Before her eyes, the robin pounced. His sharp, deadly beak indented into the damp earth and in a flash, triumphantly, he tugged out the worm she’d tried to hide from him. With a flurry of wings he was gone, his prey consumed.
It’s not my heart. I don’t love him. I don’t love him!
‘Global economy … fiscal policy … employment levels … infra-structure investment … ‘
Athan let the words drone over his head. He wasn’t listening. He gave the appearance of it, though—anything else would have been rude. But the speaker at the conference—a top economist at a major bank—had been going on for what seemed like for ever. And Athan had heard it all before—
several times now. This was the third day of the conference, and he had been here right from the start.
It mopped up time, this conference, and that was the most important aspect of it.
Time that he would otherwise have spent brooding.
Obsessing.
Because that was what it was, he knew. He could look it in the face and know it for what it was. Know why it was what it was.
He’d lost her. Plain and simple.
Devastating.
How had it happened? How had he screwed it up so badly? But he knew why—just didn’t like accepting it. He’d high-tailed it down to the back of beyond where she’d holed up in that rundown hovel, seething with a raw, angry jealousy that he’d disguised to himself as outrage because Ian was daring to try and hook up with her again, and he’d hit a stone wall. Her point-blank refusal to have anything more to do with him.
Frustration warred with self-castigation. Frustration usually won—frustration that what he wanted so badly he wasn’t going to get—but every now and then self-castigation managed to force itself through.
Did you really imagine that, having been manipulated and deceived, she was going to open her arms to you again? Take up with you again just where you left off—or rather, just before where you left off, at the bit where you hadn’t yet denounced her as your brother-in-law’s marriage-wrecker?
Of course she wasn’t going to tamely come right back to him. Of course she was going to throw him out on his ear …
His eyes flashed darkly as he berated himself yet again.
You never stood a chance of getting her back. Not after what you did to her.
Then his expression hardened. Yes, well, she had no call to feel herself ill-used. She was the one who’d welcomed the attentions of a man she knew was married. That was what he had to remember. Then another thought flickered uncomfortably across his consciousness—that cramped, dilapidated cottage she lived in, stark evidence of a penurious background that would have meant Ian’s lavish attentions being so very tempting to her. No wonder a practised, suave philanderer like his brother-in-law had been able to impress her, lead her astray. She’d fallen head first for his superficial charms and turned a conveniently blind eye to the wedding ring he wore.
That was what he had to remember. That was what justified what he’d done to her.
But another emotion slashed across his consciousness, obliterating any others. What did it matter now whether he was or was not justified in what he’d done? The fact that he’d done it had destroyed his chances of getting her back—that was all. Marisa had sent him packing and that was that. She was gone. He’d lost her.
All that was left was frustration.
One more emotion. One he was trying hard not to admit to. Because in comparison even the most obsessive frustration was easier to endure.
We were good together—it worked. I don’t know precisely why, or how, but it did. It was easy being with her—natural.
His mind went back to that idyllic fortnight in the Caribbean, remembering how his mind had plucked so troublingly at what he was doing, what he was going to have to do when they went back to London, when he could no longer shut his eyes to the purpose he’d set out with, when he’d have to set aside what they were enjoying now and destroy it all …
Well, I did destroy it—and I can hardly sit here and complain that I can’t get her back, can I? I did what I did for my sister’s sake, and now I have to accept the consequences.
It was stern talk, and he knew he had to hand it out to himself. But even as he did so, he could hear another voice, deep inside.
Saving your sister’s marriage has lost you something you will never recover … never …
His eyes gazed out unseeing over the conference hall.
His face as bleak as a winter wind.
Marisa turned down the radio and cocked her ears. It was a car approaching, she could tell. She frowned. It wasn’t the day for her grocery delivery, and very little traffic other than heavy farm vehicles ventured this far along the dead-end lane. Setting down her paint roller and clambering off the chair she’d been standing on to reach the parlour ceiling she was busy painting, she made her way to the front door. As she got there an envelope came through the letterbox. Opening the door, she saw the postman getting back into his van and reversing. She gave him a half wave of acknowledgement and picked up the envelope. Her frown deepened. She got very little post, but the handwriting was familiar. She felt a knot start in her stomach.