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She knew that he would sell the house as fast as he could. He barely used it and he wouldn’t care whether it fetched a good price or not. He didn’t need the money. He would just want speed so that he could break off all connections with his past, and that included both her and Amanda.
She awoke the following morning, groggy and disoriented, and she remained in bed for an hour, letting all the memories of the night before slowly seep back into her head. When she finally began moving around, her joints felt stiff.
By mid-morning, she decided that there was only one thing to do and that was to call Jack, her confidante. He had been up to the cottage twice with his partner, mid-week when she knew that Angelo wasn’t going to be around.
She could have kicked herself now for effectively putting her life on hold while she had conducted a pointless affair that had never been destined to go anywhere. She hated herself for hoping, when he had not once given her any grounds for hope, when he had repeatedly reminded her that she was just good sex and unfinished business that needed to be put to rest. Thinking back to all the conversations they’d had, she wondered how she could ever have thought that it was a brilliant idea to sleep with a man who had dumped her once, believed the worst about her, refused to hear her side of the story and had made it patently clear that he was only in it for the sex. She marvelled at the ingenuity of the human brain which could grasp incidentals—the odd kind word and tender gesture—and turn them into something meaningful. But then that was love, wasn’t it? Blind to the obvious and ever willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
Jack picked up on the first ring and knew immediately that there was something wrong.
“It’s Sunday,” he said bluntly, cutting through the false cheer she had tried to inject in her voice. “Shouldn’t you be in bed eating croissants with the Italian hunk?”
“It’s over.”
Rosie told him everything. She spared no details. In between her sniffling, she apologised for being a bore.
“You’ve been down this road before.” She struggled to keep her voice even. “The last thing you need is to go down it again.”
“I’m thinking the same could be said for you,” Jack sympathised.
He would come the following weekend. On his own. They would have a talk and she would feel much better. Time was a great healer, he assured her with confidence, and she was ready to believe him. Maybe it was better that it ended this way because she would never now look back on the relationship with nostalgia. Anger could be a good friend when it came to forgetting things.
She was pleased for all the clichés, although they didn’t make her feel any better. She was just glad that she had a friend who was willing to drop everything and travel to stay with her, where he would be obliged to listen to all her outpourings whilst insisting that he wasn’t bored or tired.
* * *
Angelo stared indifferently at his mobile phone which was buzzing. He knew who it was on the other end because he had her number programmed into his address book: Eleanor French. A week ago, the day after he had slammed the door for good on his relationship with Rosie, he had made the mistake of allowing the blonde to believe that she stood a chance with him. It had been a mistake. They had been out just once and he had fought to not look at his watch, not to count the minutes, to not compare her with Rosie. The harder he had tried, the guiltier he had felt and the more he had tried to paper over his irritation by smiling. Wrong tactic. She had been calling and leaving text messages since Tuesday.
And now there was something else—the boundary lines. He had told his lawyers to draw something up and make it fast. He didn’t care how much land they saw fit to sign over to Rosie. He just wanted out and he wanted to sell the house as quickly as he could.
True to their word, they had thrown the full force of their considerable combined talent into the project and the finished article was staring him in the face. On his desk. With his vibrating phone right next to it.
It was Friday. It was seven-thirty. The choice was to look over a legal document on a property he no longer wanted and certainly didn’t need, which would forever cut the ties between him and a woman he likewise no longer wanted and certainly didn’t need, or subject himself to another date with the piranha blonde.
He made his excuses to the blonde, this time without room for leeway or any other dates, and he began to read the legal document.
* * *
Jack’s visit was good. He was cheerful and optimistic. He said all the right things and took her side without question. As he had three years before. He had shown a great deal of willingness to slag Angelo off without making any effort to see the complete picture.
In fact, she was the one who miserably pointed out that she only had herself to blame. She gloomily realised that she couldn’t focus on all the bad things about Angelo because she was too busy thinking of all the brilliant things about him.
She discovered that it was remarkably easy to turn all his failings into endearing idiosyncrasies. He was a pig for having used her, yet hadn’t she allowed herself to be used? He had never failed to remind her that there were no long-term prospects to what they had, yet couldn’t you just call that honesty? He refused point-blank to indulge in anything he considered too domestic with her, yet wasn’t it appealing the way he still managed to do so without even realising it? He was the most fascinating, complex and utterly infuriating man she had ever met and he was without compare.
As Jack sat in his little car on the Sunday afternoon, revving the engine, getting ready to go, she just wanted to pull him back out through the car door and make him promise not to leave her, at least not until she was able to get her act together.
“So you’ve got jobs lined up?”
Rosie nodded. She couldn’t have hoped for better networking opportunities than at the party Angelo had thrown. She had a list of people who were interested in commissioning her, from things as small as children’s parties to an end-of-summer event to be held at the town hall.
“And we’ve finally finished planting up your little vegetable plot.”
Yes, they had. Cultivating it would give her something to do when the nights started to draw in and winter approached.
“Plus you’ve joined that book club.”
Something else to occupy herself now and again in the evenings.
“Not to mention volunteering to teach cookery classes at that local school.”
Yep. How many more activities could one person get involved with? Jack had been great at chivvying her along, just as she had once chivvied him along.
“So I’ll be up again on Friday. Okay?”
“You don’t have to.”
“I need to make sure you keep on top of those vegetables.”
“You wouldn’t know whether I was or wasn’t, Jack.”
“I can spot a weed as well as the next man.”
He left with a great deal of horn-blowing and waving and Rosie retired back into the cottage.
Further up the lane, his car about to turn left into the long avenue that wound its way up to his mansion, Angelo couldn’t fail to hear the blowing of the car horn. He slowed his car. The car hurtling towards him could only be coming from the cottage. Curiosity made him look at the driver of the car and he saw that face—the dirty-blond hair tied back in a pony tail, blue eyes squinting into the glare of late-afternoon sun.
A tide of rage swept over him. So the past wasn’t as dead and buried as she would have liked to pretend! Had he really expected otherwise? Hadn’t it always preyed somewhere at the back of his mind? Hadn’t he wondered what had happened to the guy with the dirty-blond hair and the bright blue eyes?
Hell, he should never have made this trip. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. With the boundary lines roughly drawn up and only her consent needed to seal the deal and rid himself of her once and for all, Angelo knew that he could leave it to his lawyers to fine-tune the detail, to arrange all the necessary paperwork and documentation. But no, he had taken it upon himself to jump into his car and head down to ascertain for himself where the lines would be.
What exactly had he hoped to gain from the exercise—aside from wasting a great deal of petrol?
He certainly hadn’t expected to find himself sitting behind the steering wheel of his car, consumed with such white-hot anger that he felt himself on the point of combustion.
And, even so, there was no place for his anger to go! What he should do, he thought grimly... No, what he was going to do...was to steer his car calmly up the avenue, have a last look around his house so that he could evaluate what priceless paintings and ornaments would be reshuffled to other properties he owned, have a quick tour of the land to confirm that he was in agreement with the boundary lines proposed in the deeds that were currently residing in his briefcase, and then leave. Nothing could be simpler.
He certainly would not head to the cottage and resume any sort of debate with a woman he was well rid of. A woman to whom he owed nothing. A woman who had manoeuvred him three years ago and, as was evident, had continued to manoeuvre him. A woman who schemed and lied and did it all in a way that had managed to get to him. Again!
When he looked in his rear-view mirror, it was to find that the other man’s car had long since disappeared from the horizon.
