that wasn’t strictly true. His thoughts were reeling and he was trying to make some sense of them. Had she sold up to simplify her life, or because it was too big for her and her half-sister?
He found what was in fact a cottage and it was small. Very small. He rapped loudly on the door, but there was no reply and suddenly he wondered what he was going to do if she’d gone away. She could be anywhere. He didn’t know a single thing about her daily life, he realised. He’d imagined her life staying exactly the same, while his own had moved on. It had been part of his fixed image of Jess—the upper-class blonde in her country mansion. Because wasn’t it easier to be angry with a stereotype than with a real person?
He walked to the back of the property and that was where he found her, attacking the bare earth furiously with a spade. She didn’t hear him at first and as he found himself looking at the denim tightening over her buttocks, it was difficult not to appreciate the sheer grace of her movements.
She must have heard him, or sensed him, because suddenly she whirled round—her face growing through a whole series of emotions but so rapidly that he couldn’t make out a single one except for the one which settled there, and it was one which was distinctly unwelcoming.
She leant heavily on the spade as if she needed it for support. ‘What are you doing here, Loukas?’
‘Parakalo,’ he said sardonically. ‘Nice to see you, too.’
She seemed to remember herself and forced a cool smile.
‘Sorry. It just came as a bit of a shock, you creeping up on me like that.’
‘Creeping?’ he echoed.
‘You know what I mean.’ She shrugged, but the movement seemed to take a lot of effort. ‘I mean, obviously, you’re not just passing.’
‘Obviously.’
She looked at him with her eyebrows raised as if she wanted him to help her out, but something stubborn had taken residence inside him and he didn’t feel like helping her out.
‘So why are you here?’
It was a question he’d been asking himself during the four-and-a-half-hour drive but had given up on it because he couldn’t seem to find a satisfactory answer. ‘You haven’t been answering your phone. Or your emails.’
She held her finger to her lips and began to tap them, as if considering his accusation. ‘I don’t think that’s written into my contract.’
‘Maybe it isn’t,’ he said, feeling a nerve beginning to flicker at his temple. ‘But I don’t think it’s unreasonable of us to want to get hold of you, is it?’
‘Us?’
‘Zeitgeist,’ he bit out, wondering what the hell was the matter with her. Why she was being so damned stubborn. And so remote. Hadn’t they just spent the best part of a week being about as intimate as a man and woman could be? ‘And Lulu,’ he added. ‘You know. The people who provided you with work.’
‘I was told it was a one-off.’ She gripped the handle of the spade. ‘And you were the one who told me that.’
‘With hindsight, I might have spoken a little hastily.’
Her gaze was steady. ‘If only we all had the benefit of hindsight, Loukas.’
He frowned. He didn’t want this impenetrable wall between them. He wanted her onside. ‘The campaign has been a huge success.’
‘Ah.’ She smiled. ‘The campaign.’
‘We’ve been inundated with requests for interviews, TV—’
‘So have I,’ she said sharply. ‘My answer machine keeps getting filled up with messages, even though I clear it at the end of every day.’
‘But you didn’t think to answer them?’
‘Actually, I did. And then decided not to.’ She wrapped her jacket more tightly around herself and gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘I’m getting cold just standing here.’
‘Then why don’t you take me inside and offer me some of your legendary English hospitality?’
Jessica hesitated when she heard the sarcasm in his voice, but she could hardly say no. And the trouble was that she didn’t want to say no. She wanted to know what had brought him here—appearing on her horizon like some dark avenging angel. Most of all she wanted him to kiss her, and that was where the danger lay. She had missed him so much that it had hurt and yet now that she had seen him again her heart had started aching even more. This was a lose-lose situation and his presence here wasn’t going to help her in the long term. But you couldn’t really turn a man away when he’d driven all this way to see you, could you?
‘You’d better come in,’ she said.
He followed her into the kitchen and she could sense him looking around as she put the kettle on. What did he think of her dresser, with the eclectic collection of jugs, or the cork board studded with all the postcards which Hannah had sent from her travels? Was he comparing it to his huge but cold suite at the Vinoly and did it all look terribly parochial to his sophisticated eye?
The wind had ruffled his black hair and he was dressed in jeans more faded than hers, along with a battered brown leather jacket. His casual clothes started playing tricks with her memory. Like a flashback, they gave her a glimpse of the man he had once been. The big bear of a bodyguard who used to watch her from the side of a tennis court. But flashbacks were notoriously unreliable—they always painted the past in such flattering shades that you wanted to be back there. And that was impossible. The past was the refuge for losers who couldn’t cope with the present, and she wasn’t going to be one of those losers.
She made tea and took the tray into the small sitting room which overlooked the Atlantic. She thought about lighting a fire but then decided against it, because he wasn’t staying long. He definitely wasn’t staying long.
‘So...’ She put a steaming star-decorated mug on a small table beside one of the chairs, but he didn’t take the hint to sit down—he just strode over to the window and stood there, staring out at the crashing ocean, his silhouetted body dark and powerful and more than a little intimidating.
He turned back, eyes narrowed. ‘Did you move because the house was too big?’
She thought about saying yes. It would be understandable, after all—especially now that it was just her. But Jessica knew that she couldn’t keep hiding behind her cool mask, thinking that to do so would offer her some kind of protection. Because she’d realised that it didn’t. Masks didn’t stop you wishing for things which were never going to come true. And they didn’t stop your heart from hurting when you fell for men who were wrong for you.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I moved because I had to. Because my father had built up massive debts which were only revealed after he was killed in the avalanche.’
His eyes narrowed, but there wasn’t a flicker of emotion on his own face. And suddenly she was glad that he hadn’t come out with the usual platitudes which people always trotted out, platitudes which meant zero and somehow ended up making you feel even worse. Maybe they were more alike than she’d
