Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Myles
I don’t see Zara the next morning, nor does she answer when I knock on her door. There’s a moment of panic when I wonder if she left in the middle of the night, like a bird evading a net. Unable to bear the thought I go down to reception and ask the young woman there.
“No, Miss Woodman is still here, Mr Brandon,” she says with a smile. “Though you’re both leaving today, are you not?”
“We are. Thank you.”
She’s still here, thank Christ. I pause outside the door to her room, raising my hand to knock.
Then I let it drop, like a coward. But I can’t help feeling I’ve fucked this up, badly.
I go back to my room and check all the cupboards, making sure everything is packed and my surfboards are secure in their long bag.
I have cash for Amira, a thank you for her excellent care, as well as for the rest of the staff, sitting in a thick white envelope on the counter.
There’s nothing else to do except put my bags in the car.
Still no sign of Zara.
I head back into my apartment for one last look around to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, a habit ingrained in me from years of budget travel. I go out to the terrace for one final check, and pause.
The beach curves away from me, the bench where I’d held Zara in my arms looking innocent and empty, as though it wasn’t the place where my life changed irrevocably.
Or perhaps the change happened earlier, when she first walked into my office. She came into my life like a tornado, turning me entirely upside down.
I really fucking hope I haven’t blown it.
I don’t even care anymore about the obvious legal issues of blurring the lines like that with an employee. I’ll pay her whatever she wants, if that’s how she feels.
Christ, I hope that isn’t how she feels.
If I can salvage anything from this, it’s that she might still want to be part of my life. That she might let me woo her, work for her, until she feels the same way about me as I do about her. Or until she tells me to go away.
I am utterly at her mercy.
Unable to sleep, I’d spent part of the night going through her contract, seeing whether there was any sort of loophole I could use to release her from the role.
There was, as it turned out; she’s on a temporary contract with a clause that meant I could terminate her position whenever I wanted.
The job I offered her doesn’t start until Eloise returns; I suppose she could make a fuss about it if she wanted to, but I hope she doesn’t.
I need to explain things to her, tell her how I feel, and give her the chance to choose. If she’s not interested, she can still work in the Soho office. I won’t hold her back. But I hope, with all my heart, that isn’t the case.
I leave the apartment for the final time, dropping the key and envelope of money at reception, then head up to the car. I look at my watch. It’s five to ten. We’re supposed to be leaving by 10am. It’s a three-hour drive to Marrakech, and I have a meeting at 3.30.
Just as I’m considering going down to her room and banging on the door, she appears. Slightly breathless, wearing the same red dress she wore the night before, a scarf around her shoulders. Her hair is scraped back into that damn ponytail again, and she won’t meet my eyes.
Her own eyes, I notice when she lifts her sunglasses for a moment, look red and swollen. My heart aches at what I’ve put her through. I want to pull her into my arms and declare myself, hold her tight and protect her from the entire world.
I step forward. “Zara, I?—”
“Please,” she whispers, her voice rough, shaking her head.
When I try to take her bag and put it in the car she evades me, doing it herself.
The message couldn’t be clearer. The ache in my heart increases.
I’ve gone about this all wrong, moved too fast. No wonder she’s pulling away.
I need to give her the space she needs, and put up with the torture of having her so close to me yet not being able to touch her.
“We need to go.” I open her car door, stepping back to give her room.
She climbs in, settling her skirt around her long legs.
I try not to think of how her skin felt beneath my fingers.
I climb in the driver’s side, put the car in gear and reverse out of the parking space.
As we bump along the rutted path to the road I resist the urge to look at her, though I’m aware of her like no one else.
I head to Agadir, then take the turning to the new toll road, which cuts through the desert like a blade, leading straight to Marrakech.
As we leave the coast behind I feel the tension between us start to ease.
Zara leans forward, her phone in her hand, obviously taken by the landscape unrolling around us.
It is magnificent. The Atlas Mountains rise like a wall to our right, topped with snow despite the heat of the day.
Smaller hills line either side of the road, rising like the humps of a dinosaur, striped in shades of gold and orange and brown, almost devoid of vegetation.
It’s beautiful and alien, a hostile-seeming place.
Yet there are little towns here and there, small groups of square buildings surrounded by green trees.
Irrigation channels run alongside the road, carrying rainwater from the hills to the orchards and fields.
Zara glances at her phone from time to time, taking photographs of the scenery.
I’m still trying to work out what to do, whether there’s a way I can let her go and tell her how I feel at the same time.
I wonder whether money might be the best answer, though she doesn’t seem like someone to be swayed by a payout, or the size of a person’s wallet.
Perhaps, when I tell her how I feel, I can offer her paid leave while she makes her decision.
One thing I do know for certain is that she can’t keep working as my assistant.
I want her as my lover, and my partner, and she can’t be either of those things if she’s my employee.
I can’t do this. Her words come back to me, the memory of her voice choked with tears playing on a loop in my mind.
She’s right, of course she is. But I can’t bear the thought that, if I handle this badly, I might lose her.
I’ve already screwed up once, moving too fast, forgetting that she’s recovering from her own heartbreak.
I need to regroup, go back to the original plan.
Give her space. I feel utterly adrift, not knowing what path to take.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling, but then so much about this situation is new to me.
Zara’s phone buzzes, and she jumps. My hands clench on the wheel. What if it’s that bastard from the hotel? What if he got to her, despite my efforts? What if she’s more interested in him than in me? Christ, I never even asked her. Just assumed she would want me.
But I know I’m not imagining how she responded to me, how her body had fit so well against mine.
“Your meeting has been moved back,” she says.
Her voice is still rough, a little catch in it that tugs at my heart.
“To 4pm. Something about a representative of the king coming?” She turns wide eyes to me.
They’re a little bit pink at the corners, but she seems more herself again.
I glance down at the swell of her breasts beneath her dress, trying not to think about how easily I’d touched them, pulling the neckline down.
“Uh, right,” I say, feeling strangled. “Fine.”
“So I can let them know we… er, you’ll be there?”
The little slip almost undoes me. “Zara, can we talk about what happened?”
She doesn’t say anything. I glance at her again to see her staring down at her phone. She’s blinking, her throat moving. “I can’t,” she whispers. “I need to figure this out.” The words are so low I can barely hear them.
My heart is light and heavy at the same time. Heavy that I’ve hurt her, that I’ve created this impossible situation between us. And light, that she said she needed to figure it out. The door isn’t closed. I hope.
I need to give her the space to choose to open it, though. I stare at the mountains, ancient and implacable, like a wall at the edge of the world. There’s about an hour until we reach the outskirts of Marrakech. I’m just going to spend it in the moment with her, however she wants me.
Zara
I don’t know if my heart has ever hurt this much.
Even when Mum died there was some relief, that she wasn’t suffering anymore.
But this is unrelenting sorrow. I spent most of the night tossing and turning, in between bouts of tears.
I dragged myself out of bed around nine, forcing myself to eat something before handing in my key and heading up to where I’d agreed to meet Myles.
My breath caught at the sight of him, dressed in his usual linen, navy trousers with a cream shirt, highlighting his broad shoulders, his long legs.
There are dark circles under his eyes, though. I suppose mine are just the same.
And now, as we speed across the brown and gold landscape, I can barely stand to look at him. I’m completely aware of him, though. So close to me, yet so far away.
What a fool I’ve been. Falling for my boss, like a girl in a story.
I’ve become exactly the cliché I didn’t want to be.
What on earth was I thinking? I could have said no, could have gone back to my room last night when we got back to the hotel, but I didn’t.
And then, like an idiot, I ran away from him, like none of the million sophisticated beautiful women he’s dated would ever do.
But the worst part of all is the fact I have to resign from one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, and never see him again.
I try not to look at his hands on the wheel, try not to remember how good his fingers felt, sliding in and out of me.
This can’t happen. I can’t let my heart be hurt anymore.
I need to cut myself off from him, rather than prolonging the agony.
Once we return to London Big Red will be back in the picture and I’ll be relegated to Zara, the assistant who was incredibly inappropriate with him on a work trip.
I have no choice but to resign. I just need to get through the next three days.
We leave the freeway, taking a long straight road past houses and shops and dusty orchards, snow-capped crags rise in the background like frozen waves.
We speed past carts laden with leafy green branches studded with oranges, donkeys pulling them along.
It feels like another world, the wonder of this place tugging at me again.
Then he asks me if we can talk about what happened.
Yes, I want to say. Yes, let’s talk about it, how magical it was, how your hands are fucking amazing and I want to know what the rest of you can do, as well as tell you I’m falling for you.
I don’t say any of those things. When I look at him, he’s staring ahead, his jaw tight. I feel as small and useless as the dead grasses at the side of the road. Morocco is a magical place, I realise, and it wove a spell around us last night. But it will have to remain a memory.
In my mind I draw the line again, even though my arms stretch over it, reaching for him, my heart yearning for his touch. It’s better this way.
It doesn’t feel like it, though.