was right. He knew she was right. It was just…
Aw, forget it. He’d spent the last decade fooling everyone—even himself—that he was ‘living the dream’. He might just as well return to that happy, alpha-wave state and forget that he’d ever yearned for anything more.
If you can, a little voice whispered in his ear. If you can…
Mark disappeared back to London the next day, much to Ellie’s relief. But it didn’t stop him coming back to Larkford again the following weekend. Or the one after that. During the week she could relax, enjoy her surroundings, but the weekends were something else. Stiff. Awkward. And, although she’d never expected anything more than a professional relationship with the man, now they were operating on that level it just seemed, well…weird.
And that was how it continued for the next month or so.
So, there she was on a Saturday afternoon, hiding out in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal, even though she needn’t start for hours yet. But it was good to keep herself busy and out of a certain person’s way. Not that it had been hard today. He might be at home, but he was obviously working; he’d hardly left the study all day. They were keeping to their separate territories as boxers did their corners of the ring.
She was still cross with herself for being too weak to control her brain’s fried electrical signals. They still all short-circuited every time he appeared. It was as if her neurons had rewired themselves with a specialised radar that picked up only him as he breezed around the house, as calm as you like, while her fingernails were bitten so low she’d practically reached her knuckles.
Blip. Blip. Blip.
There it went again. Her core temperature rose a couple of notches. He was on the move; she just knew it. She stopped chopping an onion and listened. After about ten seconds she heard what she’d been waiting for—footsteps in the hall, getting louder.
She kept her eyes on her work as Mark entered the kitchen. The coffee machine sputtered. Liquid sloshed into a cup. The rubber heel of a stool squeaked on the floor. Silence. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristled.
Just carry on as if he’s not there.
The knife came down hard on the chopping board—thunk, thunk, thunk—so close she almost trimmed her non-existent nails. She threw the onion pieces into a hot frying pan where they hissed back at her. According to the recipe they should be finely chopped. The asymmetrical lumps looked more like the shapes Chloe had produced as a toddler when left to her own devices with paper and safety scissors.
She sliced the next onion with exaggerated care and flipped the switch for the extractor hood above the hob. It was too still in the kitchen. Too hot. She plucked a papery clove of garlic from a nearby pot.
Only one more left.
That gave her an idea, stunning in its simplicity. She turned to face Mark with what she hoped was a cool stare. He sat looking straight back at her, waiting.
‘I need to go out—to get some things I can’t find at the local shops from the big supermarket. Is there anything you’d like me to get you that’s not on the shopping list?’ She nodded to indicate a long pad hanging on a nail where she always listed store cupboard items as soon as they’d run out. She even managed a smile on the last few words, so delighted was she at the thought of getting out of the house and into fresh, uncomplicated air.
He just lifted his shoulders and let them drop again. ‘Nope. Nothing in particular.’
Most housekeepers would be glad of having a boss with such an easygoing nature, but the contrast with her own jangled emotions just made her want to club him over the head with his large wooden pepper mill. She strode to the other side of the room and snatched her handbag from where it hung on the back of a chair.
It wasn’t more than a minute later that she was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, turning the key in the ignition.
Nothing.
‘Come on, old girl!’ she crooned, rubbing the dashboard. ‘Don’t let me down now. You are my ticket out of here—at least for the afternoon.’ She tried again, pumping her foot frantically on the pedal. Her old banger coughed, threatening to fire up, then thought better of it. She slapped the steering wheel with the flat of her hands.
‘Traitor.’
She collected her bag and strutted back into the kitchen, chin in the air. Mark was still sitting on the stool, finishing his coffee.
‘Problems?’
‘Car won’t start. I’ll have to go another day, after I’ve had the old heap looked at.’
Mark stood up and pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket. ‘Come on, then.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll take you.’
‘No, it’s okay. Honestly. You’re busy.’
‘No problem,’ he said with that lazy grin of his, the one straight out of a toothpaste ad. ‘I could do with getting away from my desk and letting things settle in my head, anyway.’
Ellie groaned inwardly. Now the afternoon was going to be torture rather than escape. She followed him reluctantly to his car. It was a sleek, gunmetal-grey Aston Martin. She could almost see his chest puff out in pride as he held the passenger door open for her.
Boys and their toys. What was the theory about men with flash cars?
Mark didn’t need to take his eyes off the road to know that Ellie had shifted position and was now staring out of the window. He was aware of every sigh, every fidget. And her body language was yelling at him in no uncertain terms—back off!
What if she’d been right all those weeks ago when she’d shouted at him? He’d given the whole thing a lot of thought. Did he live in a ‘Mark bubble’? A self-absorbed little universe where he was the sun and all revolved around him? Did he now waltz through life—well, relationships—without a backward glance?
If he did, it hadn’t always been that way. His thoughts slid inevitably to Helena. That woman had a lot to answer for. He’d have stayed by her side until his dying day. Hadn’t he promised as much, dressed in a morning suit in front of hundreds of witnesses? Stupidly, he’d thought she’d felt the same way, but it turned out that he’d confused loyalty with neediness. She’d stuck around while he’d been useful and then, when he’d needed her to be the strong one for a change, she’d walked away.
And he hadn’t seen it coming. Before the news had broken, he’d been thinking to himself that Helena had finally reached a place where she seemed less troubled, and he’d even been thinking about broaching the subject of having kids.
But then his first management company had gone belly-up because he’d made the same mistake with Nuclear Hamster. He’d really believed in them, had remortgaged his house, emptied his savings accounts to give them a start in the business. Friends had warned him not to take a cut of the net profit in their first contract when most managers took a percentage of the gross. The album had sold well, but on tour they’d run up huge bills—having parties, chartering private jets—and at the end of the day fifteen percent of
