Chapter Eleven #2
At the foot of the stairs Laurel was hovering. Waiting to launch at him. “Why did you come back like this? There’s no point, Xander.”
“There’s every point,” he said.
He’d never said anything truer in his life, nor more crucial.
Laurel stared at him. She wanted him to go away right now. Back to his hotel. Back to Greece if possible. Him being here was impossible, unbearable.
He was taking her elbow. She wanted to pull away, but she felt nerveless, helpless. “Let’s go into the kitchen. Our voices will travel less.”
He guided her in, and the moment they were inside she stepped free of him.
“Xander, I don’t know why you’ve come back so soon, but if you intend a replay of what you said to me on Easter Sunday I don’t want to hear it—”
“No, I don’t want to replay it.” With effort Xander kept his tone even.
“So what do you—”
“We can talk over dinner,” he said, cutting her off.
“Dinner? Can’t you eat at your hotel?” she protested.
He ignored her objection. “Something simple like pasta will be fine. I’ll give you a hand.
I bought a decent bottle of wine at the airport.
I’ll fetch it from the car. You get the pasta going.
” He made his tone of voice sound reasonable, hard for her to object to.
He couldn’t have her seeing that he was flying blind.
He’d done that once before, and it had brought him to this moment now.
So, am I crazy to think I can do it again?
But he had no choice. Too much depended on it.
The rest of my life.
And Laurel’s too. And their son’s.
All of us.
For a moment he saw her fulminate, then, whisk away and yank open the fridge to extract a packet of fresh spaghetti.
Xander went to fetch the wine from his car, glancing up at the sky.
The night was clear, and stars blazed, not as brightly as in Greece, the visible constellations different too, and the air was nowhere near as warm.
No chorus of cicadas serenaded the night, but the lonely hoot of an owl from the woods sounded hauntingly.
He felt his heart beat more heavily than indoors.
Emotions passed through him that were strange but potent.
He looked back towards the cottage, dim light showing through from behind the drawn curtains of the sitting room, the hall light outlined by the open doorway.
Inside was the son he and Laurel had created seven long years ago. Precious beyond measure.
To us both.
He fetched the wine, went back inside. Still flying blind. But certain of his destination. Of Laurel’s too.
If he could just get them both there.
Laurel set down the two dishes of spaghetti, into which she’d stirred pasta sauce out of a jar, together with a block of parmesan and a grater, putting it all down on the kitchen table.
Xander was already sitting there and had poured them each a glass of red wine.
He waited till she took her place, then lifted his glass.
Looked across at her. He was way too close, the kitchen table way too small.
And Xander dominated it and the entire kitchen, the house, her consciousness.
Awareness of him vibrated through her, but like an electric current on alternating frequency.
Generating completely opposing emotions.
One wished Xander a thousand miles away, the other—
She felt her heart rate quicken, felt the urge, almost overwhelming, to let herself sink into returning his gaze for the sheer pleasure of it, just as she’d done that evening of insanity that had brought them to this impossible impasse that could never be resolved, divided as they were now every bit as much as they had been seven angry years ago.
She drank in his familiar features, all the enticing details, the way his dark hair feathered his forehead, the length of his lashes, the strong line of his jaw, the sensual contours of his mouth.
With a start she jerked her gaze away, fumbled for her glass. Xander was speaking, his voice low, intent, but with something in it she couldn’t recognise. He tilted his glass towards her.
“To getting this right, Laurel,” he said.
Her eyes flew back to his. “To getting what right?” she said.
She could hear a trace of breathlessness in her voice and hated herself for it.
This had been a bad idea, to let Xander demand dinner of her, to sit himself down at her table, create this exchange with her.
There was nothing else to be said between them. How could there be?
Her own voice echoed back to her: Do you really think that I would ever stoop to marrying a man who treated me as you did? Who thinks me a thief?
But it was his voice that spoke out loud.
“Everything,” he said. His voice changed.
“Starting with this meal.” He reached for the parmesan, started to grate it over his pasta.
“You should eat, Laurel. You’re strung out like wire.
And me, pretty much the same.” He offered her the parmesan, and she took it automatically, mechanically shredding it over her spaghetti, then setting it down again.
She reached for her wine glass, taking a mouthful, needing it.
Xander was already stuck into his pasta, and she did likewise, though she could taste nothing. Tension was, indeed, racking through her. Was he going to say again what he’d said before, wanting a different answer from her? She had none to give.
“This is good,” Xander said, indicating the pasta, twisting another forkful of spaghetti. “Thank you.”
She gave a half shrug. “It was easy enough. The sauce is out of a jar.”
“Lunch on the plane was a long time ago,” he said, “so this is much appreciated.”
He finished off his bowl, pushed it aside. Reached for his wine. Took a breath as he replaced the glass. Looked right across at Laurel. Something was in his eyes, but she didn’t know what. Only that she had not seen it before. She was wary and tense, guarding herself from whatever he might say.
But what he said was nothing that she’d expected.
“I want to tell you, Laurel, about my marriage.”
My marriage.
The words tolled in Xander’s brain. His disastrous failure of a marriage, which Olympia had finally cut and run from to find her own belated happiness. He wished her well.
He took a breath, began his sorry story.
He did not figure well in it.
“A lot of people, Laurel, wanted me to marry Olympia. Her parents wanted it. I was a good catch, well-matched for their daughter, comfortably wealthy, and our families were friends. My father wanted it too for reasons I can make…allowances…for. After my mother died my father pressed me increasingly to marry. He wanted me to find the happiness he’d found with my mother.
He did not want me to delay. He longed for grandchildren now that his wife was gone.
And as my mother had always liked Olympia, been fond of her, she seemed therefore, to my father, the ideal match for me. ”
He paused. “Olympia thought so too. So—” he took a breath “—there I was, four people all wanting me to marry Olympia. And why should I not? She was intelligent, attractive, of good character, perfectly compatible, with the same social and financial background as myself. The ideal match indeed.”
He let his gaze rest on Laurel. “All I had to do was propose and name the date.”
He took a breath, a difficult one. “Instead—” He broke off.
Abruptly, he pushed back his chair, scraping on the stone floor tiles. He turned towards the window, dark against the night outside. His hands gripped the windowsill. Then he began to speak, his voice low and rapid.
“Laurel, when I set eyes on you for the very first time in that café on the beach, I wanted you. I was ripe for an affair, I admit that freely. Though just why that should be, when I was all set to propose to Olympia—” his voice twisted “—I did not wish to consider. I only knew that I wanted you and that you—well, you made it obvious the idea also appealed to you. So we sailed away, you and I, and had our affair. Happy and carefree. And it was incredibly good,” he said, “like I’d never known before. ”
He stopped, did not look around.
“I never wanted it to end.”
Still he did not look around. “But it had to end so that I could do what everyone was waiting for me to do. Marry Olympia. She even—” his voice twisted again “—turned up on board to remind me of that.”
“She made that clear to me,” Laurel said, her voice as dry as sand, “that my time was up. So there we were, two women, hackles raised, scrapping over you, and you, moody as hell, wishing us both to perdition.”
“No,” he looked at her now. “Only one of you.”
She tried not to flinch, not wanting it to show.
Yes, Xander had wished her to perdition all right, and she had gone.
There was a heaviness forming inside her, hard and painful.
Jerkily she reach for her wine, but it did not go down easily, or have any bolstering effect on her.
She set down her glass. She didn’t want to look at him.
So she didn’t. She stared down at her half-eaten pasta instead.
It blurred beneath her gaze. She realised he was talking still.
“Laurel,” Xander’s voice was sombre, “you need to understand what happened when Olympia joined the yacht. Reminding me, just by her presence, what I was supposed to be doing. Proposing to her without further delay. Which meant you had to go. But she knew your fantastic looks totally outshone hers, so she was waspish and condescending towards you, fighting you with what weapons she had.” His voice changed. “And so did I.”
She looked up him then. Not understanding. He was looking at her, his expression shuttered. His voice heavy.
“When her bracelet went missing and was found in your suitcase, I found my weapon too. One I desperately needed.”
She frowned. His words made no sense. “I…I don’t understand.”
He gave a rasp in his throat. “No more than I. Until now.” His eyes rested on her, like weights she could not bear. “I condemned you for stealing Olympia’s bracelet, Laurel, because I needed to believe you were a thief.”
She didn’t understand. Nor did she understand the sudden constriction in her lungs.
“I needed to believe it, Laurel, because it was the only way to get rid of you. And make myself marry Olympia.”
“I don’t understand,” Laurel said again, her voice faint.
But then he hadn’t understood, either, not for for seven long, tormented, wasted years. Not until he’d stood in his father’s garden did he realise why he’d needed to believe in Laurel’s guilt.
She was looking at him with an uncomprehending expression that did not hide from him another emotion in her face, that self-protective withdrawal from him. It hurt him to see it—guarding herself from him from what he’d done. Done to her so that he could make the choice he never should have made.
“No more than I,” he said again. “But now I do. Now I know that I needed to accuse you, condemn you.” He took a breath that came from the bottom of his lungs, said what he had just flown two thousand miles to tell her. “Or I could not have let you go.”