Clearly I had you all wrong.’
‘Do you want to know what makes me most angry?’
‘No—’ he was icily polite ‘—but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’
‘What makes me most angry is that you’re prepared to destroy what we have because you’re too cowardly to take a risk with your feelings. I know they hurt you, Nathaniel. Your father, Jacob—they all abandoned you. But are you really going to let the past dictate the way you live your life in the future? Before you can go forward, you have to go back. You have to talk to Jacob. You have to accept what happened and live with it, not just keep switching your phone off. You have to be who you really are.’
There was a long, pulsing silence. He watched her, his face inscrutable. ‘Are you finished?’
Katie felt her heart crack in two. Hope drained away. The future, which a few hours earlier had seemed so bright, now seemed dark and empty. What they had was special. She knew that. Why wouldn’t he fight for it? Why was he just giving up? Caught in a whirl of despair, misery and exasperation, she allowed herself a final long indulgent look at his face. Memories, she thought. That was all she was going to be left with. Desperately she imprinted images in her brain—the brilliant blue eyes, their astonishing colour intensified by the jet of his eyelashes and bold brows; the straight line of his nose and the slow curve of his sensual mouth. But the image that was going to stay with her for ever wasn’t the movie star collecting his Sapphire, it was the man teaching disadvantaged children how to act. The man delving deep inside himself to help a vulnerable child.
Dredging up willpower she hadn’t known she possessed, Katie lifted her chin. ‘Yes—’ her voice was shaky and sad ‘—I’m finished. And so are we.’
Feeling as though someone had gouged out her insides with a blunt instrument, she turned and stumbled through the door. Her vision swam and she narrowly avoided crashing into a group of people who were laughing together.
Blind, she kept ploughing forward until she ran smack into one of Nathaniel’s security team.
‘I’m not feeling well,’ she choked. ‘Mr Wolfe would like you to take me back to the apartment and then to the airport.’
She still had a credit card, didn’t she? The fact that she’d never be able to pay it off was irrelevant. She’d book herself on the first flight into Heathrow and go home. She wasn’t naïve enough to think that the Howard Kenningtons of this world would be interested in her if she wasn’t with Nathaniel. It was all about who you know, wasn’t it? Contacts.
Katie hurried down the steps. Like Cinderella, she thought, running from the ball. Except that she hadn’t lost a shoe.
Both shoes were on her feet, but her heart was in pieces.
CHAPTER NINE
BEFORE you can go forward, you have to go back.
In a dangerous mood, Nathaniel floored the accelerator of his Ferrari and shot down the long drive that led to Wolfe Manor.
He’d swum with sharks, leaped from moving vehicles, skydived and climbed vertical cliffs but none of those activities had left him shaking the way he was shaking now. Fear, he thought. It lodged itself in his chest and gripped him by the throat.
What if, by going back, he was unable to move forward?
Centuries before, his ancestors had carefully planted an avenue of horse chestnut trees and they added an air of grandeur which was abruptly shattered as the main house came into view.
In a state of crumbling disrepair, Wolfe Manor stood like an ancient aristocrat struggling to maintain dignity in the face of advancing years and little maintenance.
Nathaniel killed the engine and sat for a moment, his fingers drumming a rhythm on the steering wheel.
What was he doing here? How did torturing himself with the past help solve the issues in his present?
Swearing under his breath, he sprang from the car and prowled through the tangled, long-neglected gardens. After the warmth of California, the bite of a British winter was particularly brutal and he turned up the collar of his jacket and blew clouds in the freezing air.
Afterwards, he realised that it had always been his intention to walk to the lake—to confront that part of his past—but now, as his feet moved, he felt as if he were being drawn there against his will.
He kicked his way through grass that was untended and overgrown. It brushed against his knees and wrapped itself around his ankles, impeding every step, as if warning him about the danger.
And then there it was.
Bulrushes clustered at the edge of the water, tall and straight as sentries as they guarded the dark, sinister pool that had dominated his childhood. It had begun here, he thought, and it had almost ended here, in the depths of the lake.
‘You sank like a stone.’
His mind still trapped in another place, Nathaniel turned sharply to find Jacob watching him. Apart from that brief glimpse at the theatre, it had been almost twenty years since they’d laid eyes on each other and both had spent that time running. Isolating themselves from their past.
Nathaniel felt the anger rush down on him, vivid and scorching hot. The full force of twenty years of simmering resentment and pain powered the fist he slammed into Jacob’s jaw. Pain exploded through his hand and Jacob staggered. But he didn’t retaliate.
Nathaniel was shocked by how badly he wanted him to. As if a good earthy physical pounding might right all the wrongs.
Deep down he felt sick with himself because he knew the person he wanted to lay out cold had been dead for twenty years.
He stepped back. Let his hands fall. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Jacob touched his fingers to his jaw, checking for damage. ‘I thought it was time.’
‘Why? Because we’ve all grown up?’ Nathaniel heard the bitterness in his tone. ‘We did it without you.’
There was a long silence, broken only by the ghostly howl of the bitter wind. ‘Don’t you ever pick up your phone?’
‘Only when the caller is someone I want to speak to.’
‘You have every right to be angry. I’m sorry about what happened at the theatre. I should have warned you I was coming.’
‘Why did you come?’
‘I wanted to see you.’
‘Well, now you’ve seen me so you can leave.’ His emotions in turmoil, Nathaniel turned to walk away but Jacob caught his arm.
‘I’m not leaving. I’m here to stay.’
Nathaniel stood still, staring down at the hand that held his arm. Those hands had hauled him out of the lake and saved his life. Those hands had been responsible for the death of his father. Katie’s words rang in his head. He’s trying to make amends—you need to stop running.
Nathaniel
