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He glanced over. Wearing large sunglasses and a black baseball hat, she looked stunning but solemn. ‘Robert?’
She nodded. ‘I know it’s stupid, that he can’t understand, but I always like to tell him when I’m going away.’
‘It’s not stupid,’ he replied softly, indicating to pull off at the next junction. A manoeuvre that caught her totally by surprise.
‘How did you know to turn off here?’
‘I’ve been there before.’
‘You have?’
‘Why are you so surprised? He was my brother, too. At least in spirit.’
‘Yes I know, but . . .’ She shook her head and stared out of the window.
‘I’ve only been to see him twice. Both times I called you first. Both times you weren’t there.’
‘I’ve done a lot of travelling in the last two years.’ He watched as she played with her bottom lip. ‘If I’d had some warning, I would have changed my schedule.’
Nick shifted his eyes back to the road. She was right. Only phoning her the day before he was due to fly out hadn’t displayed a great deal of effort on his part. The truth was, he’d been torn. Half of him desperate to spend time with her. Half of him desperate not to go down that route again. So in the end he’d fudged the issue and called at the last minute, appeasing his conscience, ensuring minimal damage to his heart.
When they entered Robert’s room, Nick was shocked to see his friend looking thinner, more gaunt than he had eight months ago. The staff were meticulous in keeping his hair trimmed, his face shaven, but they couldn’t do anything about his still, lifeless appearance.
Nick stood behind Lizzie as she sat by her brother’s side and held his hand, calmly talking to him as if he were really listening to her. He didn’t know how she did it. As quickly as he entered the room, he always wanted to leave. The sight of his dashing, larger than life friend reduced to such a hollow shell was too painful to watch for long.
She was quiet on the way to the airport and he left her to her thoughts. What could he say? It cut him up to see Robert like that, but he’d only been his friend. To Lizzie, Robert was the only family she had left.
They managed the whole trauma of airport check in and departure without Lizzie being spotted. Now settled in first class, she’d kept her wig on and was, outwardly at least, captivated by the inflight magazine. She looked beautiful — even with the wig, the exhausted pale face — but so fragile. Nick had to fight the urge to snake his arm around her and snuggle up. Sadly the last thing she needed at the moment was another man coming on to her. What she desperately did seem to need was a good friend.
‘Are you sure there’s nobody else you want to tell you’re leaving LA?’
Slowly she eased back on her seat. ‘Is that your roundabout way of asking me if I’ve got any real friends?’
‘Yes.’
A wry smile twitched at her mouth. ‘I’ve got lots of friends, thank you, but none I feel the need to contact right now.’
It struck Nick that who she thought of as friends, he called acquaintances. If they’d been real friends, why hadn’t she phoned them at the first sign of trouble? And if they weren’t close enough to lean on, why the hell hadn’t she phoned him? His conscience pricked. He hadn’t exactly overwhelmed her with calls himself.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch as often as I should have over the last two years.’ He gave her hand a quick, awkward squeeze.
She slipped the magazine into the seat pocket, and his hand fell clumsily onto the armrest. ‘You’ve been busy. I’ve been busy. Life often gets in the way. You phoned me on my birthday and at Christmas. That meant a lot.’
His efforts sounded pathetic, even to his own ears. If he was honest, his attempts at keeping in touch had stopped after he’d glimpsed Lizzie on American TV during a visit to Robert. She’d been hanging on the arm of a famous actor and in a flash all the hard work he’d put into trying to forget her had decimated into a million tiny, jealousy-filled pieces. He’d wanted to dive into the TV set and knock the man’s straight white teeth down his neck. To his shame he’d dashed off home and not contacted her since.
‘I’m going to get some sleep.’ Lizzie called for the flight attendant to turn her seat into a bed and was soon snuggled down, her head tucked under the duvet.
Wearily Nick rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands. Even dog-tired as he was, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. It was a combination of the noise of the engines and the absurd notion they were suspended in a silver tube, thousands of miles up in the sky. He reclined his chair back a little and accepted the drink offered by the stewardess. Sipping at his whiskey, he gazed at Lizzie’s sleeping form, unable to shrug off the feeling that he’d let her down. It shouldn’t have mattered that visiting her would have hurt his already damaged heart. Lizzie bloody well deserved to have someone in her life looking out for her, checking everything really was going as well as it appeared on the surface. Instead he’d taken things at face value and stayed away, licking his wounds, trying to move on.
With a start he remembered Sally. Colleague, friend and occasional sleeping partner when it suited them both. He should warn her he had a friend staying with him for a while. The last thing he needed was Sally turning up at the barn and Lizzie opening the door to her. The thought of the pair of them meeting sent an unpleasant shudder through him. Lizzie and him weren’t together, neither were Sally and him a real item. Still, he wasn’t sure he wanted the woman he loved but wasn’t sleeping with to meet the woman he was sleeping with but didn’t love.
He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew they were announcing the approach for landing. Gently he gave his companion a shake. ‘Time to wake up, sleepyhead.’
She groaned and pulled herself up, peeling off the eye mask, blinking her large blue eyes. It was so odd to see her with curly dark brown hair. It kind of suited her. Then again, so would a pink, frizzy wig.
‘Are we landing already?’
He grinned. ‘If you call already ten hours later, then yes, we are landing already.’
