prize?’ Now he really did look furious. His mouth contorting in rage, Adrian stared at Liadan as though his gaze alone could turn her to stone. ‘How the hell do you figure that out, Liadan? Nicole is dead! It’s not like she just walked away and left me. How can you be jealous of a dead woman?’
Recoiling with hurt in her eyes, Liadan slipped her cold hands back into the pockets of her coat. ‘How can I? That’s easy when you wear her memory like some kind of invisible, impenetrable shield to prevent anyone else getting close. Think about it, Adrian. At least be honest with yourself, if not me.’ She walked to the door. ‘You’re a man of enormous drive and talent, clearly passionate about his beliefs. In my opinion you should be sharing all those gifts with the world—not shutting yourself up here in this vast house writing the stuff of nightmares! Anyway…I know it’s really none of my business.’
‘That’s right. It isn’t.’
Fielding the hurt that welled up inside her chest at his acid reply, Liadan glanced quickly away. She stared down at the beautiful parquet floor with its strategically placed Persian rugs, and reminded herself just who Adrian Jacobs was and how far apart they really were. He was clearly outraged that she had expressed her unstintingly frank opinions about him so readily. But after today, what did it matter? she asked herself. What more did she have to lose when she had lost everything already?
‘You don’t really want to marry me, Adrian,’ she said dully. ‘You don’t even really want a companion. As far as I can see you’re quite happy here in your magnificent solitude. You were right. All you really do need is a housekeeper.’
Liadan let herself quietly out of the room, and carefully closed the door behind her. Still reeling from her passionate words about Nicole, along with her damning accusations that he was still in love with her memory, Adrian let her go without even trying to stop her. Feeling chilled to the bone, he picked up his brandy glass from the mantel and dashed it into the fireplace, letting loose a violent expletive as it shattered into crystal shards in front of him.
Even though she told herself time and time again that she’d made the right decision, Liadan had still found it hard to come home. Opening the door of the cottage she’d been so eager to hold onto, she had no sense of joy or pleasure. Instead, her chest felt tight with pain and there was a hollow sensation of dread in the pit of her stomach that made her feel as though someone had just thrown a blanket over her head and bound her hands together with rope. Her beloved home felt like a prison and she an unwilling inmate inside it.
Since meeting Adrian and falling in love with him, how could anything be the same as it was before? The morning after the row—when she’d declared her decision to leave, explaining that she felt unable to work out two weeks’ notice under the circumstances—he’d merely nodded, disappeared into his study and returned with an envelope, which he’d brusquely told her contained her payment for ‘services rendered’. Then he’d carried her suitcase and bags to her car, loaded them into the boot, and, with a short, impersonal wave, watched her steer the car down the drive as if he were saying goodbye to a stranger.
Now, lowering herself defeatedly into the nearest armchair, Liadan wanted to cry, but somehow the tears wouldn’t come. There were some hurts that went too deep for tears and plainly this was one of them. What was going to become of him? What was going to become of her? Right now Liadan had no answers, only questions. Why hadn’t he stopped her from leaving? Surely he felt something for her other than physical attraction after what had transpired between them? Or was the man really as heartless and impossible to reach as he pretended?
Izzy came in through the cat-flap from the kitchen and leapt up on Liadan’s lap, clearly delighted to have her mistress home again. She automatically reached out her hand to stroke the whisper-soft fur, and tried to block out the memory of the face she had grown to love too well. Praying hard that whatever Adrian chose to do with his future it would make him a far happier man than now, Liadan shut her eyes and willed her aching heart to heal quickly. The thought of carrying around this dreadful pain for the rest of her life was surely too much for anyone to contemplate, no matter how stoic or determined.
‘What do you mean, you want an extension on your deadline?’ Lynne shrieked down the phone. ‘You never need extensions. You either deliver well in advance or dead on time. What’s going on, Adrian? Has all this horrendous business concerning you and Petra got you down? Is that what it is?’
His shoulders hunched over the telephone, his expression fearsome enough to frighten something wild, Adrian gritted his teeth and tried desperately to get to grips with the painful urge to break every piece of furniture in his study—including his damned computer! Right now he hated it. Just as he hated everything to do with his life—this house, this chair, this telephone, and most of all the gleaming grand piano that sat with such a superior air in the corner of the room and mocked him until he could barely stand it any longer. He would never play it again, he realised. Since Liadan’s fingers had caressed those keys and transported him to a peace and sanctuary that he’d never have believed possible, Adrian didn’t want to have anything to do with it. In fact, as soon as he got off the phone to his editor, he was going to ring a local dealer and get them to come and take it away as soon as possible.
How the hell was he supposed to work since she’d walked out on him? Turned her back on him as if the thought of him would never cross her mind again. And who could blame her? That was the thing. She had every right under the circumstances. He was hell on wheels to live with, he was bad-tempered and ungrateful, and to top it all—he’d buried himself too much in unhappy memories of his past, refusing to see the lustre of the glittering diamond that he had right under his nose…Liadan. Her name almost had him clutching his chest in torment at the pain of losing her.
‘It’s nothing to do with Petra or the press or anything like that. I just can’t work at the moment. I can’t think straight, never mind come up with some god-awful ending for the damned book!’
‘I thought you told me you already had the ending worked out?’ Lynne asked tolerantly, clearly deciding that getting anxious wasn’t going to get her the desired result. The publishing house made more money out of Alexander Jacobsen’s books than any other and the last thing she wanted to do was antagonise this particular golden goose.
‘I did.’ His expression ferocious, Adrian picked up a loose sheet of blank copy paper and screwed it up into a ball. ‘But I’ve changed my mind about it. I need some time to work something else out.’
‘Well, sure, Adrian, I can give you extra time, but just so long as you remember that your endings are your trademark. How about coming up to London to meet me for lunch? We can talk about things and it will do you good. You need to get out of that house more; you know that, don’t you?’
Yeah, he knew that. The last person who had told him that had been dead right but he’d been too damn belligerent to tell her so. What the hell did he think he was doing hiding away in this gigantic carbuncle of a house that would be better off as a museum than a home? It patently wasn’t a home. It was even less so now that Liadan had gone.
‘When did you want me to come?’ he asked wearily into the mouthpiece.
‘Tomorrow. Come tomorrow. I’ll book us a table for one o’clock. That all right with you?’
‘Fine. Tomorrow, then.’
True to his word, when Adrian got off the phone to Lynne he went restlessly in search of the Yellow Pages to get the number of a local dealer and hopefully get rid of his no-longer-wanted piano.
Scanning the newspaper in the little newsagents-cum-post-office in the village, Liadan frowned, unable to believe
