Chapter 24
LACHLAN
The living room was different from how he remembered it.
When Jason lived here alone, it had been a true bachelor pad, with huge, oversized sofas, a glass and granite bar against the far wall and a pool table where a white chaise, with artfully placed cushions, now sat.
Even if he didn’t know that Tanya lived here, he’d recognise her in the casually elegant style of the room, the whites and creams of the décor, the frames of her abstract art on the wall where the bar used to live.
Tanya. She looked different too. Her hair was shorter, still caramel blonde, but sitting just on her shoulders now.
The old sweats that she used to change into as soon as she got home from work had been replaced by a matching cream knitted jumper and trousers, that looked so expensive they could only be cashmere.
There were small diamonds in her ears and a huge rock on the third finger of her left hand.
But, of course, it was the other difference that was most notable of all.
‘You’re pregnant,’ he said softly. ‘Congratulations.’
‘You didn’t know?’ He wasn’t sure why she seemed surprised at that. ‘I’m eight months along. It was why I couldn’t come to your father’s funeral in Monaco. I thought Jason would have told you. I’m… sorry.’
Lachlan managed to hold the smile. ‘Nothing to be sorry for. I’m happy for you Tanya. Truly.’
‘Thank you.’
Silence.
‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘No, thanks.’
Silence. This was excruciating.
She raised her gaze upwards. ‘He’s up in the shower, but he’ll be back down soon. Have you got time to wait?’
‘Yes.’
More silence.
He knew he couldn’t sit here for that long, on opposite couches, a few yards and a million miles between them, so he was the first to break. ‘Actually, I’ll have a coffee if you don’t mind.’
Tanya’s relief was instant. ‘Sure. But the awkwardness of this is killing me, so why don’t you come talk to me while I make it?’ That was a flash of the old Tanya, the one he’d thought he’d spend his life with.
Tanya. The love of his life. Their future was the thing that Jason had taken from him that hurt the most. And Lachlan had let that happen.
After they lost the baby, Thomas, when Tanya was twenty weeks pregnant, they’d both been devastated.
They’d cancelled their wedding, only two weeks away, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to celebrate anything for a long time to come.
Tanya was broken by the loss and Lachlan would fall asleep at night and wake up at 2a.m. from a dream about the child he’d never know.
The injustice of it would tear at his soul, make him angry, then desolation would set in and make him want to push the world away.
Including Tanya. For some couples, he knew that grief pulled them together, but that hadn’t been the case for them. Lachlan had shut down, Tanya had retreated from him, and that had created a vacuum that had allowed his brother to do the thing he was best at – taking what he wanted.
Months later, after analysing it all with the benefit of perspective and hindsight, he’d seen that Jason’s feelings for Tanya had always been there.
The way that his brother was always on his best behaviour when he was around her.
The relentless charm. The attentiveness.
The conversations he would initiate with Tanya at family gatherings.
How had Lachlan somehow overlooked what he knew was true – that Jason only showed an interest in something when he wanted it for himself.
Maybe Lachlan hadn’t spotted the threat because Tanya saw Jason for what he was. At least, in the beginning. She’d been unimpressed by his wealth. Indifferent to his accomplishments. Incompatible with his relentless drive for success and control.
But then, as Lachlan had slipped further into the solitude of his own grief and wasn’t there to share Tanya’s, he’d missed the most obvious truth of all. When someone is lost and they’re offered a safe place to be, they’ll take it.
Jason became her safe space. When Lachlan was staying late at work because he couldn’t deal with the pain of their loss, Jason was the one who went to their flat to check in on Tanya.
He’d listen to her. He’d say the right things.
He gave her the support and the friendship that Lachlan had withdrawn.
It would be easy to blame Jason – and sure, Lachlan had no doubt that he’d known exactly what he was doing – but the truth was this was Lachlan’s fault. And that was the reality that hurt most of all .
Tanya hadn’t done anything wrong. There had been no tawdry affair.
They’d hung on for almost a year, the gulf between them opening and closing, until they were too exhausted and drained to keep trying and she’d called it a day.
Two months later, she’d phoned him to tell him that she had feelings for Jason and that they’d started dating.
Lachlan had respected her honesty. And he’d wanted to kill his brother.
But, instead, he’d just walked away. Dax had just been transferred to the London team, so Lachlan had agreed to go with him to work on his new property.
As for everyone here? He’d turned his back on them all.
In the kitchen, he sat on a black suede bar stool at the long stone island, while Tanya made a coffee he’d asked for but didn’t want.
‘Are you good?’ she asked. ‘I heard you moved to London.’
‘I did.’
‘Like it?’ The raise of her eyebrows, the amusement at the corners of her mouth, told him that she already knew the answer to that.
She was well aware that he wasn’t a city guy.
They’d always talked about going out to live in the countryside when they had a family, and they’d already put their Glasgow flat on the market before they lost Thomas, with the plan to move to a more rural area.
‘As long as I stay out of the busy bits, I’m fine.’
That made her chuckle, and he had a twinge of pleasure in seeing her smile. After the trauma of what had happened, he’d wanted that for her, hoped she would find joy again. He just didn’t think it would be here or with his brother.
‘Babe, who are you talking to?’ Jason came in, wearing a T-shirt and joggers, bare feet, drying his hair as he walked until he saw Lachlan and stopped. ‘Oh…’
The most loaded ‘oh’ of all time .
Lachlan watched as Jason’s gaze went from him, to Tanya’s smile, back to him.
‘What are you doing here?’ There was a hint of a challenge there. ‘If you’d told me you wanted to meet, I could have come to you. I tried to talk to you this morning.’
Lachlan nodded. ‘I know. I guess I didn’t have anything to say then.’
‘And you do now?’ Jason’s eyes narrowed, like an animal that was wary and anticipating attack.
‘Yeah.’
Tanya put an earthenware mug of coffee on the island in front of him and pulled out a chair, so that she was sitting at right angles to him.
‘Are you okay with me staying for this?’ She directed the question at Lachlan, and he wondered if she thought he was here to settle scores or to hold them to some kind of belated account for what had happened.
‘Sure. It won’t take long. I just want to talk about Dad’s will.’ He put that out straight away, hoping it would defuse any defensiveness Jason was feeling. If he was going to get anywhere with his brother, he had to come at this from a place of peace.
‘Yeah, I’m not fucking happy about it either. I can’t believe all we got was one crappy property and some change.’
Lachlan wondered in what world ￡125K could be called ‘change’. And he’d seen for himself that Alyssa’s café was far from ‘crappy’, but this wasn’t the time to argue.
He tried to keep his tone even and non-confrontational, even as he said, ‘I didn’t say I wasn’t happy about it. To be honest, I didn’t expect anything, so it made no difference to me.’
‘Always the Boy Scout,’ Jason jibed, with a bitter smile, as he reached into a drinks fridge on the far wall and pulled out a beer.
He came back and stood at the other side of the island from where Lachlan was sitting so that he was directly opposite and in front of him.
Lachlan knew it was a classic power move.
Stay standing. Be the tallest in the room. Command the space.
He wanted to reply, ‘Always the dickhead,’ but he managed to refrain.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tanya lower her gaze so that she was staring at the island and wondered if she regretted staying to listen.
He had to get this back on track, so he ignored the dig and rewound a few seconds.
‘The thing I wanted to talk about was the Weirbridge building.’
‘I used to hate it when Mum would drag us out to the sticks to go to that place every summer,’ Jason sneered.
Of course he did. It was one of Lachlan’s favourite memories, so naturally Jason had a completely opposing view. But again, now wasn’t the time for arguing. ‘I went there today. Do you know much about it?’
Jason’s mannerisms were telling him that his brother’s brain was whirling, trying to work out what was coming. Always trying to be ten steps ahead.
Jason took a slug of his beer before he answered.
‘Yes. Café on the ground floor, with a flat above it. Would be worth a fortune in the city, but not out there. Like Jeremy said, the building is worth about ￡360K. I had my guys give me a report on it this afternoon. We made some calls to a couple of other developers I know, and I reckon we can offload it in the next week or so. If they do it right, they’ll get three flats out of it and a decent profit.
I’d do it myself, but I’m stacked with other projects right now and don’t have the time. ’
Lachlan caught the boast – his brother was clearly doing well if he didn’t have time to take on this redevelopment. Maybe that could work in his favour.