Biting back the sob which was spiralling up inside her throat, she bent down to grab her tattered panties, before rushing upstairs towards the bedroom and slamming the door behind her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE END OF the marriage was played out in the papers, just as the beginning had been, and Amber found herself reading the headlines with a sense of being outside herself. As if she were some random little dot high up on the wall, looking down at the mess she’d made of her life.
And it was a mess, all right. She stared down at the photo taken of them at the Granchester on their wedding night—that false and misrepresentative photo snatched by a fellow diner—while she read the accompanying text.
Whirlwind marriage over. Golden couple split.
But it turned out to be surprisingly easy to dismantle their short-lived union. Or maybe not so surprising. Because a marriage undertaken to settle a long-term debt could never be anything other than doomed, no matter how strong the sexual chemistry between them was.
During their last conversation together, Conall had told Amber he intended being ‘generous’ in his settlement—but she had shaken her head.
‘I don’t want your charity,’ she’d said, trying desperately to hold on to her equilibrium when all she’d wanted was for him to put his arms around her, and to love her.
‘An admirable attitude, if a little misguided,’ he’d responded coolly. ‘And a waste of everyone’s time if you don’t accept your side of the deal.’
A waste of everyone’s time? She had glared at him then, because glaring helped keep the ever-threatening tears at bay.
‘I’m offering you the apartment and a monthly maintenance payment,’ he’d said. ‘You won’t have to move.’
She told herself it was pointless to deliberately make herself homeless and so, even though she rejected his offer of monthly maintenance, she accepted the deeds of the apartment and immediately put it up for sale. She couldn’t bear the thought of living in a block owned by Conall and the nightmare prospect of running into him. She would buy somewhere smaller, in a less dazzling and expensive area, and use the profit she made to support herself. She would start living within her means and take no maintenance from him. And she intended to get a job.
She sold her diamond watch—slightly taken aback by how much it was worth—and with the money raised she booked onto a short degree course in translation and interpretation at the University of Bath. It was a beautiful city and far enough away from London to know that there would be no risk of running into Conall. By a fortuitous chance there was a course starting almost immediately and Amber leapt at it eagerly. It gave her something to do. Something to replace the miserable thoughts which were whirling round in her head. She didn’t want to do some boring job involving grain quotas, but surely there would be other opportunities open to her? Some which might even involve travel. But first she needed a bona fide qualification and so she moved into a rented room in a house on the outskirts of the city and began to work harder than she’d ever worked in her life.
She’d never shared a flat or lived on a reduced budget before and she soon became used to running out of milk, or eating cornflakes for lunch. She discovered that a cheap meal of pasta could taste fantastic when you shared it with three other people and a bottle of cheap wine. And if at night she found sleep eluding her and tears edging out from between her tightly closed eyes, she would hug her arms around her chest and tell herself that soon Conall Devlin would be nothing but a distant memory.
Would he?
Would she ever forget that rare smile which sometimes dazzled her? That lazy way he had of stroking her hair just after they’d made love?
Had sex, she corrected herself as she tossed and turned in the narrow bed. He’d only married her because of the debt he’d felt he owed her father. Other than that, it had really only ever been about the sex. It must have been—because when she’d told him not to bother contacting her again just before she’d left London, Conall had taken her at her word. To Amber’s initial fury and then through the dull pain of acceptance, she realised he was doing exactly as she had asked him to do. He hadn’t called. Not once. Not a single text or a solitary email had popped into her inbox to check how she was doing in her new life. All negotiations had been dealt with through his lawyers. And she was just going to have to learn to live with that.
June bled into July and a monumental heatwave brought the country almost to a standstill. Sales of ice cream and electric fans soared. Riverbeds dried and the grass turned a dark sepia colour. There was even talk of water rationing. One evening Amber was sitting in the dusty garden after college, when she heard the doorbell ringing loudly through the silent house. It was so hot she didn’t want to move and as a rivulet of sweat trickled down her back she hoped someone else would answer it.
She could hear the distant sound of voices. A deep voice which she didn’t really register because she was holding her face up, trying to find the whisper of breeze she thought she had detected on the air. And then she heard footsteps behind her and a deep voice that sent shivers racing down her spine— shivers which should have been welcome in the extreme heat, if they hadn’t been underpinned by emotions far too complex to analyse.
She lifted her head slowly, telling herself not to react—but how could she possibly not react when she’d spent weeks thinking of him and dreaming of him? Hadn’t it been an integral part of some of her wildest fantasies that he should suddenly appear in this house, like this? Greedily, her gaze ran over him. His eyes were as shuttered as they had ever been and his jaw was still shadowed blue-black. His concession to the warmer weather meant he was wearing a T-shirt with his jeans, which immediately made her start wishing it were the dead of winter, because then she wouldn’t have to stare at that hard, broad torso. She wouldn’t have to remember when those rippling biceps had wrapped themselves so tightly around her before carrying her off to bed.
‘Conall!’ Her throat felt dry and constricted. Her head felt light. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘No ideas?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Even though there’s a question we both know needs answering?’
She licked her lips. ‘What question is that?’ she said hoarsely.
There was a pause. ‘Are you carrying my baby?’
The pause which followed was even longer. ‘No.’
Conall was taken aback by the shaft of regret which speared through his body and embedded itself deep in his heart. He was briefly aware of the fact that somewhere inside him a dim light had been snuffed out. He wondered how it was possible to want something more than you’d ever wanted anything, and only discover
that once the possibility was gone.
He stared into Amber’s pale face. At the tremble of her lips. He thought how different she looked from the woman he’d found fast asleep on that white leather sofa. Calmer. With an air of serenity about her which gave him a brief punch of pleasure. But he could see anger flickering in her grass-green eyes as she drew her shoulders back and brushed a lock of ebony hair away from her face with an impatient hand.