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This wasn’t what America meant to her. Apart from a couple of trips to Disney World with Aldo, she’d only ever been to New York and Los Angeles. During both of those trips, all she’d seen was the inside of corporate offices and a quick tour of the tourist sites—but it had pretty much convinced her that, like in London, where you were supposedly never more than eight feet from a rat (and certainly never more than eight feet from someone who would tell you that), in the US you were never further than eight feet from the nearest Starbucks.
As she scanned the majestic forest of towering oaks and maples and fir trees that edged the road, she guessed they were at least eighty miles from the nearest Starbucks now.
She wished she’d stayed awake long enough on the plane to read Mel’s carefully annotated file, loaded on her iBook, that detailed the landscape and the resort and their itinerary for the next two weeks. Because her laptop was currently stuffed in her luggage in the boot of the Lexus and her curiosity had outweighed her desire not to seem incompetent or unprepared about five hairpin bends ago.
‘What are we supposed to be doing at this resort?’ she asked over the noise of a local radio station playing back-to-back country classics. And steeled herself for a condescending look from Luke.
He thumbed the volume down using the buttons embedded in the steering wheel and flicked his glance from the road. ‘You want an answ
er to that question I’d be happy to oblige, but I’ve got one for you first.’
She levelled a look at him, noting the testy tone. Did he have the hump about something? Other than her lack of research? ‘Ask away, although I can’t promise to answer it.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you for your secret fudge recipe,’ he said curtly. ‘I was merely going to ask if you’ve finished sulking. Or is this only another ten-second truce?’
Halle’s jaw tensed. Since when had she been sulking? ‘I see, so when a woman doesn’t have anything to say to you, it must be because she’s sulking. And not because you’re just not that interesting?’ If he thought he was going to hit any bullseyes with a cheap shot like that, he could forget it. She had been in guerrilla training for the past five years with his teenage daughter—who had turned sulking into an art form. ‘How very convenient for your ego.’
‘You’ve spoken exactly thirty-two words to me in close to—’ he paused to check his watch ‘—thirteen hours.’
‘Thirty-two? That many?’
‘Yup, I counted.’
She quelled the spurt of astonishment that he’d been paying enough attention to her to count them. Or that he actually seemed to care enough to be upset about it.
Luckily for him, I’m big enough not to gloat.
‘My goodness, you’re more interesting than I thought.’ Or not to gloat too much.
If anyone had a right to sulk about this trip, it was her.
‘The way I see it,’ he said, ‘I could be the most boring guy on the planet and that would still get into the Guinness Book of World-Record Sulks.’
‘Then you’d be wrong. If you’d spent as much time with your teenage daughter as I have, you’d know thirty-three words in thirteen hours wouldn’t even be worthy of a mention in the footnotes.’
‘Lizzie doesn’t sulk.’ He looked genuinely surprised. ‘Or not much for a teenage girl packed full of rioting hormones.’
Halle’s pulse stumbled. Was he serious? Surely he must have some knowledge of their daughter’s dark side? How could Luke have escaped all the angst, and the agony, the sullen strops and the cutting remarks that had been her life ever since Lizzie hit puberty?
How was that fair?
‘Excuse me, but are you talking about our daughter, Lizzie?’ She attempted to clarify. ‘The child we conceived nineteen years ago after we got legless at that Oasis gig and had unprotected sex against the back wall of the Clapham Grand? The Lizzie who changed the significance of “Wonderwall” forever?’
He chuckled, even though she hadn’t actually intended to be funny. ‘It was pretty wonderful, wasn’t it, despite the consequences.’
Despite the consequences.
The callow remark hit home. She’d always been suspicious about his reaction to the pregnancy, and all his insincere platitudes at the time, about being willing to respect her choice, live up to his responsibilities and support her and their baby. The fact he’d done a runner to Paris to shack up with another woman a couple of years later when they had needed him the most was a fairly big clue he’d been lying about that, like so much else.
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Best. The only wonderful thing about that shag was the fact it gave us a daughter.’ A daughter he hadn’t wanted then, which might explain why he knew so little about her now.
‘OK, that does it.’ He braked sharply, throwing Halle forward. She slapped her hand down to stop from rearranging her face on the dashboard.
The car shuddered to a stop on the grass verge. She grasped her throat, her heart having slammed into her larynx.
‘I know it all went to hell.’ He swung round, taking advantage of her inability to talk. ‘And I know a lot of that was my fault.’
Her astonishment at the forthright admission of guilt was superseded by shock when he continued, his tone grim. ‘But you don’t get to rewrite history. We had four years together and not all of them were shit, OK? And it definitely wasn’t shit against that wall when we made Lizzie. I still remember how tight and wet you were, and how you gripped me when you came, and how, when I came, it felt as if my balls had exploded. My knees ached because I had to lock them they were shaking so hard when you told me I was your Wonderwall. And even though you were drunk and it was super cheesy, and I made a joke about it, it meant something. To me at least.’
