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'No, I was sitting in the garden having a coffee.' Considering the way her heart was careering around her breast cavity Beth thought she'd done quite well to answer so normally. 'Anything wrong?' she added carefully.
Plenty.' It was wry. 'The main thing being I'm in Bristol and you're in Shropshire.' There was a pause which Beth found herself utterly unable to break. Then he said, very softly, 'Missing me? Wishing I was with you?'
So much. Forcing lightness into her voice, Beth said, 'You only left late last night.'
'That wasn't what I asked.'
She shut her eyes tightly. They indulged in such banter often these days but now, with her new knowledge of her love for him, she couldn't play the game. She knew she had been playing with fire for months now. She should have realised it wasn't a matter of if she would get burnt, only when. She had thought she'd experienced the lowest point of her life when Keith had betrayed her so badly. She had been wrong. Sending Travis out of her life was going to be much worse. But it had to be done. For both their sakes.
She took a deep silent breath and prayed for the right words. He must never know the power he had over her. Keith hadn't been able to break her but Travis would. Not that he would want to—she didn't believe he was a bad person, far from it—but everything that could be wrong for them as a couple was wrong. She would never know a moment's peace if she became his woman in every sense of the word. Right from the first time they slept together she would be waiting for him to tire of her and go on to the next female who threw herself at him. And they would. They did.
'Beth?' His voice was still warm but she detected a shadow of wariness. 'What's the matter?'
'Nothing's the matter.' She wished she'd had something stronger than coffee to give her Dutch courage for what she was about to do. 'I was going to call you tomorrow, actually. I wanted you to be the first to hear what I've decided to do. I'm feeling so much better I think it's time to get back to work, take up all the strings again.'
There was a brief silence. 'I see.' It was steady and expres¬sionless. 'I thought you wanted to stay at the cottage for a full six months. Wasn't that the plan?'
'I did at first.' She swallowed. 'But, as I said, I feel fine now
and.. .and it's a bit boring here sometimes.' She tried to inject a note of truth into the lie.
The silence was even longer. 'We'll talk about this at the weekend,' he said finally. 'OK?'
Not OK. She knew it was cowardly but if she saw him again she would be terrified of what she might reveal. This had to be a clean swift severing of all contact. She opened her mouth to say she would be gone by the weekend but then something stopped her. Travis was quite capable of driving straight up to see her. In fact she was sure he would do that. They had become close in the last months, much too close. He would expect more than a long distance finish to their re¬lationship—as he had every right to, she admitted miserably. If anyone else did what she was planning to do, she'd consider them the lowest of the low. But she couldn't bear seeing him again.
'Beth?' Again he prompted her, his voice now carrying a concern which made her feel even more of a worm. 'Has something happened? Are you all right?'
No, she wasn't all right. She would never be all right again m the whole of her life. Why had he made her love him? How could she have been so foolish as to think she could handle this in the first place? 'I'm fine,' she said flatly.
'You don't sound fine.' The tone was grim.
She took refuge in the universal get-out clause. 'I've got a headache, that's all. It's the hot weather.'
"A headache.' Travis being Travis, he didn't even try to pretend he believed her.
'Taken anything for it?' he asked sceptically. 'Aspirin, paracetamol?'
"Of course.' She grimaced at the phone. How did he always know when she was lying? He was a human lie detector.
'I'll get off the phone and leave you to get to bed, then. Goodnight, Beth.' It was abrupt, cold. 'Sleep tight.'
He didn't even wait for her to reply before he finished the call. Beth blinked. No sweet nothings. No trying to persuade her to open up. Not that she would have, of course, but he might at least have tried.
She stood in the kitchen, her stomach churning. She was a headcase. He had turned her into a headcase. And then her innate honesty made her add, no, that wasn't fair. The blame for this couldn't be laid at Travis's feet.
One good cry later and ten minutes of pacing the cottage brought her to the point of calling Travis back before she stopped halfway into the number. She didn't even get as far as halfway the second and third times.
It was gone two before she finally crawled into bed and the dratted owl hooted her into four o'clock still wide awake. She must have fallen asleep some time after that because when the knocking at the front door woke her bright sunlight was spilling into the room.
