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And her mouth was sodry.
Everything inside her was tied in a knot, pulling tighter and tighter and tighter, daring her to open her mouth and say the thing she wanted even if it meant changing them forever—
And that was the thing she couldn’t do.
Shecouldn’t.
“I’m not leaving a review or asking a question,” she managed to say, though there was a bitter taste in her mouth. “It’s an enthusiastic observation, that’s all. I hear they’re all the rage.”
Across from her, Dylan didn’t seem to move. But he changed, again. That tension dissipated. And she couldn’t help but imagine she saw a shade of disappointment in those green eyes of his.
She told herself she had to be imagining it. That she had to be imagining all of this. Because the alternative was that he was no longer Dylan and she was no longer Jenny, and that meant there was nothem—and she could do almost anything. She could make anything work, as her engagement proved.
But she couldn’t lose Dylan. She could survive anything but that.
“I think you should eat something,” he said, quietly. Years could have passed, for all she knew, tangled up as she was inside. “Have a bit of a kip. Maybe even shower off the plane ride. What do you reckon?”
And for the first time in as long as she’d known him, when he smiled at her she thought it might break her heart.
But she couldn’t have said why.
Because you don’t want to say why,something in her retorted.
Either way, she didn’t say it. Jenny only nodded, didn’t quite meet his eyes again and let him lead her back into his house.
Later, Jenny was sure she’d imagined all that tension. Those strange moments out in the bright winter sunlight on the bottom of the world. They all seemed lashed together like a dream, green eyes and the memory of Dylan’s smile, none of it making any sense when she tried to recapture them or think it all through.
Better to forget and move on, she told herself staunchly.
Dylan’s guest room was on the back side of the house. It had its own bit of a balcony, so she could wake in the mornings and bask in all that lovely Australian sunshine. Outside her room she could inhale the fragrance of all the flowers and pretty green things as she peered down the side of the building to see the sea, like a beckoning wall of blue.
She fetched herself a cup of tea from the kitchen and sat out on her balcony quietly. In the space between the buildings, she could imagine she lived here when, of course, she didn’t. And couldn’t. Her life was in England.
Though you’ll be living in France soon enough,the voice inside her pointed out. Still sounding entirely too much like Erika.Conrad’s base is in Paris.
Several days into her impromptu stay in Sydney’s lovely eastern suburbs, Jenny found herself pondering that potential reality. Conrad’s business took him all over the world. Just because he liked to call Paris home didn’t mean she needed to do the same...did it? The automatic relocation expected when people married wouldn’t be expected of an arranged wife, surely. She glared down at the rock on her hand as if it might have the answers, but it was as quiet and overlarge as ever.
And thinking about Conrad and Paris and the rest of the marital decisions she couldn’t quite face made her feel a bit too close to wobbly. She decided she was too restless to stay on the little balcony off the guest room, spiraling into her own unfortunate thoughts, so she padded out into the rest of the main floor of the house instead. It was organized so that the rooms were stacked one in front of the next, with a hallway down the middle that opened up into the streamlined chef’s kitchen. Beyond that, the vast lounge with its spectacular view of the ocean outside ambled out to the deck. And up above, taking over the whole of the top floor, was the master bedroom.
Dylan had showed it to her not long after she arrived as part of his general tour of the house. And maybe it had something to do with those strange moments she was already forgetting, but she’d found it...unsettling up there. That big, wide bed with its four sturdy posters and what looked like wrought iron at the head. And windows all around, floor-to-ceiling high in some places, letting in what felt like the whole of this stretch of the coast and the sweep of the Tasman Sea, until it seemed as if anyone in the room was apartof the sea itself. Or the man who lived there.
She preferred her little balcony downstairs. Or the neutrality of the kitchen, where she headed now. She put the kettle on, and found herself staring out the window, in that half a dream state that seemed to accompany any proper gaze at all that deep, changeable blue.
Jenny should head straight back to England. She knew that. After she’d slept, eaten and showered as ordered that first day, she’d sat down and sent off a raft of emails to explain her absence to all and sundry. She told the charity she needed a bit of personal time, and laid out all the reasons why she thought her second-in-command was more than capable of stepping into the role. She wrote her second-in-command, apologizing for the short notice, but making sure the woman she’d handpicked knew that it was her very competence that had made Jenny so sure she could slip away.
It was true, she’d realized as she wrote it all out, even though she might not have thought it through before she’d gotten on that plane.
She emailed her father—or rather, his personal secretary—and felt badly about the relief she felt because she didn’t have to have an actual conversation with him. Because she already knew what he’d say. Or rather, how he would sound while he said it. And he was far too good at triggering her guilt. That it was unintentional on his part, and always motivated by concern, somehow always made her feelmoreguilty.
The truth was, Jenny didn’t feel guilty at the moment. She didn’twantto feel guilty.
I’ve decided to take a little break,she had texted Erika.
I support this move completely,her best friend had fired back.I hope a beach is involved. Cabana boys and cocktails.
More or less,Jenny had replied. And it had still been that first night, so that strange fear had washed over her, gripping her tight.I’m in Sydney.
And she’d stared down at her mobile, watching as the three dots that indicated Erika was typing appeared. Then disappeared.
