break down in front of him. He’d seen her at her lowest ebb and he’d walked away. Walked away…
Mac saw the colour drain from her face and wondered why. Their marriage had been over a long time ago, so she could hardly be shocked that he was finally drawing a line under it after all these years. In fact, he’d been more surprised that she hadn’t contacted him first. He was so sure that some nice young man would snap her up the moment she’d been free of him that almost every day for the first year after they’d parted he’d dreaded the phone ringing or picking up his mail. Just in case it was Tara asking him for a divorce.
‘There didn’t seem much point until now.’ He drew his fingers through his hair and Tara stared in shock at the slim platinum band he was still wearing. Why on earth hadn’t he taken it off? Then she glanced down at its twin glinting up at her from her own slender finger and quickly folded her hands in her lap.
‘So what’s she like?’ Don’t do this, Tara…don’t torture yourself. ‘Your intended? Some single-minded career woman, no doubt—equally addicted to work with a designer wardrobe?’
‘You should finish your sandwich. You don’t want to risk passing out again. I won’t be around next time to help you up.’
‘Wasn’t that the whole problem, Mac? You never were around when I needed you. Work always came first. Well, I hope it’s brought all the success you dreamed of. Clearly it has if that suit you’re wearing is any indication.’
‘I never denied I was ambitious. You knew that from the first. But I worked hard for both of us, Tara. I’m not the selfish bastard you seem so eager to tag me as.’
‘No. You were always generous, Macsen. With your money and your expensive gifts but not your time, as I recall.’
Silently he acknowledged the truth of her statement. God knew he’d regretted it when time after time he’d had to let her down—whether it was cancelling a dinner date, missing a long-planned theatre trip or sending her off on holiday alone because something important had come up at the last minute. That was the way of it in the advertising world. Everybody wanting something yesterday and unwilling to wait, because there was always another agency who would do it quicker or cheaper. He had worked hard to make his agency one of the best and most successful in the business. But he’d paid a high price. Some might say too high.
‘Why did you move out of London to live with your aunt?’
‘That’s none of your damn business!’
Mac’s gaze was steady. ‘She told me you’d given up teaching to help her in the shop. It’s a shame; you were always so passionate about your dancing.’
‘Aunt Beth told you too much. And it’s typical that you instantly infer any decision I make about my life must naturally be a wrong one.’
‘Do I do that?’ Looking genuinely puzzled, Mac slowly shook his head. ‘That’s not what I meant to imply at all. I was just surprised you’d given up something you so clearly loved.’
‘Yes, well, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? So tell me, what made you decide to try again? At marriage, I mean? Last time we were together you yelled at me that it was the biggest mistake of your life.’
The pain in Tara’s throat was making it difficult to speak. He’d wounded her deeply with his cruel, angry words then walked out without giving her a chance to make things right. The following day he’d rung to say he was leaving. He’d come home that night to pack, then left her in pieces while he walked calmly out the door. A few days later he’d sent her a cheque for some outrageously large amount in a card with a Monet painting on the front—the one with the waterlilies—and she’d torn it up along with the cheque and thrown it in the bin.
‘I lost my father last year to cancer.’ Mac’s words were hesitant, measured, and Tara’s foolish heart turned over at the flash of pain in his deep blue eyes, but she’d never met his parents. Mac had always been too busy to arrange it. Another casualty of his drive to succeed. ‘Something like that…the death of a parent…makes you think about your own mortality. I’m thirty-eight years old, Tara, and I want a child. I want the chance to be a father.’
‘Is that right?’ Her words were barely above a whisper and Mac could see that she was visibly shaken. He frowned. A memory returned that jolted him. Clearly he should have chosen his words more carefully.
‘I’ve got to go.’ Gathering up her jacket from the spare chair between them, Tara got hurriedly to her feet. ‘I’ve just remembered I’ve got several things to do today. I can’t stay here chatting. You can have your divorce, Mac. You know where I live, so send the papers there and I’ll sign them. Good luck.’
‘Tara!’
He pursued her from the cafeteria into a long, echoing corridor with marble busts of grave historical dignitaries looking on and a shiny parquet floor. When he caught up with her, urgently spinning her round to face him, it distressed him intensely that she was crying. Two slow wet tracks trickled down her face onto her chin. Impatiently she scrubbed them away. ‘What is it? You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you? What more do you want?’
‘I want to know why you’re crying.’ He held onto her arm when she would have tugged it free and felt it suddenly grow limp in his hand.
‘You said you wanted a child, that you wanted to be a father?’ Suddenly weary and angry and beyond caring that she was about to lay her soul bare for him to trample all over it, Tara lifted her head and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I begged you to let me have a baby…do you remember that?’
Mac did. He remembered a night of the sweetest, most erotic lovemaking known to man—a night that had come about after another bitter argument, when their mutual desire and attraction was stronger than the anger that raged between them—and his beautiful green-eyed wife laying her head on his chest and asking him if he could guess what she wanted more than anything else in the world. Suddenly his chest was so tight he could hardly breathe.
‘I remember.’ Hot colour crept up his neck and he let go of her arm.
‘When we broke up I was pregnant.’
Her words sliced through him, knocking his world off its axis.
‘I didn’t— Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why should I have? You left. Our marriage was over. You didn’t want a baby anyway. You didn’t know if you were cut out to be a father, wasn’t that what you said at the time? Work was too demanding, you were busy building up the business…“safeguarding” our future, that’s what you said. Didn’t that just turn out to be the biggest joke of all?’
‘Tara, I…’ Loosening his tie, Mac dragged his fingers shakily through the blunt-cut ends of his thick blond hair. ‘What happened?’
Fear clouded his impossibly blue eyes and just for a moment or two Tara considered softening the blow. She didn’t know how, but she would have done so if she could. Cruelty just wasn’t in her nature.
‘What happened?’ Her even white teeth bit briefly into her quivering lower lip. ‘The baby died in my womb at six months.’
‘Dear God!’ Mac’s exclamation was like a hissed breath. He moved away, shaking his head, staring down at the floor as if he didn’t want to hear any more. Couldn’t handle hearing any
