalling all the thrill and excitement that had been there then, and, instead of crying, she lugged her broken heart into a wheelbarrow and left it sitting there for a little while as she thought about Leo without pain in the mix. She walked and thought of dancing and dressing up and the bliss of that night and every night she had spent with Leo.
With her heart on hold she could examine it without pain. Their time together had been amazing, for the first time she’d had a glimpse of freedom, had tasted exhilaration—how could she possibly regret that?
So she fetched the wheelbarrow and replaced her heart and, yes, she was still better for her time with him.
One big cry, Lizzie decided.
Tonight, after she’d had birthday cake with her parents, she’d head to the shops and get supplies. With chocolate and wine and her favourite movie, she’d lie on nylon sheets and howl, but on Monday, if she valued her job, she’d better work out rather quickly how to face him better.
‘I’ll be up on Friday.’ Lizzie kissed her father goodbye.
‘We’ll look forward to it, won’t we, Faye?’ Thomas said to his wife. ‘Lizzie’s coming up early next weekend. We’ll have three days of her.’
‘No.’ Lizzie’s face was on fire. ‘I’ll be going home on Saturday morning. I’m just coming up for the procedure.’
‘I just thought …’ Thomas huffed. ‘We haven’t been seeing so much of you lately.’
‘I’ve got a new job, Dad,’ Lizzie said. ‘Sometimes I have to go to work functions …’ And she just stopped making excuses to her father for actually having a life. ‘I need to catch up with some of my friends too.’ She gave him a kiss. ‘I’ll see you on Friday.’
No, she would not be a martyr, Lizzie told herself on Monday as she walked past Leo’s office. The door was open and there he was, looking a little seedy.
‘Busy weekend?’ Lizzie smiled.
‘Er, a bit.’ He was caught unawares. She’d been busily avoiding him late last week and Leo had been only too happy with that, but it was a very together Lizzie who greeted him now.
She saw his slightly guarded expression as she unbuttoned her coat. ‘It’s okay, Leo, I’m not going to do a Flora.’
