was good, Jake thought with respect; their host’s ice-grey eyes registered only a single flash of fury, but of course Aline noticed.
She whispered, ‘Was Lauren the only one?’
‘Yes,’ Keir said brusquely.
‘So he did love her,’ she said, as though the words stabbed her to the heart. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Would you have believed me?’ When she shook her head he added more gently, ‘It wasn’t my place to tell you.’
Jake understood. He’d been in an impossible position. Was Keir’s knowledge the source of the tension he’d sensed between Aline and her boss?
Politely, Aline said, ‘Of course it wasn’t. I’m sorry I asked. Keir, I think I’d better go now.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Jake told her.
She swivelled as though she’d forgotten he was there. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said woodenly, ‘but my car’s here.’
‘You can’t drive.’ Jake’s voice was patient. ‘I’ll make sure your car gets home.’
He could see her try to muster her defences. ‘I’ll be perfectly all—’
‘You’re not fit to drive,’ Jake said brutally. ‘Kill yourself if you want to, but what if you kill someone else?’
Huge turquoise eyes held his until she made a blundering gesture of rejection, muttering, ‘All right, I’ll go with you.’ She turned back to Keir. ‘Please tell Hope I’m sorry?’
‘Of course. Will you be all right?’ He frowned, his eyes travelling from Aline’s shuttered face to Jake’s.
With an effort Jake could only imagine, she managed a faint curve of her lips.
‘Of course I will. You don’t die from disillusion. And I’ve got this week off—I’ll be fine once I’ve had a chance to get used to the idea of—of…’ She choked and caught herself up.
Harshly, Jake said, ‘I’ll look after her.’
He and Keir exchanged a look, golden eyes clashing with ice-grey. Jake said softly, ‘This has nothing to do with you.’
Keir didn’t like that, but after several taut seconds he nodded.
Once safely in Jake’s car, Aline sat back into the seat and stared at the window, trying desperately to summon a blankness that would blot out her thoughts.
It was useless. All her mind could register was the stark, inescapable fact that Michael had betrayed her.
Eventually she blurted, ‘I’m surprised she waited so long to tell me.’ The words burst from some secret part of her, rooted in a miserable mixture of anguish and furious humiliation.
‘Why would she want to tell you?’ Jake asked, backing the car skilfully between two badly parked others.
‘For years she hasn’t said a word! Why now, I wonder?’ And to her astonishment Aline heard herself say, ‘I’m so sorry for her; to love someone and not be able to grieve openly for him must be the worst kind of hell. And then to lose her baby…’ Her voice trailed off as she remembered that Michael had refused her a child. Stumbling, she said, ‘Perhaps she wanted to forewarn me—’
‘The baby,’ Jake told her with ruthless frankness. ‘That’s what she saw when she came in the door—you laughing with Emma.’
Aline looked down at her hands, realising they’d taken on a life of their own and were writhing together in her lap in the classic gesture of helpless indecision. Revulsion and sheer force of will subdued them into stillness.
‘I see.’ She straightened her fingers and stared at the wedding ring she’d worn with such pride ever since Michael had put it on five years previously. It weighed heavy, as crushing as treachery.
Clenching and unclenching her hands, she said thinly, ‘I feel a total idiot. Grieving nearly three years for someone who told his lover what pet names he called me!’
‘You’re not the first person to have your trust betrayed.’ Jake’s voice was infuriatingly calm, close to off-hand. ‘It happens to everyone.’
‘To you?’ she demanded.
He shrugged. ‘Of course.’
Suddenly aflame with reviving anger, she said intensely, ‘I’m not going to put myself in such a position again. Never!’
Jake glanced across and saw the savage, almost wild determination on her face as she wrenched off the wedding ring and wound down the window. He didn’t stop her when she flung the ring through the window. Fresh air whipped around them, carrying the scent of grass and manuka balsam and the faint, salty tang of the sea.
‘There,’ she said intensely. ‘It’s over. All I want to do now is forget.’
Brows slightly raised, Jake drove on.
A few miles down the road she said, ‘Turn right at the next turn-off. I live—’
‘I know where you live—in a townhouse beside the harbour on Whangaparoa Peninsula,’ he told her curtly.
Later she might wonder how he knew her address, but at the moment she couldn’t summon up the energy.
But he wouldn’t let her sink into the stupor she craved. Coolly persistent, he asked, ‘What are your plans?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said dully. She looked around as though in an unknown landscape. ‘Stay at home, I suppose. Regroup…’
‘Did you live there with him?’
‘Who? Oh, Michael. Yes.’ Stupid—she’d been so stupid! ‘I don’t want to go back there,’ she admitted with painful honesty.
‘You could come with me,’ he suggested casually. ‘I own a beach house not too far away—it’s completely isolated. I’m going there tonight for a few days before I leave New Zealand. You can come if you want to.’
She made a jerky movement, then clamped her hands together in her lap. ‘I couldn’t impose,’ she said in her stiffest tone.
His laughter was low and cynical. ‘You mean, you think I might try to seduce you. Naturally, after you’ve had such a huge shock, that’s exactly what I’d do. You don’t have much of an opinion of me, but, for the record, you won’t have to sleep with me.’
Scarlet-faced, she muttered, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’
Her head drooped sideways. Racked by an exhaustion of the spirit, by waves of tiredness that slowed her brain and made her unable to think sensibly, she muttered, ‘I’ll be fine. It was kind of you to offer, though. Thank you.’
But when the car drew to a halt outside her house a pleasant and determined young woman, with cameraman and sound recorder in tow, was waiting for her in the street. One or two neighbours were already
