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‘I am sure.’ Her voice was suddenly little more than a whisper.
‘How can you be? Last night was... It was beyond words. But it was just one night.’ Fear tore at him. Megan could break his heart in a way that Sonia had never been able to. He would risk that, but not in public. Not for everyone to see and know about.
Megan was twisting her hands in her lap, staring at her feet. ‘Then we have to stop.’
‘Why? Just because you can’t see that I’m not like your father? Do you honestly think that’s any different from thinking that the most important thing about me is that I’m Lord Marlowe or that I have a big house? I want you to see me as I am.’
Something that had been precious to him was crumbling before Jaye’s eyes, tainted with a poison that existed only in Megan’s mind. He could forgive her anything else, but not this.
‘I can’t do it. Not even for you, Jaye.’
When she got to her feet, he knew she was leaving and didn’t even want to stop her. That was the cruellest blow of all. Jaye turned, striding into the bedroom and slamming the door behind him. Megan could go if she wanted to, but he wouldn’t watch her do it.
* * *
Megan undressed slowly, carefully folding her clothes. Cleaned off her make-up and smoothed in a little moisturiser, as if this determined bedtime routine might somehow get her in the mood for sleep.
But plumping the pillows and arranging them just as she wanted them, before pulling back the covers, wasn’t fooling anyone. The moment his lips had touched hers, she’d known it. She loved Jaye.
Perhaps she’d known it all along. Megan turned the idea over in her head as she climbed into bed, switching the light off. It seemed now that she’d loved him all her life, that her tumultuous teens had just been because she’d been waiting for Jaye and had somehow known that she would have to wait too many years before she met him. As if defying Harry to become a nurse and finding her vocation in life had just been the first steps on the long road that had led to Jaye. Going to Africa, seeing the job with Jaye’s charity in the paper... Navigating all the bends in the road, the crossroads and the dead ends to find him.
If that were true, it had been a wasted journey. The treasure at the end of the rainbow was fools’ gold—a bright counterfeit. Because she and Jaye couldn’t make it work.
She felt tears fill her eyes and blinked them away. The worst thing about it was that it was no one’s fault. He needed time before he could bring himself to trust that she really loved him. But it was time that Megan couldn’t give him, because every day she kept the secret would eat away at her and destroy what they had together.
Thunder rumbled, far away in the hills. Then came the sound of rain on the roof of the bungalow. Megan turned over in bed, covering her head with her pillow. She’d never felt more alone.
* * *
By the time she’d got out of bed and dragged herself across to the canteen for breakfast, Jaye had gone. On the road somewhere, on his way to one of the villages and a patient he absolutely must see today. He got back late in the evening, and Megan saw the lights in his bungalow flip on briefly and then off again.
This wasn’t going to blow over. She’d always be looking over her shoulder, bumping into him in every part of the world as part of her work. How many times had she wished that her mother would just give up on Harry, recognise that she could never have him and move on?
Her mother had ruined her own life, and Megan could take a lesson from that. As the dark, lonely hours of the evening dragged into a darker, lonelier night, she made her decision. And somehow even that heartbreak was comforting because she knew that there would be an end to it.
* * *
Megan looked tired this morning. Jaye had spent the last two nights missing her, and the intervening day working as hard as he could to drive away the memories of her touch. It had exhausted him, and it seemed that whatever Megan felt had exhausted her too.
‘I want to talk to you.’ She sat down opposite him as he sipped his third cup of coffee in the canteen. Maybe the caffeine buzz was what made her words sound so ominous.
‘We can borrow Ranjini’s office, she won’t be in for another hour.’
She nodded, silently following him out of the canteen. Jaye knew exactly what he wanted to say to her. He’d rehearsed it enough times.
He sat down next to her in one of the chairs that Ranjini kept for visitors. ‘May I say something first?’
Megan gave him the ghost of a smile. ‘Yes, of course.’
Jaye took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Megan. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I know we have to end our relationship, but I don’t want us to be on bad terms.’
‘That’s how I feel, too.’
‘We’ve made a good start, then.’
‘Yes. I’ve been thinking very carefully about...the job you’ve offered me.’
A sliver of alarm inserted itself in Jaye’s heart. The thought that Megan might be about to do something stupid froze him, because there was absolutely no way he could stop her.
