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She let her suitcase be hefted up, clambered onto the seat herself. Nerveless...numb. Her chest was bound with steel bands, her vision still blurred. The afternoon heat pressed down on her like a crushing weight.
The buggy glided off, taking her away.
In Mel’s room Nikos stood very still.
The room was empty. Quite empty.
Emotion sliced through him. He stopped it. Meshed himself together again. Made himself walk towards the house phone and pick it up, speak to the front desk to request, in tones that were curter than he would normally use to a member of hotel staff, that he be booked on the London flight that evening. Then he put the phone down. Stared about him.
She’d gone. Mel had gone. That was the only thought in his head. She’d waved him goodbye and walked out.
And he couldn’t believe it. Just could...not...believe it.
In the space of a few minutes he’d gone from having Mel with him to not having her.
She walked out on me. She just walked out on me!
The slicing emotion came again—vertically from the top of his head right down to his feet. Slicing him in half, as if each side of his body would keel over separately. Destroying him.
Breath ravaged his lungs as he drew air into them, hauling the two sides of his body back together again by raw strength of will. He was in shock, he knew. Recognised it with the part of his mind that was still capable of functioning, which was somewhere deep inside him, somewhere very remote, it seemed. Shock was all there was to him right now. And the disbelief that went hand in hand with it.
The ringing of the house phone made him jolt. Automatically he picked it up, listened as he was told his flight had been booked, automatically gave his monosyllabic thanks before hanging up.
He walked out through the French windows he’d walked in through only minutes earlier. When his world had been completely different...
When Mel had been in it.
But now Mel was gone.
Oh, God, she’s gone.
The emotion came again, like a sweeping knife, head to foot—and this time it severed him in two completely...
* * *
Mel was standing in bright sunlight, heat beating down on her bare head. The view was beyond all imagining.
The great chasm in the earth a few metres beyond her was a full ten miles wide at this point, she knew—one of the greatest natural wonders of the earth. But as she stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon she could not feel its grandeur, nor its wonder. All around her tourists were milling, exclaiming, taking photos, grouping and regrouping, but still she stood, gazing out over the contorted rocks that cascaded down into the belly of the earth, where far below the Colorado River snaked along the almost subterranean base of the canyon.
She was taking part in an organised day tour from Las Vegas, having flown in from Washington, where she’d gone after New York. She’d assiduously visited every landmark on the tourist trail, determined to miss absolutely nothing.
Determined to fill every moment of the day with occupation. With busyness and fulfilment.
Determined to show that she was living her life to the full, seeing the world and all its wonders as she had planned and hoped so much to do.
Determined not to let herself remember the brief, glorious introduction to that new life of hers that she had had courtesy of Nikos.
It had been good—brilliant—fantastic—fabulous. But it had only ever been supposed be a glittering, gorgeous introduction to her new life of hedonistic freedom after long servitude. Travelling on her own, going where she wanted when she wanted, footloose and fancy-free, answerable only to herself—that was what her new life was supposed to be about.
So she must not stand here and think of Nikos. Must not stand here and see only him in her mind’s vision, not the jaw-dropping stupendous splendour of the Canyon.
And above all she must not—must not, must not—let that most dangerous and fatal thought creep into her head: If only he were here with me, standing beside me now, and we were seeing all this together... If only he were seeing everything with me...
Seeing everything with her...
If only he’d been with her in New York, seeing the sights with her as they’d planned. The Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Empire State Building. And then in Washington, seeing all the historic monuments there, and then—oh, then the complete contrast of Las Vegas...so gaudy and garish and such ridiculous tacky fun!
In her head she could hear him laughing with her, murmuring to her, could feel him sweeping her into his arms, kissing her senseless and carrying her off to their bed to find passionate, burning rapture in each other’s arms.
Oh, the longing for him was palpable, the yearning all-consuming. There was an ache inside her...she wanted him with her so much...
