pretending it isn’t there and hoping it will go away. But it won’t go away. It will just fester and fester and make you bitter. And I don’t want a man like that. I want someone who can face up to reality. Who can accept how it’s making him feel—even if it hurts—and who isn’t afraid to show it.’
She leant forward and her voice was fervent. ‘The stuff you imagine is always worse than the real thing,’ she said. ‘I know that. When I met my father—all the dreams I’d nurtured about us becoming one big happy family were destroyed the moment he pushed the table away and my cappuccino spilt everywhere. And of course I was upset. But afterwards I felt...well, free, I suppose. I could let go of all those foolish fantasies. Because it’s better to deal with reality, than with dreams. Or nightmares,’ she finished as she rose to her feet. She looked into his face and saw the pain which was written there. Such raw and bitter pain that it made her instinctively want to reach out and comfort him.
But she knew she couldn’t rid him of his nightmares. She couldn’t fix Alek. He had to do that all by himself.
HE DIDN’T TELL HER he was leaving until the morning of his departure, when Ellie walked into the kitchen and saw him drinking coffee, a leather bag on the floor beside his feet. He turned as she entered the room and, although his hooded eyes gave nothing away, his powerful body was stiff with tension. A trickle of apprehension began to whisper down her spine.
‘You’re going away on a business trip?’ she questioned.
He shook his head. ‘I’m going to Paris.’
Fear and dread punched at her heart in rapid succession. Paris. The city of romance. She looked down. An overnight bag. The fear grew. ‘You’ve decided to take me up on my offer?’ she breathed in horror.
He frowned. ‘What offer?’
‘You’re seeing someone else?’
His brow darkened. She saw a pulse flicker at his temple. ‘Are you crazy? I’m going to meet my brother. I phoned the journalist and spoke to her. She gave me his details and I emailed him. We’re having lunch at the Paris Ritz later.’
Ellie’s heart flooded with a complex mixture of emotions. There was relief that he hadn’t taken her up on her foolish suggestion and joy that he’d taken the step of arranging to meet his brother. But there was disappointment, too. He was facing up to his demons—but he hadn’t stopped to think that she might like to be involved, too. She was curious to meet her baby’s uncle, yes—and wasn’t it possible she could be a support to her husband if she was there at his side? She took an eager step towards him, but the emphatic shake of his head halted her.
‘Please don’t,’ he said. ‘Elaborate displays of emotion are the last thing I want to deal with right now.’
It wasn’t an unreasonable reaction in the circumstances, but that didn’t stop it from hurting. Ellie’s arms hung uselessly by her sides as she pursed her lips. Yet, why should he accept her comfort or her help when she’d spent weeks pushing him away?
She nodded. ‘Good luck,’ she said quietly, though never had she wanted to kiss him quite so much.
She spent the day trying not to think about what might be happening in France. She told herself that Alek wouldn’t ring and she was right. Every time she glanced at her phone—too often—there were no texts or missed calls and the small screen remained infuriatingly blank. She’d been due to meet Alannah for lunch, but she cancelled—afraid she would end up doing something stupid, like crying. Or even worse, that she would blurt out the whole story. And she couldn’t do that. It wasn’t her story to tell. She’d already broken Alek’s confidence once and to do so again—wittingly this time—would be unforgivable.
She tried to keep herself occupied as best she could. There was a subtle nip to the air, so she slipped on a jacket and walked across a park with leaves showing the distinct bronzed brushstrokes of autumn. She went shopping for food in the little deli she’d discovered, which was hidden unexpectedly in a narrow road behind the smart Knightsbridge shops, and she bought all the things she knew Alek liked best to eat.
But no matter what she did, she couldn’t clear her mind of nagging questions which couldn’t be answered until he arrived home. Though it occurred to her at some point that he might not want to tell her anything. He was naturally secretive and that wouldn’t necessarily have changed. Discovering something about his past wasn’t necessarily going to transform him into someone who was comfortable with disclosure.
She went to bed at around eleven and it was sometime later that she heard the sound of a key in the lock and a door quietly closing. Her throat dried. He was home. She could hear him moving around, as if he didn’t want to wake her, but as the footsteps passed her door she called out to him.
‘Alek.’
The footsteps halted. The floor creaked and there was silence.
‘Alek?’ she said again.
The door opened and a powerful shaft of light slanted across the room to shine on her bed, like a spotlight. She blinked a little in the fierce gleam and sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She tried to search his face, but his eyes were in shadow and all she could see was his powerful body silhouetted against the bright light.
‘Are you okay?’ she said.
‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Won’t you...come in?’ Her voice gave a nervous wobble as she switched on the bedside lamp. ‘And tell me what happened.’
She’d been half expecting him to refuse, to coolly inform her that he’d tell her everything—well, maybe not quite everything—in the morning. That would be much more characteristic of the Alek she knew. But he didn’t. He walked into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, only she noticed he kept his distance—as if ensuring that he was nowhere within touching range. And stupidly—because it wasn’t very appropriate in the circumstances—she found herself wishing she were wearing some provocative little excuse for a nightie, instead of an oversized T-shirt which had nothing but comfort to commend it.
‘So,’ she said nervously. ‘What happened?’
Alek looked at the way she was biting her lip. At the shiny hair spilling over her shoulders and the anxiousness she couldn’t quite keep from her eyes. He thought that she loved him, but he couldn’t be sure. His mouth hardened. How could you tell if a woman really loved you? He had no baseline to work from.
‘We met,’ he said. ‘And after a while he showed me some photos. The first—’ His voice cracked slightly. ‘The first photos I’d ever seen of her.’
She nodded. Swallowed. ‘What were they like?’
He tipped his head and looked up at the ceiling. ‘She was very beautiful—even in the later shots. She had this thick black hair and the most amazing blue eyes.’
‘Like yours, you mean?’
He gave a wry smile as he looked at her again. ‘That’s right. Just like mine.’ It had been beyond strange to see the physical evidence of somebody he’d only ever heard about in the most negative terms. A woman in a cotton dress, glinting
