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He uncrossed his arms. ‘Your bonus will be in your bank by Monday. My solicitor will work out the details of the divorce.’
‘Thank you.’ Darcy avoided his eye now, picking up her bag.
A knock came to the door and she looked up. ‘That’ll be the taxi. The housekeeper is sending someone up for my bags when it arrives.’
Max had pushed everything he was feeling down so deep that he was slightly light-headed. Like a robot, he moved over to the bed and took Darcy’s suitcase easily in one hand. He took it to the door and opened it, handing it out to the young man on the other side. One of the estate staff.
And then Darcy was in the doorway, close enough for him to smell her scent. It had an immediate effect on him, making his body hard.
Damn her. Right now he was more than ready to see the back of her. That edge was beckoning again, panic flaring.
He stepped back, allowing her to leave the room. He forced himself to be solicitous even as he had a sudden urge to haul her back into the room and slam the door shut, locking them both inside.
And what then? asked a snide voice.
Another one answered: Chaos.
‘Good luck, Darcy. If you need anything get in touch.’
‘I won’t.’ Her voice was definitely husky now, and she wasn’t looking at him. ‘But thank you. Goodbye, Max.’
CHAPTER TEN
DARCY WASN’T SURE how she managed it, but she stayed in a state of calm numbness until she was on the train at Inverness Station and it was pulling out in the direction of Edinburgh, followed by London.
As the train picked up speed, though, it was as if its motion was peeling her skin back to expose where her heart lay in tatters, just under her breastbone. It had taken almost every ounce of her strength to stand before Max and maintain that icy, unconcerned front.
She just made it to the toilet in time, where she sat on the closed lid, shuddering and weeping and swaying as the train took her further and further away from the man who had taken all her vulnerabilities and laid them bare for his own ends.
And she couldn’t even blame him. She’d handed herself over to his ruthless heartlessness lock, stock and barrel. She’d made that choice.
Three months later
Darcy climbed up the steps from the tube and emerged in a quiet road of a leafy suburb in north London. Well, not so leafy now th
at autumn was here in force, stripping everything bare.
After walking for a few minutes she hitched her bags to one hand as she dug out her key and put it in the front door of her apartment building. A familiar dart of pleasure rushed through her. Her apartment building. Which housed her bijou ground-floor two-bedroomed apartment that had French doors leading out to her own private back garden.
The bonus Max had provided had more than covered the cost of the apartment with cash—making the sale fast and efficient. She’d moved in three weeks ago.
Max. He was always on the periphery of her mind, but Darcy shied away from looking at him too directly—like avoiding the glare of the sun for fear of going blind.
For a month after she’d left him in Scotland she’d had to endure seeing him emblazoned over every paper and magazine: the wunderkind of the financial world, accepted into the highest echelons where heads of state and the most powerful people in the world hailed his genius.
The emotion she’d felt thinking that he finally must have found some peace had mocked her.
There’d been pictures of him in gossip columns too, attending glittering events with a different beautiful woman on his arm each time. The pain Darcy had felt had been like a hot dagger skewering her belly, so she’d stopped watching the news or reading the papers.
She put her shopping away with little enthusiasm and thought idly of inviting her neighbour from upstairs for something to eat. John was the first person to make her laugh since she’d left Max.
After a quick trip upstairs, and John’s totally overjoyed acceptance of her invitation—‘Sweetie, you are the best! I was about to die of hunger...like literally die!’—Darcy went back downstairs and prepared some dinner, feeling marginally better.
She could get through this and emerge intact. She could, she vowed as she skewered some chicken with a little more force than necessary.
* * *
‘You know, if you ever want to tell Uncle John about the bastard who done you wrong, I’ll get a few boxes of wine and we’ll hunker down for the weekend. Make a pity party of it.’
