‘You would?’ They were just approaching the lane leading to his house. ‘OK. Once we get in, why don’t you pull your things together and put them in the car while I make some coffee. We can talk then.’
She didn’t wait for him to open her door when the car pulled up in front of the house, jumping out with more speed than grace and nearly going flat on her back in the process. She saw the quizzical glance he shot her but pretended that she hadn’t, rushing straight up to her room once he had opened the front door. Bundling her things into her case and clearing the bathroom of her bits and pieces, she was downstairs again in a minute or two, stowing her case into the back of the sports car as Nick had suggested.
Then she stood for a moment on the drive, staring up into one of the huge trees bordering the house. You’ve been here for over a century, she said silently. You’ve seen so much. People come and go, heartache, trials, loss. And you’re still here, weathering the storms and feeling the sun on your leaves and branches in the good times. Life will go on after Nick, I know that, but nothing will be the same. And I just don’t know how I’m going to bear it.
‘All packed?’
He called her from the doorway and she lowered her eyes to his. He looked very big and dark standing in the shadows dappling the house, and in the strange half-light she couldn’t see the expression on his face. ‘All packed,’ she said, walking to join him and taking the hand he held out to her.
‘Cory, what’s wrong?’ As they walked through to the sitting room he spoke softly. ‘You were fine earlier but something has changed.’
‘You were right this morning.’
‘Right?’ he said, puzzled.
‘About us having to talk. We do.’ She sank down on to one of the sofas and watched him as he poured coffee from a tall white jug into slender china mugs. He added cream and sugar to hers and passed it to her before he sat down with his own beside her. She wished he had sat opposite her. She didn’t want to say what had to be said with the feel of his thigh against hers.
‘So you agree we have to talk,’ he said, and his voice had changed. The softness had gone and it was cool, wary. ‘Why do I feel I’m not going to like this?’
‘I don’t think we should carry on seeing each other.’ She hadn’t meant to put it so baldly but really there was only one way to say it. ‘I don’t think it’s working.’
There was absolute ringing silence for a moment. ‘May I enquire why?’
‘I told you at the beginning that I don’t date.’ She had decided in the car coming home that she wasn’t going to tell him what she had overheard. He might get the idea that she was trying to blackmail him into saying something he didn’t want to say, that she was hinting he let her know that he wanted her in a different way to Margaret, that he was prepared to offer more. But she would never hold him to ransom like that. She went on with the lines she’d prepared. ‘The last few weeks have been good but I’m getting behind with my work and things are slipping. I…I can’t have that.’
‘And so I’m to be sacrificed on the altar of your career?’ he said silkily.
The tone didn’t fool her. The powerful body at the side of her had stiffened and tensed as she had talked on. She cleared her throat. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’ Her voice had croaked on the last word and she took a sip of coffee to moisten her dry mouth.
‘How would you put it?’
‘We’re different sorts of people, we want different things from life.’ For the first time she could speak the truth and, unbeknown to her, her voice carried weight because of it. ‘We have had something great, I admit that, but if we go on we’d lose it.’
He swore, just once, but explicitly. ‘Rubbish. I don’t accept that. Is all this because I told you a few home truths the other night, because I got near? Is that it? I got under your skin and it rankles.’
She put the coffee mug down on the occasional table in front of them and stood to her feet. She had to put space between them. Then she turned to face him. ‘I’m sorry you think that but it’s not true.’
‘Neither is the garbage you’re telling me.’ He rose slowly without taking his eyes off her white face. ‘I’ve held you, damn it. Felt you quivering in my arms, moaning, begging me to take you all the way. Oh, not in so many words,’ he said, as she went to interrupt him, ‘but your body was saying what your mouth wouldn’t admit. We’re not so different, Cory.’
‘You’re talking about sex.’
‘Yes, I am,’ he said with no apology in his tone, ‘and it’s a damn good place to start. But there’s more than that between us and you know it.’
‘Whatever is between us I don’t want it to continue.’ She stared at him, desperate, her heart breaking. She had to go through with this now; it was the only way, so why did it feel so wrong, so cruel? She hadn’t expected him to look at her the way he was looking now. It made her feel so horribly guilty.
‘What was all that about earlier in the walled garden then?’ he said furiously, anger coming to the fore for the first time. ‘When you said you were wrong about your career being your life?’
‘I didn’t say that exactly.’
‘The hell you didn’t.’
‘I said perhaps I’d been wrong about it, but on reflection I don’t think so. I’ve been thinking about everything this afternoon and now I know what I want.’ And it’s you. For ever and ever. Impossible.
‘Well, bully for you.’ There was a look on his face which made her want to cringe. He despised her. Hated her even.
‘I…I thought you’d at least try and see it my way.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ he said bitterly.