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He approached her and lifted his hand, but she stiffened and stepped back.
‘Can’t you see that just makes it even more painful?’ she said.
He let his hand drop. His expression wasn’t frozen any more. She could see confusion, regret, maybe even sadness, but she steeled herself against the traitorous wobble in her heart that made her want to believe they still had a chance.
She pulled the papers out of the briefcase. The papers she’d come all this way to make him sign in order to end their marriage, without ever realising that what she had really wanted to do was mend it.
‘You expected me to trust you, Dane. And you got angry when I didn’t. But despite all the confusion with these—’ she lifted the papers and dropped them on the coffee table ‘—the truth is I do trust you. And I think I always did. Because I never stopped loving you. That’s why it’s so ironic that you were never able to trust me.’
His jaw flexed. His gaze was bleak. But he didn’t try to stop her again as she walked out the door.
She felt herself crumpling. The pain was too much. But she held her body ramrod-straight, her spine stiff, until she climbed into a cab to take her to the airport.
She collapsed onto the seat, wrenching sobs shuddering through her body.
‘You all right, ma’am?’ the cab driver called through the grille.
‘Yes, it’s okay. I’m okay,’ she murmured as she scrubbed away the tears with her fist and tried to make herself believe it.
She would be okay. Eventually. The way she had been before. Dane was a part of her past. A painful, poignant part of her past. She’d just forgotten that for a few days.
He’d never been a bad man. He had simply never been able to love her. Not the way she needed to be loved.
Once she was back in the UK—back where she belonged, doing what she loved—everything would be okay again.
But as they headed to the dock, and the boat to Nassau, even the promise of a fifteen-hour workday and her luxury apartment overlooking the Thames couldn’t ease the lonely longing in her battered heart—for something that had only ever been real in her foolish romantic imagination.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘BILL SAYS THEY’RE ready to sign off on the Calhoun deal. He’s checked through the contracts and everything looks good.’
‘Right. Thanks, Angela,’ Xanthe murmured as she studied the small pleasure boat making its way up the Thames.
July sunlight sparkled off the muddy water, reminding her of...
‘Is everything okay, Miss Carmichael?’
Xanthe swung round, detaching her gaze from the view out of the window of her office in Whitehall to find her PA studying her with a concerned frown on her face. The same concerned frown Xanthe had seen too often in the last two weeks. Ever since she’d returned from the Bahamas.
Get your head back in the game.
‘Yes, of course.’ She walked back to her desk, struggling to pull herself out of her latest daydream.
Everything wasn’t okay. She wasn’t sleeping, she’d barely eaten a full meal in two weeks, and she felt tired and listless and hollow inside.
Maybe it was just overwork. After the... She paused to think of an adequate word... After the difficult trip to the Caribbean, she’d thrown herself back into work as soon as she’d returned. She’d wanted to be busy, to feel useful, to feel as if her life had purpose, direction—all those things she’d lacked so long ago when she’d allowed herself to fall into love with Dane Redmond the first time.
But work wasn’t the panacea it had once been.
She missed him—not just his body and all the wonderful things he could do to hers, but his energy, his charisma, the dogged will, even the arrogance that she’d once persuaded herself she hated. Even their arguments held a strange sort of nostalgia that made no sense.
Their trip had only been five days in total. Her life, her outlook on life, couldn’t change in five days. This was just another emotional blip that she would get over the way she’d got over all the others. dpg
But why couldn’t she stop thinking about him? About the feeling of having his arms around her as she wept for their baby? The force field of raw charisma that had energised everything about their encounter and made everything since her return seem dull and lifeless in comparison?
And that look on his face when she’d told him of her foolish hopes... He’d looked astonished.
Every night since her return she’d lain awake trying to analyse that expression. Had there been disbelief there? Disdain? Or had there been hope?
