forgotten?’ She made herself laugh to cover the tremor in her voice. ‘I can’t believe you’d ever forget that leap-day feature I did where I talked half a dozen girls into proposing to their boyfriends on the pavement in front of the office,’ she said.
‘This may come as a terrible shock to you, Willow, but I don’t actually read the Chronicle from cover to cover.’
He always changed the subject when she talked about the newspaper outside of the office and she’d tried to keep her enthusiasm for her job within acceptable bounds, assuming that local news must bore him. But he didn’t even read her features? That was a serious dent in her perception of the way he felt about her. She’d have read a balance sheet to please him.
‘Even if you didn’t read the feature you must have noticed the increase in advertising revenue,’ she pressed. ‘We had wedding venues and bridal shops falling over themselves to book space, even offering discounts for wedding services for the six brave ladies involved.’
Maybe her face gave her away, because he found a smile from somewhere.
‘I’m sorry, Willow. If I’d made an effort to read more of your fine prose I might have realised how good you are at your job. So,’ he said, distracting her from her unhappy thoughts, ‘how many of these unfortunate men bowed to the inevitable and accepted the fate you so cavalierly inflicted on them in the pursuit of increased circulation and advertising revenue?’
‘All of them.’ She glared at him. ‘What man is prepared to look like a complete jerk in public?’ And he could take that whatever way he chose. Then, because maybe she’d pressured him into making a committment he couldn’t live with, she made an effort to justify herself. ‘The couples were chosen with a certain amount of forethought, Mike. It was supposed to be light-hearted, a bit of fun.’ He didn’t seem to find it particularly amusing. ‘One of them had been living with his girlfriend for fifteen years,’ she said, a little desperately. ‘They had three children, for heaven’s sake. No one could say he’d been rushed to the altar.’
That got his attention. ‘Why would they do that?’ he asked. ‘Live like that? Doesn’t the woman know how few financial rights she’d have? No right to a widow’s pension—’
‘Once an accountant, always an accountant,’ she said. ‘An accountant who asked me to move in with him, as I recall.’
‘That’s not true, you know. At least not in my case.’
‘What isn’t true?’
‘When I asked you to move in with me…’ there was a long pause ‘…I never intended the arrangement to be permanent.’
Well, terrific! ‘More, till boredom do us part?’
‘No!’ Then he said, ‘I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.’
‘Maybe my couple weren’t thinking ahead either,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe it just got to be a habit. I really don’t know. But maybe they’re right. Maybe the big wedding is all just for public show. Maybe the piece of paper isn’t such a big deal.’
‘It is, Willow,’ he said. ‘You know it is.’
‘Do I?’ She looked up. ‘I know that if I’d moved in with you we’d probably be living happily together and I could have taken the job at the Globe without it being some huge deal.’
He frowned at that. ‘Because you wouldn’t have felt the need to discuss it with me?’
‘No, because I would have just been your girlfriend. Not the consort to the high panjandrum of Armstrong Publications Ltd, on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with a house full of gold taps needing to be polished, with endless charity dinners to attend, good works a speciality. Because it really wouldn’t have been that big a deal.’
She didn’t want that? It was the life she’d been brought up to expect…
‘Are you sure? You’d have been away five nights a week. Perhaps not always managing to get back at the weekend. What kind of relationship would that be?’
‘The kind where you’d have said, “Take the job if it makes you happy. It’ll make the time we have together truly special.”’
He lifted his shoulders, pushed his head back as if easing a great weight of tension from his neck. ‘You’re right of course. I knew it. You should have your big break and I was too caught up in my own selfish needs to see it until it was almost too late. My loss.’
‘Is that why you walked away from our wedding?’
He straightened, looked her in the eye. ‘It would be a comfort to think that my motives were wholly altruistic. But I’m not the man you think I am, Willow. I’m not the man my father wants me to be. I tried. I really tried. I thought having you would be enough to make up for sitting behind a desk all day, manipulating figures, when I had other dreams.’ He stopped. ‘Then I saw that you had dreams to chase, too. Really, one of us should have had our whole heart in the business, don’t you think?’
‘I think marriage is tricky enough if both parties are wholeheartedly committed,’ she agreed miserably. Just because they were right, she didn’t have to be happy about it.
‘Did you follow up those leap-year proposals? Do you know how many couples have finally made it to the altar?’
It took a little time to swallow away the aching lump that had formed in her throat. For a moment she felt she’d come very near to what was driving him but, before she could ask him what his dreams were, the shutters had slammed down again. End of conversation. Change of subject. He didn’t want to talk to her about his problems, his concerns. He never had.
‘Two down, four to go. One of which, I have to admit, is looking very dodgy.’
‘Not the couple with the three children I hope.’
‘No, they tied the knot the same week. Got a licence and did it without any fuss. They just needed someone to give them a push. Sort out the details, handle the paperwork.’ Someone to find out what they had to do. She was good at that. Information was her trade. If you couldn’t get answers from one source, you found another. If Michael wouldn’t tell her his dreams, she’d find out some other way. There always was some other way.
It might, in the end, hurt even more, but the feeling of having made a decision, having regained control, suddenly made her feel a great deal better.
Then she realised that Mike was still watching her. ‘Eat up, Mike,’ she said. ‘Your chicken will be cold.’
‘Comforted?’ Mike asked when she finally put her fork down.
‘Much better,’ she assured him. ‘But I think I’m going to need something seriously wicked in the pudding department to complete the cure. What shall it be? Death by Chocolate?’
‘Sounds about right.’
She got to her feet. ‘My treat. Coffee? Anything to drink?’
‘Just coffee. We don’t want to get lost on the way back to the cottages.’
‘Oh, I think we got lost a while ago, Mike. We were just too busy
