sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair, feeling the tension mounting in his scalp. ‘It’s going to take more than an afternoon to get this sorted. I’ll probably need to be up there for most of the week.’
‘Then stay as long as you need.’
Shaking his head, he batted a hand towards his computer. ‘I have that proposal to finish for the end of Thursday, not to mention the monstrous list of things to tackle for all the other clients this week.’
‘Leave it with me. If you set me up with a folder of your previous proposals and give me the questions you need answering, I’ll put some sections together for you, so you’ll only need to check and edit them as we go. And don’t worry about the other clients; I can handle the majority of enquiries and rearrange anything that isn’t urgent for next week. I’ll only contact you with the really important stuff.’
‘Are you sure you can handle that? It’s a lot to leave you with at such short notice.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ She seemed so eager he didn’t have the heart to argue.
In all honesty, it was going to be tough for him to let go of his tight grip on the business and trust that this would work out, but he knew he didn’t have a choice—there was no way he was letting this contract slip through his fingers. He really couldn’t afford to lose this firm’s loyalty at this point in his business’s infancy; it would make him look weak to competitors as well as potential new clients, and presenting a confident front was everything in this game.
‘Okay.’ He stood up and gathered his laptop and charger together before making for the door. ‘Thanks, Cara. I’ll get my stuff together and call you from the train.’
Turning back, he saw she was standing stiffly with her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed.
Pausing for a moment, he wondered whether he was asking too much of her, but quickly dismissed it. She’d chosen to stay and she knew what she was getting herself into.
They were in it together now.
* * *
To his relief, Cara successfully held the fort back in London whilst he was away, routinely emailing him sections of completed work to be used in the business proposal that he wrote in the evenings in time to make the deadline. She seemed to have a real flair for picking out relevant information and had made an excellent job of copying his language style.
She also saved his hide by sending flowers and a card in his name to his mother for her birthday, which he was ashamed to discover he’d forgotten all about in his panic about losing the client.
Damaging the precarious cordiality that he and his mother had tentatively built up after working through their differences over the past few years would have been just as bad, and he was immensely grateful to Cara for her forethought and care.
She really was excellent at her job.
In fact, after receiving compliments from clients about how responsive and professional she’d been when they’d contacted her with enquiries and complications to be dealt with, he was beginning to realise that he’d actually been very fortunate to secure her services. He felt sure, if she wanted to, she could walk into a job with a much better salary with her eyes shut.
Which made him wonder again why she hadn’t.
Whatever the reason, the idea of losing her excellent skill base now made him uneasy. Even though he’d been certain he’d want to let her go at the end of the trial month, he was now beginning to think that that would be a huge mistake.
He had some serious thinking to do.
If he was honest, he reflected on Thursday evening, sitting alone in the hotel’s busy restaurant, having time and space away from Cara and the house had been a relief. He’d been glad of the opportunity to get his head together after their confrontation. She was the first person, outside his close circle of friends, that he’d talked to in any detail about what had happened to Jemima and it had changed the atmosphere between them. To Cara’s credit, she hadn’t trotted out platitudes to try and make him feel better and he was grateful to her for that, but he felt a little awkward about how much of himself he’d exposed.
Conversely, though, it also felt as though a weight that he’d not noticed carrying had been lifted from his shoulders. Not just because he’d finally told Cara about Jem—which he’d begun to feel weirdly seedy about, as if he was keeping a dirty secret from her—but also because it had got to the point where he’d become irrationally superstitious about clearing out the room, as though all his memories of Jemima would be wiped away if he touched it. Which, of course, they hadn’t been—she was still firmly embedded there in his head and his heart. So, even though he’d been angry and upset with Cara at the time, in retrospect, it had been a healthy thing for that decision to be wrenched out of his hands.
It felt as though he’d taken a step further into the light.
Cara was out when he arrived back at Friday lunchtime, still buzzed with elation from keeping the client, so he went to unpack his bags upstairs, return a few phone calls and take a shower before coming back down.
Walking into the kitchen, he spotted her standing by the sink with her back to him, washing a mug. He stopped to watch her for a moment, smiling as he realised she was singing softly to herself, her slim hips swaying in time to the rhythm of the song. She had a beautiful voice, lyrical and sweet, and a strange, intense warmth wound through him as he stood there listening to her. It had been a long time since anyone had sung in this house and there was something so pure and uplifting about it a shiver ran down his spine, inexplicably chased by a deep pull of longing.
Though not for Cara, surely? But for a time when his life had fewer sharp edges. A simpler time. A happier one.
Shaking himself out of this unsettling observation, he moved quickly into the room so she wouldn’t think he’d been standing there spying on her.
‘Hi, Cara.’
She jumped and gasped, spinning round to face him, her hand pressed to her chest. She looked fresh and well rested, but there was a wary expression in her eyes.
‘Max! I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘I was upstairs, taking a shower and returning some urgent calls. I got back about an hour ago.’
She nodded, her professional face quickly restored. ‘How was Manchester?’
‘Good. We got them back on board. How have things been here?’
‘That’s great! Things have been fine here. It’s certainly been very quiet without you.’
By ‘quiet’ he suspected she actually meant less fraught with angry outbursts.
There was an uncomfortable silence while she fussed about with the tea towel, hooking it carefully over the handle of the cooker door and smoothing it until it lay perfectly straight.
Tearing his eyes away from the rather disconcerting sight of her stroking her hands slowly up and down the offending article, he walked over to where the kettle sat on the work surface and flicked it on to boil. He was unsettled to find that things still felt awkward between them when they were face to face—not that he should be surprised that they were. Their last non-work conversation had been a
