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‘It’s me,’ she told him. ‘Rose. I need your help.’ She wasn’t really giving in to her own desire or to her love for him, she wasn’t doing this for her own sake, she was doing it for Amber, to whom she owed so very much.
In less than five minutes it was all arranged. Josh would come and keep watch over Pete, freeing her to go to Macclesfield. She had struggled so hard to keep Josh out of her life, to deny herself and him any opportunity to share their love for one another because she was married to Pete, but now fate had stepped in and she really had no choice.
‘So what am I to say to Mr Oliver when he comes in?’ Maria demanded.
Looking up from checking that she had her passport safely in her wallet, Ella said, ‘Tell him that I have had to go home because my father has had a heart attack. I must go, Maria, the cab’s waiting. Look after Olivia for me and give her lots of hugs from me, won’t you?’ She couldn’t delay any longer, otherwise she would miss her flight and there wouldn’t be another one until the morning. Please God, let her father still be alive when she got there. It was pointless now to wish that she had spent more time with him during that last visit in January.
Josh arrived exactly when he had promised he would. Just the sight of him was enough to fill Rose with all the emotions she knew she had no right to have. She had married Pete willingly; no one had made her. She could not simply walk away from him because she loved Josh.
She felt so dangerously close to giving way to what she felt, to being weak. It was heaven to be in Josh’s arms and held safely there, in their familiar comfort and warmth.
‘I shouldn’t have telephoned you.’
‘Of course you should.’ Josh’s thumb wiped an escaped tear from her cheek, as he added softly, ‘I’d have been as jealous as hell if you’d asked someone else. I want you to feel that you can always turn to me, Rose, for whatever you need.’
‘I know that I can, and…and I wanted you to be here, but it’s so w
rong of me to…to involve you.’
Josh smoothed her hair off her face and then cupped it in his hands so that he could look into her eyes.
‘Nothing that happens between us or that we feel for one another could ever be anything other than perfect and right. What was wrong was my stupidity in not realising how much I loved you, and letting you go. No, don’t say anything. I know you are married to Pete, I know you won’t leave him, but that doesn’t have to mean that you and I can’t be friends, does it?’
‘Friends?’ Rose’s voice broke over the word. ‘Josh, I can’t trust myself to be just friends with you.’
‘Then trust me instead to protect you and the future we will one day have, because I promise you that you can. I know how you feel about the duty you believe you owe to Pete.’
‘He needs twenty-four-hour care, Josh. He can never be well–his drinking has done too much damage to his body–but he could live for years as an invalid. No matter how much I love you and want to be with you, I can’t abandon him.’
‘I wouldn’t ask you to. Let me help you, Rose. Let me share your life with you, even if it is only as a friend.’
‘I couldn’t ask that of you.’
‘You don’t have to ask. I’m the one making the offer. I love you and without you my life has been unbearably empty. When I bumped into Ella on Fifth Avenue and she told me about Pete, I knew that I had to come back to be with you. Don’t shut me out, Rose. I need you just as much as Pete does. One day we will be the same age as your aunt and uncle. I know more than anything else that when the time comes I want yours to be the last hand I hold and the last face I see. You may be Pete’s wife but you are my love, and you always will be. Somehow we’ll find a way to make it work, Rose, I promise you.’
And Josh always kept his promises, she knew that.
Chapter Sixty-One
‘We’ve been here ages, Emerald. What do you think’s happening? No one’s told us anything.’
Emerald could hear the anxiety in Janey’s voice.
‘You stay here,’ she told her. ‘I’ll go and see if I can find out anything.’
The hospital was busier now than it had been when she had first arrived. One of the two women on the reception desk for the intensive care ward looked sympathetic when Emerald pointed out that they hadn’t seen anyone who was able to explain how Jay was, but the woman wasn’t able to say exactly when they would see the consultant.
‘I can organise some tea for you,’ the receptionist offered, ‘and I’ll try to have a word with the ward sister.’
‘If you would, please,’ Emerald thanked her. ‘My mother is still with my stepfather and naturally we’re all concerned about her as well.’
‘Did you manage to find out anything?’ Janey asked as soon as Emerald returned to the waiting room.
‘No, but they’re going to send us some tea.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Drogo should be here soon.’
It irked her a little to have to acknowledge that Drogo was likely to have more success in obtaining information from the hospital staff than she was herself, but the years had developed in Emerald a certain pragmatism over some things, and she knew there was no point in getting angry about things she couldn’t change. Not when there were matters that needed to be dealt with that she could organise.
‘When the others get here we’ll need to have a talk about the future,’ she warned Janey. ‘I know that the first priority for you and Ella and the twins will be your father, and what’s happening now, but we have to be practical as well. There’ll be things to discuss and arrangements to be made.’
