gone for women who wanted nothing from me. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but it’s the truth. Yes, they’ve been good looking, but not in the way that you are …’
‘What way is that?’ Sarah asked scornfully, but she was keen to grasp any positive comment in these suddenly turbulent waters. She realised with a sinking heart that she would be willing to beg for him. It went against every grain of pride in her, but, yes, she would plead for him at least to keep in touch.
‘Young, innocent, full of laughter …’ He loosened his fingers on her arm and gently stroked her. ‘That’s why I should have run a mile the minute you looked at me with those big green eyes,’ he murmured with genuine regret. ‘But I couldn’t. You summed up everything I wasn’t looking for, and I still couldn’t resist you.’
‘You don’t have to!’ Before he could knock her last-ditch plea down in flames she turned away brusquely and walked towards the clearing, adopting a position on one of the fallen tree trunks which had been left as a bench of sorts.
Her heart was beating like a jackhammer and she could barely catch her breath. She didn’t look at him as he sat down on the upturned trunk next to her.
The night was alive with the sounds of insects and frogs, but it was cooler out here than it had been in the stifling heat of the bedroom.
Eventually she turned to him. ‘I’m not asking you to settle down and marry me,’ she said quietly—although, really, who was she kidding? That was exactly what she wanted. ‘But you don’t have to walk away and never look back. I mean, we can keep in touch.’ She threw him a watery, desperate smile. ‘That’s what mobile phones and e-mails and all these social networking sites are all about, you know.’
‘How many times have we argued about the merits of throwing your personal life into a public arena for the world to feed on?’
‘You’re such a dinosaur, Raoul.’ But she smiled. They’d argued about so many things! Light-hearted arguments, with lots of laughter. When Raoul took a stand it was impossible to deflect him, and she had enjoyed teasing him about his implacability. She had never known anything like it.
‘And you’d be happy to do that?’ Raoul thought that if she were the kind of girl who could be happy with that kind of distant, intermittent contact then they wouldn’t be sitting here right now, having this conversation, because then she would also be the kind of girl who would have indulged in a three-month fling and been happy to walk away, without agonising about a future that wasn’t destined to be.
For a fleeting moment he wondered what it would be like to take her with him, but the thought was one he discarded even before it had had time to take root. He was a product of his background, and that was something he was honest enough to acknowledge.
Deprived of stability, he had learnt from a very young age that he had to look out for himself. He couldn’t even really remember when he had made his mind up that the world would never decide his fate. He would control it, and the way he would do that would be through his brains. Foster care had honed his single-minded ambition and provided him with one very important lesson in life: rely on no one.
Whilst the other kids had been larking around, or pining for parents that failed to show up at appointed times, he had buried his head in books and mastered all the tricks of studying in the midst of chaos. Blessed with phenomenal intelligence, he had sailed through every exam, and as soon as he’d been released from the restrictions of a foster home had worked furiously to put himself through college and then later university.
Starting with nothing, he had to do more than just be clever. A degree counted for nothing when you were competing with someone who had family connections. So he had got two degrees—two high-powered degrees—which he intended to use ruthlessly to get where he wanted to go.
Where, in his great scheme of things, would Sarah fit in? He was no carer and never would be. He just didn’t have it in him. And Sarah was the sort of soft, gentle person who would always need someone to take care of her.
Heck, she couldn’t even bring herself to answer his question! When she spoke of keeping in touch, what she really meant was having an ongoing relationship. How responsible would he be if he told her what she wanted to hear?
Abruptly Raoul stood up, putting some vital immediate distance between them—because sitting next to her was doing crazy things to his thoughts and to his body.
‘Well?’ he asked, more harshly than he had intended, and he sensed her flinch as she bowed her head. He had to use every scrap of will-power at his disposal not to go across and put his arms around her. He clenched his hands into fists, wanting to hit something very hard. ‘You haven’t answered my question. Could you keep in touch with me with the occasional e-mail? When you should be moving on? Putting me behind you and chalking the whole thing up to experience?’
‘How can you be so callous?’ Sarah whispered. She had practically begged and it hadn’t been enough. He didn’t love her and he never would. Why should she waste her time lamenting the situation? He was right. E-mails and text messages would just prolong the hurt. She needed to cut him out of her life and leave no remaining bits to fester and multiply.
‘I’m not being callous, Sarah. I’m sparing you the pain of building false hopes. You’re young, with stars in your eyes …’
‘You’re not exactly over the hill, Raoul!’
‘In terms of experience I’m a thousand years older than you, and I’m not the man you’re looking for. I would be no good for you …’
‘That’s usually the coward’s way out of a sticky situation,’ she muttered, having read it somewhere and thought that it made sense.
‘In this case it’s the truth. You need someone who’s going to take care of you, and that person is never going to be me.’ He watched her carefully and wondered if he would ever again be in the business of justifying himself to another human being. Walk alone, that was what he had taught himself, and you don’t end up entangled in situations such as this. ‘I don’t want the things that you do,’ he continued softly.
Sarah would have liked to deny that she wanted any of those things he accused her of wanting, but she did. She wanted the whole fairytale romance and he knew it. It felt as if he knew her better than anyone ever had.
Her shoulders slumped as she struggled to look for the silver lining in the cloud. There always was one.
‘I’m not equipped for playing happy families, Sarah …’
She eventually raised her eyes to his and looked at him coldly. ‘You’re right. I want all that stuff, and it is better for you to let me down so that I can have a fighting chance of meeting someone who isn’t scared of commitment.’ Her legs felt like jelly when she stood up. ‘It would be awful to think that I might waste my time loving you when you haven’t got it in you for the fairytale stuff!’
Raoul gritted his teeth, but there was nothing to say in response to that.
‘And by the way,’ she flung over her shoulder, ‘I’ll leave your clothes outside the bedroom door, because I’ll be sleeping on my own tonight! You want your precious freedom so badly? Well, congratulations—you’ve got it!’
She kept her head held high as she covered the ten thousand miles back to the house. At least it felt like ten thousand miles.
Memories
