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‘He can’t have showered properly yet!’ Adele grumbles. ‘Can’t you pull him aside and teach him how to look the part like you, Valentine?’
He chuckles as he looks at her. ‘That’s a battle for his wife.’
She harrumphs as she walks past him and he’s looking back at me now, but I can’t move. I’m still, so still, my voice and body caught up in my gut where this revelation churns and churns.
‘Are you coming in?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Valentine
‘ITHINKTHATwent well; both Louis and Adele were clearly excited about the potential collaboration.’ I sneak a look at her cool, detached form in the passenger seat and suppress a grimace. ‘I reckon you’ve got a long-standing and very rewarding relationship building there.’
She nods. No verbal confirmation. Not even a murmur.
So much for breaking the ice...
I drum my fingers on the steering wheel and try to think of something else to say. Something that’s not on the same lines as what has her so distracted. Layla. I can’t even be cross at Adele for letting it slip. She has a heart of gold and her mouth has a habit of running away with itself. It only makes her more endearing, a liability for Louis at times, but nevertheless endearing.
No, it’s my fault I feel like this, that we’re like this. But I can’t have that conversation while I’m driving.
Neither can I sit with the silence building between us, a gulf forming that I’m scared I won’t be able to cross.
She hasn’t said anything since we left the stadium and her mood has gone from vibrant and excited with Louis and Adele, to this: quiet, reflective, so far withdrawn from me as she watches the world go by outside her window while I drive us home—tomyhome. Something I agreed I would do on Thursday...but I’m not so sure it’s wise any more.
Not that I thought it was wise on Thursday night either, but then my concern was the total annihilation of the line between business and personal. A line that has long since gone. No, my concern now is that I’ve hurt her. Not intentionally, but that doesn’t make my non-disclosure right.
‘I’m sorry you found out like that.’
Her head snaps to me, the most animated she’s been since we’ve been alone. I flick her a brief look. Definitely hurt. Her eyes are hard, her lips pressed together like she wants to say a thousand things and is trying not to.
‘I tried to tell you by the pool the other night.’ I throw my attention back on the road but inside it’s all on her and how I’ve made her feel. ‘When I asked you what happened to Nathan, I wanted to tell you then.’
‘You should have.’
‘I know. But you didn’t want to hear it; you asked me to let it go.’
‘If I’d known that’s what you were about to say I never would have stopped you.’
My eyes flit to her again, the truth of her words forcing me to accept that I knew that too and I let her stop me because I didn’t want to ruin the moment either.
I sigh, the sound reverberating through the car. ‘I know. I guess I didn’t want to talk about it either.’
I feel her eyes on me, burning into me, so many questions itching to get out. ‘When did she die?’
I stare straight ahead. ‘Four years ago.’
‘She must have been very young.’
‘Twenty-five. We were the same age.’
‘What happened?’
The ache in my chest is sharp, brutal. I swallow. Tell myself it’s the same question I asked her and that she has every right to ask it of me. But she was an innocent party to her husband’s death. Me...
My mouth dries up. I should have kept up the silence, at least until we were out of the car.
‘Adele said she had an accident...?’
