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A full twenty-four hours without having to deal with any major emotional upheavals would be more than enough.
Mac trudged up the steps from the beach and glanced at the pedometer on his wrist.
Ten miles. He’d run ten miles, pushing himself to the limits of his endurance after another sleepless night. And he still felt like crap. Usually the endorphins kicked in and gave him at least a small lift as he showered and changed and got ready to drive to the studio for rehearsals. Rehearsals that so far had been a total disaster. He hadn’t been able to find the character, not even a glimpse of it, for the first time ever.
Over the last week he’d been running further and further every morning but the exercise wasn’t doing the trick any more.
Stepping onto the terrace, he lifted his sodden T-shirt to wipe his dripping face. And paused to stare at the sun-lounger where Juno had often lain in the shade to welcome him back from his jog. He cursed quietly and let the T-shirt drop.
Who the hell was he kidding? The aching pain, the loneliness hadn’t got any better in the month since she’d left him.
If anything it had got a great deal worse. The house that had once been a sanctuary had become a prison. Everywhere he looked he saw her. In the pool in that damn yellow swimsuit. At the breakfast table eating her morning muesli. In his bed and in the shower, her lithe body responding to his touch. She was like a ghost, taunting him to try and forget her.
It had got so bad he’d even toyed with putting the house on the market this past week. But what would be the point of that? The memories would still be there, dogging him wherever he went. He didn’t need a new home. What he needed was her.
But each time he’d picked up the phone, intending to call her and demand to know why she’d left, he’d kept coming back to their final parting—and he hadn’t been able to do it. Maybe it was pride, more likely just the survival instinct that had been bred into him as a lad, but he’d needed her to come to him. For the first few weeks he’d even fostered this stupid daydream that he might have got her pregnant and she’d be forced to contact him. But it hadn’t happened.
He slammed into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Grabbing a bottle of mineral water, he rolled the chilled plastic against his forehead. As he leaned back against the counter-top his eyes fixed on the chair in which she’d been sitting the last time she’d had breakfast with him.
The hum of the air-conditioner was the only sound to break the silence. The empty silence that had started to suffocate him.
‘Stop being such a damn coward, Brody,’ he snarled into the deathly quiet.
Unscrewing the cap, he gulped down the water and then lobbed the empty bottle into the trash. She wasn’t coming to him, so he’d have to go to her.
He strode through into the living room and went to pick up the phone, then jerked his hand back when the ring tone blared out. The silly little spurt of hope that it might be Juno was ruthlessly quashed. Hadn’t he just got over wishing for the impossible?
He grabbed the handset and shouted into the receiver. ‘Brody here, who is this?’
‘It’s Connor.’
The shock of hearing his brother’s voice was so great he was momentarily struck dumb. ‘Connor?’
‘Yeah, your big brother, remember me?’
He heard it then, the brittle sarcasm, but the hope overcame his usual caution.
‘How’s Juno?’ he asked, not even attempting to disguise his eagerness for news.
He didn’t care why his brother was calling or even if the guy hated his guts. Connor lived right next door to the woman who he had just this second admitted to himself meant more to him than breathing. This had to be fate finally doing him a favour, surely.
Connor laughed, the sound harsh. ‘That’s rich. How is she? How the hell do you think she is?’
‘I don’t know how she is,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’
So Connor had good reason to despise him. So what? He didn’t have time to go into that now.
‘What was it all for, Mac? Just tell me that much.’ The edge had gone from Connor’s voice to be replaced by sadness. ‘Was this some kind of payback? Did y
ou want to punish her because you couldn’t punish me? Because if that’s the case, she never deserved to become—’
‘I’ve not a single clue what you’re talking about,’ he interrupted with a panicked shout. ‘Has something happened to Juno? Just tell me how she is, damn it.’
He was sweating like a pig, the phone slipping in his grasp. Visions of all kinds of imagined carnage running through his mind.
‘Yeah, something’s happened to her,’ Connor said, the hint of bitterness now layered with resignation.
‘What? What’s happened? Is she sick? Has she been hurt?’
