Chapter 8
Jamie
Jamie felt the thud of something against the middle of his back and stood up from where he’d been swinging the axe at some logs.
He turned around to see Lucy standing in the snow with flakes falling around her. She’d changed into jeans that clung to her legs like a second skin, reminding him how long and gorgeous they were. How high and firm her arse was.
Even George was looking at her as if entranced. Tongue out. Jamie could empathise. He noticed she was still wearing his jumper though and it had never looked that good on him. Her hair was falling over her shoulders in messy waves. Dark golden.
‘Did you just throw a snowball at me?’ he asked, as electricity crackled between them.
She put her hands on her hips. ‘Yes, I did. You asked me if I was seeing someone but are you seeing someone? Am I some kind of dirty secret? Like...whatshername in the attic?’
‘What?’ She wasn’t making any sense.
Lucy swung her hand around, ‘In Jane Eyre, the wife in the attic. Maybe you’re expecting a guest and that’s why you’re pissed off to see me and the place is all festive and romantic?’
Romantic! Jamie laughed at the notion – in this place where halcyon memories mixed with much darker memories. Awful memories.
He wasn’t pissed off to see her. He was burning up to see her.
Lucy bent and picked up more snow and threw it at him.
It sprayed up into his face, waking him up.
As if until this moment he still hadn’t really believed it.
She really was here. It was her. Lucy. And she looked gorgeous and sexy and she was clearly a little riled up at the thought that maybe he’d been with someone.
And that broke something apart inside him, a restraint he’d been holding onto, telling himself she was only here for one thing. To leave again. Maybe... she wasn’t.
She said, ‘It’s not funny, Jamie. I came all the way here and I deserve answers so I can move on.’
‘I’m not laughing at you.’ Jamie bent and picked up some snow and moulded it into a ball.
Lucy looked at it. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
He dared. It landed squarely in the middle of her chest. She looked at him for a moment, mouth open, eyes wide. Then she bent down again and this time put effort into her snowball and chucked it at him with force. It glanced off the side of his head.
She put her hands to her mouth, eyes wide and sparkling. She took her hands down, ‘Jamie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean – ‘
He retaliated and half a snowball exploded into her hair. Now she wasn’t smiling.
‘Why you...‘ She bent down but, before she could gather more snow, he’d already hit her again, on her backside. In fairness, he had the unfair edge. It had snowed almost every year of his childhood here.
She stood up and launched another missile. Oof. Snowball to the abdomen. ‘You haven’t answered me.’
Tension crackled through the snow.
She lifted and threw. ‘Are...’
Thud to his chest.
‘You, with... ’
Another thud to his shoulder.
‘Anyone?’
A final snowball right to his balls.
Jamie suddenly felt lighter and alive for the first time in a long time. As if he was coming out of some kind of stasis. Three years. Alive and hot and frustrated and full of seething emotions he’d kept a lid on for three years. Shite, longer than that.
The thought of anyone else was absurd. Couldn’t she see that? He’d actively taken the less family-friendly work assignments just to put off coming home sooner. Classic avoidance tactics.
But he was all out of avoidance tactics now and there was no escaping the electrical charge between them. But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing, because clearly they had some other unfinished business to attend to before they went their separate ways.
He hurled a snowball at her and she ducked neatly.
He said, ‘No, I’m not seeing anyone.’
She gathered more snow and packed it together and threw. It bounced off his arm. She asked, ‘Why didn’t you ever try to contact me?’
Jamie went still. ‘I did. A couple of times. But you weren’t working with that events company anymore. They said you’d gone back to Dublin. I didn’t have another number for you.’
She went red, lobbed a snowball from hand to hand. ‘Um... yeah, OK fair enough...’
But then she pointed at him, eyes narrowed. ‘I was still in New York for a year after Vegas, you had all that time to get in touch.’ She threw the snowball. It glanced off his thigh. He barely felt it. He wanted her, on her back, right here in the snow.
He forced his brain to work. ‘I was in Africa and South America working on projects back to back for that year.’ Trying to forget the connection he’d made with a woman who had called into question every tenet he’d lived by until then.
Do not get close to people. Do not risk such a massive loss ever again. So he’d let her walk away.
He aimed a snowball at her and it landed at her feet. An ineffectual throw.
She rolled her eyes. ‘They still have phones and email.’
‘Hang on, I did at least try to contact you. What about you?’
‘I did too, but every time I called your phone it made weird noises.’
‘It was barely ever in service. My sister had the producer’s sat nav phone number in case of emergencies.’
‘But not your wife.’
Wife. That landed in his chest like a physical thump. He looked at her. ‘Lucy... we weren’t really man and wife. We both agreed it was a mistake.’
‘We were man and wife for a few hours. We consummated the wedding.’
Yes, they had. And he could still remember the scorching heat of that night. And how he’d tried to convince himself that it hadn’t meant anything. It was just sex. But now she was standing in front of him and his insides were crumbling.
He said the thing he’d told himself he wasn’t going to say. ‘I did actually find you, six months ago.’
She gathered more snow and was about to chuck it and then stopped. ‘Wait a second, you found me?’
Jamie nodded. Feeling exposed he said, ‘I was on my way to Dublin but then I got the call about my Dad and I had to turn back...’
‘You were on your way to Dublin?’ she asked, looking stunned.
He nodded.
‘Why?’ she asked now, snow falling thicker around her, coating her in soft white flakes.
Why indeed?
Because apart from the ache to see her again, to see if.
.. what they’d had was as real as it had felt.
.. he’d known he had to talk to her about this place and he’d wanted to do that somewhere neutral.
Not here, at least not initially, because this was where his childhood had ended when his older brother had tragically died, splintering their family apart.
Where his faith in all things good and benign had ended.
But then, his father had died and he’d forced it all underground again as other more pressing matters had taken precedence. After that... He’d had no idea how she’d respond to seeing him again and so he’d asked his solicitor to contact her.
In Vegas, he had been in no place to commit to anyone, not that he’d ever wanted to. Not after seeing his folks’ toxic disaster of a relationship and not after the fallout of everything that had happened after Callum had died.
And yet he’d married her. Made the ultimate form of commitment.
To a veritable stranger. He could tell himself it had all been a drunken Vegas dare but she’d been the first person who had reached deep inside him to a place he’d thought he’d lost. Where some ounce of light and hope and fun had survived.
And he’d grabbed at it, greedily and then ruined it.
The words bubbled under the surface, but the prospect of laying it all out for her, when all she’d come for was to end things, made him push them down.
So, like a coward, he said, ‘The same reason as you, to end things.’