again. Oh, she’d sniffed around again when he’d won his court case and rebuilt his company, but he hadn’t even returned her calls. If she couldn’t stand by him through the tough times—through living in a bedsit and eating beans on toast for months, through losing all his so-called friends and business associates—then she didn’t deserve even a minute of his attention. He’d surprised himself at his own hardness.
And it gave him a grim sense of satisfaction to know she’d burned her bridges too soon. Half a ton of debts was all she’d been entitled to in the divorce proceedings. If she’d waited a couple of years before she’d bailed she would have done a lot better for herself.
Light drizzle peppered the windscreen. He watched it build into a pattern of dots. A flick of a switch round the steering wheel created a blank canvas where a new and completely different design was free to form.
He turned off the main road into a narrow country lane and determined to concentrate on the road in front of him. The Aston Martin was heaven to drive. Normally he didn’t have time to sit back and enjoy it, always hurrying from A to B, always focusing on the destination instead of the journey. Ellie’s presence as his passenger made him want to savour the experience.
The trip to the supermarket had been fun, in a way. Spending time with her on neutral territory had been different. She’d relaxed a little. He felt strangely comfortable pushing the trolley along behind her as she’d browsed the aisles, squeezing avocados and reading the backs of packets. Of course he’d had no idea what she was doing half the time, or what she’d make with the assortment of ingredients she’d flung in the trolley, but the fact she knew gave her an air of wisdom.
The raindrops on the windscreen got fatter and rounder. They were going to have to get a move on if they were going to get home before it tipped down. The purr of the engine seduced him into going faster. He was pretty confident in his driving skills and was starting to become familiar with these lanes, anticipating the sweep and curve of the overgrown hedgerows as they got closer to Larkford. He glanced at Ellie. She was staring straight ahead, a grim look on her face.
He swung round a corner into a flat, fairly straight stretch of road and picked up speed. He loved the growl of satisfaction as the engine worked harder. It responded with eagerness to every nudge on the accelerator.
The sky darkened and the wild hedgerows whipped past, clawing at the car as if they were jealous. Inside the low-slung sports car the air was full of static. He could almost feel the crackles arcing from Ellie’s thigh as he changed gear, his knuckles threatening to stroke the warm denim of her jeans.
A pheasant burst from the hedge in a flurry of feathers. He heard Ellie’s sharp intake of breath, and out of the corner of his eye saw her grip the edge of her seat. After he’d braked slightly, he turned his head fully towards her, meaning to reassure her.
‘Mark…’ The trembling plea hardly escaped her lips.
‘It’s okay. We weren’t going to—’
‘Mark…please…!’
The urgency in her voice panicked him. Her face was frozen in stark horror. He looked back down the lane and his stomach lurched as he saw the farm vehicle pulling out of a concealed entrance. He squeezed the brake harder, slowing to a smooth crawl, and allowed the rust-speckled tractor to rumble past them. He pulled away and silently congratulated himself on not even leaving a skid mark on the tarmac.
‘Stop the car.’ Her voice was faint, but determined.
‘But we’re almost home.’
Her voice came in breathy gasps. ‘I said…stop the car…I want to get out.’
Mark’s faced creased into a scowl of disbelief as Ellie scrabbled at the door lever, desperate to free the lock. He pulled deftly into a passing place. Before the car had fully stopped Ellie had popped her seat belt and staggered out of the car, stumbling forward, gulping in damp country air. She was shaking, her whole body quivering.
Mark sat paralysed in the driver’s seat, too stunned to move. Then, coming to his senses, he unbuckled himself and ran after her. It didn’t take long to catch her as she straggled up the lane, half in a dream state.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her firmly to him. Her head lodged just under his chin, and for a split second she moulded against him before pushing him away again.
He should have remembered she was surprisingly strong for a woman so soft and rounded-looking. He managed to grab one of her wrists before she darted off again down the middle of the road.
She turned to face him, fury in her eyes. ‘I asked you to stop the car!’
Her free arm waved around wildly and she pulled and tugged the other, trying to twist it out of his grasp.
Mark stared at her. What on earth was wrong with her? Why such angst over a stupid tractor? Puzzled as he was, he held on to her as gently as he could without letting her run down the lane into oncoming traffic. Ellie swung towards the middle of the road as she attempted to wrench her arm away from him again, all the while pressing a flattened palm to her chest and breathing in shallow gasps.
The nasal blast of a horn pierced the air and Mark grabbed her back out of the path of an approaching car. He stumbled backwards with her until his feet were on the grassy verge, the gnarled twigs of the ancient hedgerow piercing his back.
Ellie’s mouth worked against his chest. He could feel her jaw moving, feel the moist warmth of her breath through his pullover. She might have been trying to shout at him, but nothing remotely resembling a word was included in the few noises tumbling out of her mouth. Her tiny hands balled into fists and she punched him on the chest. Twice.
He might not know what was going on here—clueless, as always—but one thing was certain: whether she knew it or not, Ellie needed him in this moment. She needed someone to be angry with, someone to fall apart on. And, hey, wasn’t he the most likely candidate to light her fuse at the moment, anyway? He might as well take the brunt of whatever this was.
No way was he about to brush this situation off with a joke. It was time to face the challenge he’d walked away from so many times over the last decade. No amount of sequins or cash would defuse the situation. He was just going to have to be ‘real’ too. He hoped to God he still had it in him.
She was still trying to push away from him, but now the tears came. She gulped and cried and sobbed as if she’d never stop. He swallowed rising fear at such intense emotion, whispered words of comfort in her ear and waited for the squall to wear itself out. Eventually the sobbing became shallower and she surrendered to it, burying her face in his jumper. All those crying sessions with Kat now just seemed like practice sessions leading up to this moment—and he was thoroughly glad of the training.
How he wished he could do something to ease her pain. It was so raw. Perhaps if he held her long enough, tight enough, something of him she needed would seep through the damp layers between them in a kind of osmosis. He wanted to make up the missing parts of her. Loan her his uncanny ability to shield himself from everything, to feel nothing he didn’t want to.
His fingers stilled in her curls as he thought what a poor exchange it would be. He had nothing to give her, really. She could teach him so much more. Her determination, her ability to say what she felt whether she wanted to or not. She knew how to live, while he only knew how to dazzle.
The sky turned to lavender-grey as afternoon retreated.
