‘I don’t have any answers.’ Her brain raced and her heart pounded. ‘But now I think about it,’ she said as several things struck her at once, ‘you know, actually this article isn’t all that bad.’ She folded her arms across her chest as she looked at him. ‘I mean, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, and I didn’t mention anything that was really confidential or personal like your business deal in the States and Natalie’s abortion. And I know you’re upset and you think that I’ve somehow betrayed you, but it was a genuine mistake, which you’d realise if you weren’t being so pig-headed.’
Dan scowled. ‘You think this is simply a case of obstinacy?’
‘No. I think this is a case of fear. If you’re not as anti-relationships as you claim yet you’re willing to throw this one away when it’s been pretty bloody good then the only conclusion I can draw is that for some reason you’re scared.’
He glared at her. ‘What would I be scared of?’
‘How the hell would I know?’ she said, suddenly sick of it all, sick of his irritating air of superiority, his refusal to budge and most of all the way she was practically breaking apart. ‘But you’ve been waiting for me to screw up and, well, congratulations, I have. And you’re right. I can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again, because you know what, unlike you, clearly, I’m not perfect.’
‘That much is obvious,’ he said darkly.
‘Is there anything else or are we done here?’ she asked, her throat so achy and tight that her voice cracked.
Dan looked at her with those dark unfathomable eyes of his and Zoe held her breath because after everything they’d been through she couldn’t believe that he was really going to let her go like this. Until he nodded and said, ‘We’re done,’ and shattered what was left of her heart.
‘Right,’ she managed to get out, swallowing hard.
‘I’m going to shave,’ he said coolly, as if he didn’t have a clue he’d just split her heart and her soul wide open. ‘When I come back out it would be good if you were gone.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, realising the only way she’d be able to cling onto her dignity was by doing the same, and lifting her chin. ‘I will be, because I don’t need someone who’s too scared of what might happen to give us a go. I don’t need someone who isn’t prepared to deal with whatever stuff he has to deal with. And I don’t need you.’ She watched him throw her one last glance before heading into the bathroom and, reminding herself to hang on, said, ‘Oh, and I hope you have a really really lousy Christmas.’
FOURTEEN
Zoe might have been way off track when she’d accused him of being scared the morning they’d argued, but her hope that he would have a lousy Christmas had proved prophetic because Dan’s Christmas was truly horrible.
Following their blistering row, Zoe had been as good as her word and by the time he’d finished shaving there’d been no sign of her other than the faint lingering trace of her scent. Ten minutes later he’d been packed and on his way back to London too, practically drowning beneath the tidal wave of relief that it was all over.
The relief had lasted a couple of hours. At Reading, however, when he found himself wondering if she’d managed to escape the handful of journalists hanging around the hotel and hoping she was all right and thinking he should at least have driven her to the station, it began to fade and turn into something else, and by the time he’d got h
ome it had become something dark and grim and deeply disturbing because he couldn’t work out what it was. All he knew was that it was the reason for the now pretty much permanent scowl on his face, the constant grittiness to his eyes and the edgy restlessness gripping his body, and the increasingly appealing temptation to invest in a punch bag.
The ubiquitous festive bonhomie, which was unavoidable and so bloody cheerful, only highlighted his filthy temper. His muscles ached with a tension that he couldn’t get rid of no matter how much running he did, his chest felt so pressured that he was beginning to wonder whether it might not be a good idea to make an appointment with his doctor, and his jaw was tight with the effort of not grinding his teeth to dust.
Nothing seemed to alleviate any of it. Not work, not alcohol and definitely not spending Christmas with his mother and sister down in Ashwicke.
What with Zoe’s article he’d half expected to be dis-invited. He’d even rung to apologise and explain and then dis-invite himself, but his mother—who’d been so completely unfazed by the revelation that he couldn’t stand her meddling that he suspected it wasn’t actually much of a revelation—wouldn’t hear of it.
So he’d gone, planning to stay a couple of days at the least, in the hope it might lift him out of his black mood. But the two of them had quizzed him so relentlessly about Zoe and why they were no longer together when apparently they were made for each other that late on Christmas evening he’d eventually snapped. He’d told them to get off his back, then, in full view of their stunned expressions, muttered an apology, leapt in his car and sped back to London.
He’d been back for a week and, with his mind pretty much constantly churning with everything that had happened over the last couple of months, it had been hellish. He wasn’t sleeping well and his appetite had all but disappeared and as a result he was grumpy as hell.
Now it was New Year’s Eve and he was sitting in his drawing room, nursing a tumbler of whiskey in front of a blazing fire and trying not to wonder why he wasn’t going to his sister’s party because really there wasn’t anything to wonder about. He simply didn’t fancy ringing in the New Year with a whole crowd of people he barely knew and there was nothing wrong with that.
He certainly wasn’t wondering whether Zoe was there because he didn’t want to see her and he was glad they were over. Ecstatic in fact. He didn’t need someone he couldn’t trust. Someone who let him down. He’d had enough of all that to last him a lifetime and if that meant he was to spend the rest of his life on his own, then so be it because, despite what his mother and sister might think, there was no way in hell he and Zoe were made for each other.
She’d accused him of being scared, and didn’t that just prove exactly how little she knew him because, scared? Him? Hah, thought Dan, knocking back the rest of his whiskey and pouring himself another measure. He wasn’t scared of anything and he knew he wasn’t because ever since he’d gone off the rails when he and Natalie had split up he’d put into place safeguards and controls to ensure it would never happen again.
Frankly, given his behaviour at the time he’d had no choice. OK, so some of that forty-eight hours was still unaccounted for, but he definitely remembered rocking up at Natalie’s house, rip-roaringly drunk, ignoring her threats to call the police if he didn’t knock it off, and then taking a swing at the unfortunate police officers who’d been on duty at the time and had tried to restrain him. Somehow she’d managed to dissuade them from arresting him, but it had been a close run thing, and once he’d sobered up the knowledge of just how totally he’d lost control and what could so easily have happened because of it had hit him like a freight train and he’d promised himself that once was more than enough.
So he’d kept a tight control on himself and everything that had the potential to affect him. And, apart from the blip that had been Jasmine Thomas, it had worked beautifully.
Until Zoe had come along and shot it all so completely to pieces that he hadn’t known which way was up, let alone been able to formulate a proper strategy to handle her.
That she had shot it to pieces wasn’t in any doubt, he now acknowledged with a start. She’d dragged him into her life and then comprehensively and systematically stripped him of his control, despite his best efforts to prevent it. From the moment they’d met his behaviour had been uncharacteristic and rash and frighteningly unpredictable. He’d recognised her as trouble and he’d responded, but his responses had been haphazard and reactive and impulsive and with hindsight it was no wonder that every single measure he’d put into place to control the way he reacted to her had failed.
Firstly there’d been the kiss-only condition to his decision to help her out at the reunion. That had hardly worked out well. Then there’d been the three-date-only rule, which he’d discarded with reckless justification and indecent haste. And the confidentiality agreement, which had also been a complete waste of time because he had no intention of doing anything with it and probably never had.
When the physical barriers had let him down he’d tried putting up emotional ones, such as the whole pregnancy trust thing, but those had failed too. And then he’d discovered that she had screwed up and, yes, he’d been devastated at the thought she’d betrayed him, but hadn’t there also been a tiny grain of relief in there too?