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The sense of failure. Of treachery. Of absolute loss. And it was all his own doing.
The moment he’d seen that photo, the murderous look in his eyes as he’d slammed away that photographer’s camera, he’d realised that as much as he might pretend to be a different man—one worthy of someone as innocent and delicate as Archie, one who deserved the way she looked at him, as though he was something special, someone good—he wasn’t.
He wasn’t special and he wasn’t good. He wasn’t at all the man she seemed to have convinced herself that he was. He was still the arrogant, out-of-control, emotionally bankrupt teenager he’d been who’d destroyed a man’s life all those years ago. All for the sake of a row over an upturned bar stool.
He should have known better that night, just as he should have known better with the photographer at the ball. The press were animals. They’d had no right to jostle Archie as they had, especially not when she was so clearly pregnant. But that didn’t mean he could be equally savage and uncontrolled.
And Archie had agreed.
The whole thing only proved that he was as toxic and dangerous as his father had been.
And, for that matter, as manipulative as his mother. Hadn’t he pretty much blackmailed Archie into marrying him in the first instance? What kind of a man did that? What sort of an example could that ever set for their child?
Letting her walk away from their marriage was the only honourable thing he could do right now. Set her free. It was shameful that he was having to will himself so hard to keep running. Not turn around and race back up that beach, back to the house, and tell her that she couldn’t leave after all.
All the while, a voice inside him grew. A whisper at first. Kaspar could barely hear it even as he pretended not to know what it was saying. It grew in volume, more insistent, more triumphant. He thundered along the beach as though he could outrun it, but the faster he moved the louder it grew. Until, at last, it was a bellow. A roar. It stopped him in his tracks, and it made him swing back round until the only thing he could see—the only thing his eyes would look at—was his beach house, in the distance.
Or, more ac
curately, the house that had become a home ever since Archie had set foot inside. He planted his feet firmly, as though willing himself to ground himself into the sand the way a tree bedded itself into soil. Anything to stop him racing back there and charging in. Telling Archie she couldn’t leave. She could never leave. And not just because she was carrying his child. For a long, self-indulgent moment he allowed himself to imagine what she might say. What she might do.
And then he wasn’t indulging himself any more because he knew exactly what she would say. She would ask if he loved her. The way she’d wanted to do so many times before, whether she realised it or not. He’d seen it for the first time one morning a few weeks ago. She’d been hovering by the pool, waiting for something, although he suspected she hadn’t even realised it herself. It had taken him days to figure out she’d been waiting for him to tell her that he loved her.
And he did.
Unconditionally. Irrevocably.
It was the reason he needed her to leave now. From the instant he’d discovered she was pregnant he’d known he would be there for his child the way his parents had never been there for him. He wanted to give his baby the childhood the Coates family had given to him.
But there had always been something more to it than that. There’d had to be. He would never have proposed such a marriage to any other woman. Only Archie.
Because he wanted her. He wanted to be with her.
And if it hadn’t been for his ruinous behaviour last night, he might have told her so. Now he knew he owed it to her to let her go. Before the press tainted her with the same poisonous brush with which they were so clearly intending to paint him.
It was only what he deserved.
Just as Archie deserved better. If he really loved her, as he claimed to, then he would let her go, no matter how painful it was to him. Wasn’t that what love was supposed to be about? Selfless acts for another person?
All of which ensured that him returning to the house to declare his love for her was the one thing he absolutely couldn’t do. Kaspar snarled, but only the crashing sea and the squawking gulls bore the brunt of his frustration. And then, with what felt like a superhuman effort, he whirled around and ran, sinking furiously into the sand as though he might leave his footprints there for ever.
He had no idea how long he kept running, or how far he went. But when he finally lifted his head he was no longer on the beach, he wasn’t even anywhere near the ocean, and the morning sun was on the other side of the sky as people began to emerge for their early evening revelries.
He’d been running all day. Around in circles. Just as his head was doing.
Only then did Kaspar finally turn back and head for the house which would no longer ever be a home to him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FOR THREE DAYS she had stayed cooped up in the hotel room, wallowing in her misery, which wasn’t easy as she wasn’t a person generally accustomed to self-pity. She hadn’t wallowed when her marriage to Joe had ended, or when she’d lost the baby, or even when her father had died. She’d tried to be strong, and stoic, and soldier on.
And look where that had got her.
She hadn’t actually pushed through all the grief and the heartache, at all. She’d simply been sucked even deeper down into it. The more she’d struggled to pretend she was fine, the faster she’d sunk, a little like trying to fight when the quicksand already had an unbreakable hold.
So Archie had decided that maybe if she wallowed this time, gave in to the wealth of misery that swirled around her, she could exhaust all her sorrow and make it out the other side.
It wasn’t working. Because the more she indulged her sadness, the more her brain started whirring again, wondering if she wasn’t perhaps missing something. Second-guessing herself.
