from Fitz. ‘But I don’t think that’s what you were looking for when you first came in here.’
‘Astute of you,’ Elle murmured, trying to buy herself some time.
It was as though the evening had been leading up to this point from the moment he’d stepped up to her at the bar. Now it was up to her to decide whether dancing, a drink, a laugh were as far as things went, or if she wanted more with Fitz tonight.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t rush her. He simply waited. And Elle was mesmerised by the way his thumb traced lazy, circular patterns over the back of her hand, as though the two of them had all the time in the world.
With his other hand, he reached between their bodies and picked up her drink from the bar to offer it to her before taking his own.
‘Come on,’ he muttered, turning and leading her back through the mass of rhythmically throbbing bodies and to a quieter corner of the club.
Then he turned back to face her, his gaze snagging hers as easily as before.
Dragging her eyes away, she took a fortifying gulp of orange juice.
Then a second.
Finally, she lifted her gaze back to Fitz.
‘I was in a relationship. Two weeks ago I discovered he’d been cheating on me. I admit that it knocked me. I walked out and have been staying in the hotel up the road ever since. I suppose you might say I’ve been licking my wounds.’
She offered a rueful smile but Fitz just frowned.
‘Long-term relationship?’
‘Fourteen years,’ she confirmed.
He let out a low whistle.
‘That must be tough. You were serious about this guy, then?’
He tailed off and Elle could guess what he was probably thinking.
‘Only I don’t seem as cut up about it as you’d have thought?’
‘I’m not judging.’
She shrugged.
‘I was hurt, humiliated. I felt betrayed. I sat in that hotel room and felt like a prize idiot. I felt as though I didn’t know who I was.’ She’d wondered if she was less of a woman, less sexy, less desirable. Not that she was about to tell Fitz that. ‘And then I had what I call my “light-bulb” moment; I realised it was more about my pride being hurt than me actually being hurt, and I asked myself why I was letting someone else’s actions shake my belief in myself.’
‘That’s very logical.’ Fitz didn’t look convinced. ‘Very controlled.’
She smiled wistfully.
‘Isn’t that the point? I realised we’d been growing apart for a very long time. He was a...sportsman.’ No need to name names. ‘He spent a lot of time training and travelling. And my career is very demanding. I think a part of me was still in love with the idea of childhood sweethearts, when in reality we’d fallen out of love a long time ago. We didn’t see each other like regular couples tend to, and we weren’t really bothered.’
If she calculated it—which she hadn’t been able to stop herself from doing a couple of times over the last fortnight—between multiple tours of duty, training courses and postings around the country, she doubted she’d spent more than thirty long weekends and a handful of week-long or fortnight R&Rs in Stevie’s company over the last decade or so. At best a couple of hundred days.
‘We didn’t even live together. We always had our own homes, blaming it on the distance, but that was just an excuse. As the money rolled in, each apartment became more and more blingy, and they weren’t my style. I visited but he never gave me my own key. I never needed one, but I guess I now know why he was afraid I might just pop in unannounced.’
‘So that was how you found out? You decided to surprise him with a visit?’
‘The doorman recognised me and let me in, sweet old guy who only did a couple of nights to top up his pension. I don’t know whether he knew the girls were up there, or if he did but thought it was time I knew what Stevie was up to. First time I’d surprise visited in years. Pretty dumb, huh?’
‘Only if you’re talking about him.’ Fitz’s thunderous expression somehow soothed her bruised ego.
Elle wrinkled her nose.
‘It wasn’t just Stevie’s fault. I liked my own space, too. I think in the last ten years we might have seen each other two hundred days. Two hundred days out of three thousand, six hundred and fifty-two-ish.’
Her stomach rolled with guilt.
She’d been pretty much fine with that—they both had, by the end—but in the very beginning how many keys had Stevie offered her? In the beginning how many times had he begged her to visit more? To come to his major league matches? To attend some B-list party? And she’d always found an army-related excuse not to. Then again, where had Stevie been when she’d finally graduated or passed out of her Sandhurst course? Out with his teammates, celebrating his own big wins. Too busy to come to either of the two biggest days in her life.
So what did that tell her about the state of their relationship? They’d had three years as teenagers in the flush of first love unable to stand being apart for even a maths lesson, to adults who hadn’t blinked an eye at being apart for three months at a time. Or, at least, she hadn’t. But, still, she would never have dreamed of cheating on him and it wasn’t as though she hadn’t had the opportunity over the years.
Yet Stevie had. A wave of sadness washed over her. He hadn’t always been that way. He’d changed. Fame had changed him. And, as if to add clichéd insult to even more clichéd injury, his excuse had been that the two bimbos ‘meant nothing’, that they were ‘football groupies’, that as a professional footballer he was a ‘high-profile target’ who had done well to resist their seduction skills as often as he had.
She’d taken time to get her head around that prize gem this last fortnight and finally seen it for the bull it was. Finally, he had professed that he couldn’t be blamed for being lonely and needing physical comfort given how often her work kept her away from him. And that particular knife of guilt had been the one to actually lodge in her back.
She shook her head and took another long drink.
‘So why stay in a hotel?’ he asked curiously. ‘Why not just go back to your own home?’
‘I didn’t want him to follow me down here. I didn’t want him to find me.’
She didn’t want to do something stupid like let him cry and beg and guilt her into taking him back.
‘Anyway, it’s not a subject I want to dwell on. I came here to prove to myself that I could enjoy a night out in my own company. I didn’t bank on how eventful it would be, but I’ve felt more like myself than ever. And I guess meeting you wasn’t a bad bonus.’
She managed a deliberately cheeky smile, something tightening in her chest when Fitz finally stopped frowning and laughed with her.
‘Okay.’
