Chapter Twelve
Jago considered running after her, begging her to change her mind, but he didn’t want to acknowledge how much her rejection hurt him.
He ignored the pain that seized his chest; he disregarded the ache in his belly, the bitterness and disappointment he could even taste in his mouth.
He had unfinished business with Mollie, but she was done with him.
He was not the type of man to beg, to weep and wail and gnash his teeth over what he couldn’t have.
Mollie had made her decision, and he had to accept it, but hot damn, it hurt him in ways he hadn’t been expecting.
He had been looking forward to continuing their relationship, to bringing it full circle to make up for the lost two years.
Those two miserable years that he could not get back.
Of course, most of his anger should be directed at his grandfather for thinking he was obsessed with Mollie.
Maybe he was for all he could think about was her.
The taste of her, the feel of her against his body, the way she smiled at him, the way she melted when he looked at her.
But that was to be no longer because she wanted more than he had to offer.
Jago stared at the wedding cake, stale now and falling apart bit by bit.
Why had he kept it and the dress? What did he hope to achieve by keeping such souvenirs of a doomed relationship?
Doomed not just because of his grandfather’s meddling but because Mollie had kept so much from him, the stark details of her childhood, the poverty and neglect no child should suffer from.
His own childhood had been marked by tragedy, but at least he and his brothers had had the love of their grandmother.
But neither he nor Mollie had opened up about their painful childhoods; they had been engaged to each other but offered versions of themselves, not their true selves.
Their public personas, their identities, not the essence of who they really were.
Jago closed the door, telling himself he would get his housekeeper to get rid of the cake once and for all.
The wedding dress… His gut tightened at the thought of donating it to charity for someone else to wear.
It had been made specially for Mollie. It belonged to her, so he would courier it to her to do with it what she wished.
But then he thought of her marrying someone else, and his gut soured and cramped as if he had swallowed poison.
Maybe his grandfather was right: he was obsessed with Mollie, and it had to stop, right now.
Mollie had only just arrived back at her flat in Edinburgh when she got a call from the rehab centre to inform her that Eliot had signed himself out.
Despair hit her like a punch, knocking away her hopes and dreams for a full recovery for him.
Would this nightmare ever end? How much money had she already thrown at getting help for him?
How much had she already sacrificed? Never had she felt so alone in the world.
Even when she was in the wretched dosshouse with the dead bodies of her mother and stepfather, at least she’d had Eliot with her.
Now she was on her own.
No one knew where Eliot was. Her imagination made her crazy with horrible scenarios of him injecting a contaminated drug in some dark alley in Glasgow, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She had failed. Failed to keep him safe as a child and now as an adult.
Even if she had accepted Jago’s proposal, no amount of money could stop Eliot destroying himself.
It had to be his decision to accept a long-term commitment to help…
which in a strange way was exactly what Jago needed to do.
To commit to loving someone instead of avoiding opening his heart out of fear of losing that love like he had lost his parents.
Mollie understood the reasons behind Jago’s locked-away heart, just as she understood the choices Eliot made came from a place of deep hurt and loss, but it was not up to her to fix either of them.
It had taken her a long time to realise it, but there were some things you could not control, could not repair, could not restore.
But you could rebuild, and that was what she was going to concentrate on now.
Day by day, she would work at following her dreams, even though her top dream was for Jago to love her, and that was out of her control.
She had other dreams that required her focus, and they would be fulfilling in a different way.
Three weeks later, Mollie attended a week-long skin care workshop in London.
It was a costly affair, but attending it was a step closer to her achieving her goal of setting up her own specialised clinic.
To her surprise, on booking the conference, she received a Cinderella ticket, meaning both the workshop and her hotel accommodation were fully paid for.
It was just the boost of luck she needed.
Her brother had finally contacted her, informing her he had moved to London and was doing well by checking in to a daily rehab centre where mentors were assigned to each client to help them on their journey to recovery.
It gave Mollie another reason to attend so she could catch up with him to assure herself he was doing okay.
She had met with him for lunch, and he was surprisingly sober and assured her he was staying clean.
He was working with a therapist he had really clicked with and had since made considerable progress in moving forward without the need to anaesthetise himself with drugs or alcohol.
Mollie had to take his word for it, but from what she had seen so far, all seemed to be going well with him.
She wished she could say the same for herself.
She was lonely, sad, depressed and despairing that no one would ever love her.
The only love she wanted was Jago’s, but that was asking for a miracle, and she wasn’t so foolish to think there would be two granted her in a lifetime.
Shouldn’t she be grateful for her brother’s improvement?
Why push her luck and dream that Jago would finally open his heart to her?
After a long day at the workshop held at a plush hotel in the centre of London, Mollie was about to take the lift to her room when she caught sight of an elderly lady being escorted into the foyer by a female companion.
Her eyes widened and her heart began to give a staccato thump when she saw it was Elsie Wilde and Harriet the maid who worked for the Wilde family at Wildewood.
Mollie ignored the lift bell ping as the doors opened and turned and walked towards the women, who both smiled as she approached.
‘Mollie, how lovely I caught you just in time,’ Elsie said. ‘Are you free for dinner with me? I just adore this hotel. Did you know it’s one of Jago’s? He bought it eighteen months ago, and it’s only just finished being refurbished. It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?’
Mollie’s stomach dropped like an elevator with snapped cables. ‘Jago’s?’ she gasped.
Elsie beamed. ‘He’s the silent sponsor behind the workshop. It’s not his usual thing, but there you go. The things men will do for love.’
Mollie opened and closed her mouth like a fish thrown out of its bowl.
‘I didn’t… I mean I would never have come if I’d—’ Was he behind the Cinderella ticket?
Had her name been tagged on the booking system so she got in for free?
She didn’t know what to make of it, wasn’t game enough to make anything of it.
Maybe the guilt he felt about his grandfather’s actions precipitated his generous actions.
It might not mean anything had changed with his feelings.
‘Now, about dinner. I prefer to dine in my room, if that’s okay with you? We’ll have a lovely catch-up, and the press will leave us alone,’ Elsie said. ‘Shall we say in half an hour? I like to dine early these days. I go to bed ridiculously early, especially after travelling down from Wildewood.’
‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ Mollie said.
Harriet gave her the room number with a smile. ‘See you soon.’