Chapter Six #2
Tea was ready for them. Baked potatoes and salmon and tomatoes with green beans.
It was a treat to have salmon. On her own budget it was a rare occurrence.
As she’d cooked it, her thoughts had been difficult.
How easy, how very, very easy, it would be to get used to this kind of affluence, this up-market cottage, all superbly equipped and beautifully furnished.
How very, very easy, too, to get used to Xander being civil, behaving with politeness and consideration as he was doing now.
After that exchange at the farm park, which had threatened to turn so ugly again, he had, she could see, made a visible effort to be nicer towards her.
As if—she frowned—he was conscious of having upset her by what he’d said. And cared that he had.
That surely, though, was just an illusion. His solicitude, continuing now, was only for Dan’s sake, never hers. The woman he would never think of as anything but a thief.
But whatever the reason, it was pleasanter to experience than his more familiar harshness. He was helping with tea, extracting cutlery from drawers, handing it to Dan to set their places, rustling up some place mats out of another drawer, getting drinking glasses out the cupboard.
As if he lived here, as if this were just part of everyday family life, a family supper together.
But they weren’t a family. They were two people divided irreconcilably who just happened to share an innocent child between them. Two people who’d met on holiday, between whom desire had once flared with an intensity that had swept them both away. Desire that had crashed and burned to bitter ashes…
And even without that wretched bracelet business, there would have been nothing left but the cold embers of a dead affair. He’d still have finished with her and married Olympia.
I was just a bit of summer fun. I knew it then, and it was just as well I did. Nothing could have come of it. So, what did it matter if it ended as viciously as it did?
Except for the long black shadow it cast for seven years. Was still casting.
Because he’ll never believe my innocence. Never. He’s made that clear now, just as he did back then. Guilty forever.
She felt that sense of depression, defeat, creep back in. But what was the use of it? None. All they could do was keep going as they were now, trying, as they had agreed, to put the past aside at least. Not let it flare and bite, and so harm and damage their son.
She seized up a pair of oven gloves, opened the eye-level door and extracted the tray with the salmon on it.
“Watch out! Hot! Coming through!” She set it down on the large mat in the centre of the table. She went to fetch the second tray of baked potatoes, then drained the beans and put them on the table too.
Xander and Dan were sitting there expectantly. Looking so alike…
Emotion rose in her. Father and son.
How much she loved the one and not the other.
And it’s the same for Xander when he sees Dan and me.
And that could never change. The sense of depression and defeat crept over her again…
There was nothing to be done but accept it.
Xander pressed the accelerator, moving into the fast lane of the motorway.
It felt odd to be driving on the wrong side of the road again, but it felt good—more than good—to be back in the UK.
He’d ripped through his business affairs.
As his father got older, he himself was now taking on more and more of the running, and he’d been relieved that his father had been away, visiting friends in Thessaloniki and wouldn’t return till the Orthodox Easter.
Xander did not want any awkward questions asked about what was drawing him to the UK yet again.
At some point he would have to tell his father why, but not yet.
And just what he would tell him and how, he had no idea.
He wants a replacement for Olympia for me, not—
Not what, precisely? The complicated, tortuous existence of Laurel and Dan?
He shied his mind away. Right now he had only one focus: seeing his son again. Within the hour he was parked at the cottage, vaulting out of the car. He’d scarcely shut the driver’s door before Dan came hurtling out of the house.
“Dad! Dad!” he called, face alight.
He ran up to Xander, and Xander caught him up. Bear-hugged him, emotion pouring through him. It was a good feeling. A very good feeling.
He set Dan back, keeping an arm around his shoulder as they walked up to the front door. Laurel was standing there. She was wearing jeans and a baggy sweater, her hair knotted, and she wore not a scrap of make-up. Her usual nothing look.
But something kicked through Xander. Something that shouldn’t be there. Something he had killed off seven years ago.
But which now, as his eyes went to her, was there again.
However much he might wish to God it wasn’t.
Laurel forced herself to look at Dan, but it was too late.
One glance at Xander had done it, one single glance.
All day, with him expected back from Greece, she had been schooling herself.
She must not react to him; she must only be composed, neutral, keeping to their carefully agreed cessation of hostilities.
But as her eyes went to him as he strolled towards the open front door, his arm around Dan’s shoulders, she felt her resolve vanish. For seven days she hadn’t seen Xander. Now he was here again. Right in front of her.
Lean, and lithe, and lethal.
She fought for composure, silencing the reaction to seeing him again. The stupid, pointless, totally unwelcome and unwanted reaction to him. How could it be otherwise? Given everything that had parted them.
Yet for all her arguments, all her intentions, she could feel her pulse quicken as she stood aside in the narrow hallway. He greeted her civilly, and she returned in kind, then Dan was tugging at him to come upstairs.
“I’ve built more of my garage!” Dan was exclaiming now. “Come and see!”
Laurel watched them head upstairs, then went back into the kitchen. Dan had asked for mac and cheese again for tea, so she set about making the cheese sauce, getting the pasta cooking. Telling herself what she needed to do, to be.
I need to be calm, composed. Civil and polite, nothing else. No ridiculous gazing at him, letting my heart rate jump. Because there’s nothing left between us, and even if there were, there shouldn’t be. Mustn’t be.
Brave words, but keeping to them was going to be a challenge.
She gave a sigh, grated cheese into the sauce, mixed in the cooked pasta, then set it to crisp under the grill while she fixed a green salad to go with it.
She’d ventured out, cautiously, several times during the week with Dan in the car—a smart, brand new automatic hatchback Xander had ordered for her—and restocked on groceries.
Xander asked how it had gone as they all sat down to mac and cheese.
“I’ve had to get used to driving again,” she admitted.
“She’s getting better at it, Dad,” Dan said reassuringly, man to man.
Xander’s mouth tugged in a half smile. “Let’s put her through her paces tomorrow, shall we? See if she crashes us!”
Dan chortled, and Laurel said with humorous tartness, “No, thank you!”
For a second, her eyes met Xander’s, then she pulled them away. “So, what are your plans now you’re back?” she asked instead, civilly and politely.
“It’s Easter here the weekend after this,” Xander replied. He looked at Dan. “In Greece, Easter is celebrated later, and I’ll be going back for it, so we’ll make sure we celebrate your Easter here first.”
Dan’s eyes brightened. “Easter eggs!” he announced happily.
“Yes, indeed,” Xander said dryly, and yet again, his eyes met Laurel’s for a moment.
“Mum gives me a small one before Easter, but then after it’s over we go and buy one of the leftover ones because they’re cheaper then, so we can have a bigger one,” Dan explained artlessly.
Laurel saw Xander’s face tighten. “Well, now you can have a big one before Easter,” he said. “From me.”
Dan’s face lit up. “Can I really, Dad?” he asked disbelievingly.
Laurel felt her heart squeeze.
The week she’d just spent with Dan but without Xander had, she knew—and it troubled her to know it—shown her even more just how very easy it would to be to accept this new life that Xander—courtesy of the Xenakis family’s wealth—could provide for Dan.
They could live in this lovely house in this affluent area with no more money worries.
Dan could go to that nearby school with all its facilities, its excellent rating.
She’d looked it up online and could not but be impressed by its vaunted ethos of character-building and team-playing.
Dan could have a very good life here. She could feel herself weakening to accept what Xander wanted her to accept.
Can I really deprive Dan of this?
He had settled in so well, and they’d driven around, exploring the area, and all the while she’d wondered whether to tell Dan they could live here always, if he wanted. But he would say yes, wouldn’t he? And then…
Then there’ll be no going back.
The words were troubling. They troubled her again now as her eyes went to Xander, who was chatting away with Dan. She felt that little jump in her heart rate again, the one she must not allow to happen. Just because Xander had walked back into her life again—
There was no going back from that either.
And somehow, whatever way she could, she was going to have to accept that. Deal with it. Somehow.
Xander stared moodily out over the moonlit gardens from his bedroom window at his hotel. The night air was cooler here in England, but fresh with the fragrance of spring. He was glad to be back. More than glad.
A kick such as he’d never known in his life had gone through him when Dan raced up to him as he’d arrived and that bear hug he’d swept him up in had been the best feeling.
Yet a kick of a different kind had gone through him when he’d set eyes on Laurel. A kick whose cause he could not deny.
His mouth twisted self-mockingly. He’d told her that they had to set aside the enmity between them, but he should set more aside as well—that reaction he got every time he looked at her.
Seven years separated them—his failed marriage and a stolen bracelet.
All that drew them together was Dan. Nothing else.
He gazed unseeingly over the darkened gardens.
Except that that’s not true—
There was more than Dan drawing them together. There was what had drawn them to each other from the very first. It had been extinguished, forcibly, in the moment he’d seen the glitter of rubies and diamonds in her suitcase. It had been even more forcibly extinguished in the years of his marriage.
But now it was making itself felt again.
Refusing to stay extinguished.
Abruptly, he turned away from the window, pulling the curtains across again. Seven years ago it had taken only a single glance at her sitting at that café reading her history book for him to desire her.
And it was happening again, just as swiftly and every bit as powerfully.
Carrying him along with it.
Laurel was counting the days towards Easter.
Because when it had been and gone, Xander would be as well.
Taking himself off to Greece for the Orthodox Easter celebrations.
Dan would miss him, but she wouldn’t. She’d be relieved.
Even with their new agenda of civility and politeness to each other, she could never relax when Xander was around.
She was continually wary—aware of him—and it was getting worse.
That constant flickering of her own reaction to him, which ought to be dying away—surely it should?
—wasn’t diminishing in the slightest. Nor did it seem to be doing so in Xander either.
She could sense his eyes going to her, resting on her, disturbing her.
Making her want to meet his eyes, respond to him…
Doggedly, she made to focus on their time with Dan.
Giving him a good time and time with Xander.
Whether that was Xander getting stuck in to Dan’s enthusiasms, from his construction toys and, most lately, a train set addition, to taking Dan off to the playground by the green, feeding the extremely well-fed ducks on the pond, playing football in the garden, rambling in the woods behind.
Or Xander piling them all into his SUV and venturing further afield to yet more sources of entertainment for a six-year-old, from some exciting caves hollowed out of the chalk hills to a fiendish maze at a grand stately home, which also had a miniature railway to entrance Dan.
They went swimming again, too, at Xander’s hotel, though this time Laurel declined to join them.
“You two have fun,” she said. “I’ll just have a coffee at the café.”
Her announcement drew a look from Xander. “Shame,” he murmured. His eyes rested on her a moment, and she looked away quickly.
Protest rose in her. He must realise perfectly well why she was avoiding the pool, avoiding stripping down to a swimsuit, avoiding seeing him stripped down too.
For God’s sake, the last thing he would want is me drooling over him!
And it was the last thing she wanted to do either. Or its corollary. Having his eyes wash over her.
A sense of danger plucked at her, disquieting and disturbing.
I should be getting immune to him, spending time with him like this. He shouldn’t be able to affect me.
She had to try harder, because otherwise—
But there was no otherwise. There couldn’t be. It was impossible that there should be.
And I must never, never allow it! However hard that would be. However strong his impact on me still. I have to deny it and defy it.
Seven long bitter, hate-filled years separated them. And nothing had changed about the reason for it. His marriage might be over, but what difference did that make? To Xander she was still a liar and a thief.
Dividing them forever.