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She laughed delightedly when Lizzie’s reply popped onto her phone two seconds later accompanied by a pair of clapping hands surrounded by confetti.
OMG! Way TMI Mum!?! But g4i! xoxo
Chapter 26
Luke scribbled a note on his pad, propped the pen behind his ear, then carried on typing, inhaling the fragrance of freshly baked filou, strong coffee and the acrid echo of a thousand cigarettes that still clung to the wooden booths in Café Hugo despite the smoking ban introduced in 2008.
He came here often to work, the quiet of his apartment somehow much more disturbing than the chattering hum of other people’s conversations, the clatter of cutlery and crockery, the light slap of shoe leather on marble tiling as the waiters hurried past with trays of patisseries. Of course, he’d been here even more often than usual in the past two weeks. Ever since returning from London and the Punch-Up at Halle’s Kitchen Corral.
Because in the past fourteen days, the silence in his apartment had become unbearable.
He gulped down another shot of the cooling coffee and eased back in the booth. Before clicking away from the document he was working on—an ‘Insider’s Guide to the Hidden Treasures of the Marais’ for National Geographic magazine—to check his emails. For about the two millionth time in the past eighteen hours.
He cursed as the two new messages turned out to be a subscription circular and some spam about Russian mailorder brides.
Just what I need—a hook-up with Olga from Omsk—to turn my personal life completely to shit.
He deleted the messages, flagging Olga as spam so his damn filter could stop doubling as the demon matchmaker from hell, then stared at his empty inbox.
Eighteen hours since he’d poured out his heart in a magazine article, in one last desperate attempt to make amends for all his mistakes, both old and new. And no word from Halle.
So that was it, then. She’d finally washed her hands of him. Of them. Who could blame her? He flexed the stiff fingers of his right hand, still feeling the phantom ache in his knuckles that had healed over a week ago.
Unfortunately, there was no way to heal what he’d done. Not just charging into her home and behaving like a lunatic—his fingers curled into a fist, or rather behaving like his old man, and smashing his fist into some poor kid’s jaw because of his own shortcomings as a parent. But also issuing that nutjob ultimatum.
He could have waited. He should have waited, for Halle to talk to the kids. But instead of behaving like a grown-up, he’d panicked and tried to put Halle on the spot. All those insecurities from his childhood had risen up to strangle his sense of proportion, not to mention the self-awareness that had been forged in fire after his breakdown, years of therapy and eleven life-changing days in the Smoky Mountains.
He rested the back of his head on the booth and examined the yellowed cornice on the ceiling.
No wonder she no longer wanted to have anything to do with him. Some soul-searching, lots of extreme sports activities, too much hot-tub sex and a heartfelt article for Vanity Fair wasn’t going to atone for the never-ending list of fuc
k-ups he’d subjected her to over the years.
Especially if he kept right on fucking up.
He heard the tap of heels approaching the booth but ignored them to click back on his work document. Probably just one of the waitstaff come to refill his coffee cup.
‘Merci,’ he murmured, not bothering to look up as the girl stopped by his booth.
But instead of filling the cup, the waitress slid into the booth opposite him. His head came up, and he blinked to try to dispel the apparition sitting across from him.
Halle smiled back at him, her cheeks flushed, her soft blonde hair secured in that habitual knot and her magnificent cleavage displayed temptingly above the bodice of a snug summer dress emblazoned with mutant sunflowers.
‘Hello, Luke,’ said the apparition.
He groaned. He was having some sort of psychic freak-out brought on by weariness and stress and bone-deep regret. But he had no clue how to stop it.
‘Hi, Halle,’ he replied, deciding to humour it. And himself. If delusions were the only way he could carry on a conversation with her, then he’d take them.
His gaze tracked down to her cleavage and the plump flesh that he’d explored at his leisure in Tennessee. Blood pulsed into his groin and he wondered vaguely, exactly how psychotic you had to be to get a boner from a hallucination.
As if in slow motion, she lifted a dark leather purse and pulled out an iPad. She placed the tablet on the table, keyed in the code, then turned it the other way up and slid it across to him until he could read the standfirst of his Vanity Fair article on it.
Cool, so far, so totally certifiable.
‘I thought I should come and tell you in person,’ Dream Halle said, sounding super-real now and making him doubt his sanity even more. ‘I’m not going to let you publish a word of this.’ Damn, he could even smell that delicious floral scent of summer flowers and vanilla essence. As hallucinations went, this one was actually pretty hot.
He nodded, still in a trance. ‘You hated it, then?’
