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She did want to talk about it. She wanted to talk about every minuscule detail of their time together. Even the arguments. But that was the delusional person talking. The delusional person she’d decided to ignore. ‘Not particularly,’ she said.
The melodic ding of the doorbell made one of the cupcakes jerk out of her hand. The little spurt of excitement was instantly quashed. Cal wasn’t going to call on her, and she didn’t want him to. She was having enough trouble forgetting Mr Unforgettable without him turning up on her doorstep and making matters worse.
‘I’ll get it,’ Ella said, giving Ruby’s back a gentle rub before heading for the front reception area.
Minutes later, her friend came dashing back, brandishing a letter. ‘You have registered post, Rube. And it’s from him.’
‘What?’ She blinked. ‘How do you know that?’
Ella thrust the letter into her hand. ‘There’s a return address.’
Holding the thin white envelope with the registered mail sticker on it, Ruby’s hands trembled as she read the Lincoln’s Inn address, written in a swirling serif font with Callum Westmore, QC emblazoned at the top.
‘Open it, then.’ Her friend gave her a nudge.
Ruby sliced open the envelope with one of the kitchen carving knives. The thick white paper inside was stamped with the same letterhead. As she unfolded it another piece of paper fluttered onto the work surface. She stared at it. A cheque made out to her for a thousand pounds.
Why on earth …?
Then her gaze strayed back to the note, her heart pounding so hard now she could barely breathe as she read the three concise sentences written in a bold black scrawl.
Ruby,
We had fun a couple of weeks ago. Let’s have more.
Contact me.
Cal
‘What’s all that money for?’ Ella piped up beside her as Ruby sucked in a shaky breath.
Screwing up the note, she threw it in the dustbin, hitting the wicker dead on and making i
t rattle. Even though she knew she was overreacting, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Her heart felt as if it were being ripped from her chest.
For one blissful moment, she’d believed something wonderful was going to happen. And she wasn’t even sure what that wonderful thing was. Just that Cal had contacted her, he wanted to see her again. And that meant anything was possible.
But then his curt, cursory words had registered, and the full impact of the insulting payment. And everything had crashed down into the pit of despair opening up like a chasm inside her.
It was worse. Much worse than she had imagined. She’d thought that although he didn’t care for her enough to even consider a relationship, that at least they had parted as friends. That this silly yearning hadn’t been completely one-sided. But the note showed she had never been more than an available body. A willing available body. No doubt like all the other women he’d dated and then discarded.
Fury rose up to quell the vicious, inexplicable pain. She shoved the cheque in the pocket of her apron, whisked her car keys off the hook by the ovens and charged out of the door.
‘The money is for Callum Westmore’s funeral expenses.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
RUBY drove to his flat first. Stabbed on the intercom for ten minutes, allowing the simmering rage to dry up all of her tears. She’d shed them later, after she’d confronted him. Seeing him again would be hard, but not as hard as letting him rob her of the last of her pride and self-respect.
No man got to waltz into her life, waltz back out again, turn her into a basket case and then kick her while she was down.
She’d invented the man she thought he was. The sensitive, traumatised boy who’d become a man of such rigid control that he’d closed himself off from even the possibility of love.
That had all been an illusion brought about by sex and emotion and a lack of sleep—and her own stupidity. Callum Westmore wasn’t the troubled, turbulent man she’d discovered over that long-lost summer weekend. She’d always been impulsive, passionate, and reckless—and in Callum she’d met a man who knew how to exploit that, by giving her an out-of-body experience in bed. Probably not unlike the man who had once made her mother forget the man she loved for one night of thoughtless passion.
She closed her fist over the cheque, stabbed the button again, ready to throw the offending scrap of paper in his face when he opened the door.
But, he didn’t.
