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‘No, it’s not. I’m sorry, Alex.’
‘We took a risk and it didn’t work out. That’s okay.’ She looked up at him suddenly. ‘Would you do something for me, please?’
‘Of course.’
‘I want you to delete my number from your phone. And I’ll delete yours. I don’t want us to be...’ Alex gave a little shrug.
She didn’t need to explain. The sudden impulse to beg her not to was almost too much for Leo, but he knew this was the right thing to do. ‘You don’t want me to be looking at my phone, wondering if you’ve called, do you. Because you’re not going to.’
‘No. I’m not.’
It seemed so final, but at least this was real. In some ways this was the most compassionate thing she could have done, in a situation that was tearing him apart. Leo took his phone from his pocket and, with shaking fingers, he found her number and deleted it. When he looked up, he saw that Alex was doing the same.
She stood up, seeming to shed whatever she felt about that, suddenly brisk. ‘I should get going.’
He fetched her bag from upstairs, trying not to look at the rumpled bed. Trying not to smell the faint scent of their lovemaking, which still perfumed the air. By the time he got back downstairs, she was in her coat and looking for her car keys in her handbag.
‘I’ll take your things to the car...’
Alex shook her head. ‘I can manage. Thank you.’ She took her bag and turned, opening the front door. Leo watched her go. Across the bridge, alone this time. Then she put her things into the car and the engine choked uncertainly into life.
He wanted to shout the words after her, but he could only whisper them. Because shouting them might elicit some response from her, and he knew that he should just let her go.
‘Be happy.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HER KNEE STILL throbbed a little from when she’d crashed down on all fours. She’d woken with a start when Leo had got out of bed, and realised almost immediately that she’d lost him. Swinging herself out of bed and across the room should have been easy—she’d managed enough times before—but she’d been so shaken by grief that she’d fallen.
Somehow, she made it down the track without either driving into the millpond or crashing into a tree. But any further and tears would have blinded her. Alex pulled off the road into an entranceway to a field, switched off the engine and then crashed her fist into the steering wheel.
This might feel a little better if she hated Leo. If she could convince herself that he wasn’t a good man. If he hadn’t made love to her that way last night. He’d meant it. She knew he’d really meant it.
But none of that mattered. Leo had just been on loan to her. For one gorgeous night she’d thought that he could live for the moment, in the here and now, and then the past had clawed him back again. Alex couldn’t forget the guilt and regret on his face when he’d appeared in the doorway. Last night had meant something to both of them and
that look had taken it all back, soured and destroyed it.
She pulled a tissue from the glove compartment. She was going to cry. She could feel it welling up inside, an insistent and wordless agony. All she could do was to get it over with. She’d fallen down and, however much it hurt, she was going to have to get back up again.
* * *
Getting back up again hadn’t been so easy. Alex missed Leo every day. Every time she walked past the cake shop on the way to the charity’s office. Every time someone wrote to her or phoned her, saying that they’d heard her on the radio.
The dark days of March trickled away and became the slightly less dark days of April. It would be summer soon. Alice had been fitted for her running blade and was beginning to learn to run with it. She’d asked Alex to put a photograph up on the charity’s website, in the hope that the anonymous donor might see it and know how much it meant to her. Perhaps Leo would. Perhaps he’d see it and smile.
* * *
‘Look at these!’ Rhona came flying into the office, a bunch of yellow roses in her hand, her face flushed with pleasure.
‘They’re lovely. You and Tom had a good weekend, then?’
‘It was a great weekend. But Tom doesn’t send yellow roses—he sends red ones. And not two dozen long-stemmed ones either; we’re saving for the wedding.’ Rhona put the flowers down on Alex’s desk. ‘These are for you.’
‘Me?’ Two dozen long-stems sounded suspiciously like Leo. Or maybe he was just the first person who sprang to mind because she’d been thinking about him again, on her way to work this morning.
‘You. Yellow roses. That’s for friendship, in case you were wondering.’
‘Who are they from?’ Alex didn’t dare touch them. If they weren’t from Leo then it meant they must be from someone else. And receiving roses from someone else felt somehow disloyal. Even if there was nothing between her and Leo any more.
