Finally, Adele could bear it no more.
‘Why didn’t you tell me your mum was ill?’
Nick’s jaw dropped. ‘How did you find out?’
‘Debbie left a message for you on the answer-phone. I suppose your mum’s not the only one who doesn’t know we’ve been living apart for almost a year.’
‘You know how close they all are. If any of them knew, they’d be sure to blab it to Mum and I didn’t want to give her the extra worry.’
‘You should have told me.’
Nick gave her a lopsided look. ‘I seem to remember hearing an awful lot of dial tone in our phone conversations.’
‘Not then. Now. Why didn’t you say anything yesterday?’
‘It seemed too much like emotional blackmail.’
She took a sip of her coffee. ‘I would call it being honest, actually.’
‘Are you telling me that you wouldn’t have felt duty bound to make the trip, even if it was the last thing on earth you wanted to do?’
She looked down and rubbed at a mark on the table with her fingertip. Nick was right. She would have gone to the party whether she wanted to or not if she’d known the truth. The thought didn’t sit comfortably with her. In her opinion, knowing all the facts meant she was in control. She wasn’t going to let him use keeping her in the dark as an excuse, even if, by some strange logic, it sounded kind of noble.
‘Well, I know now, don’t I?’
Nick’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘What are you going to do?’
She breathed in and sat up straight. ‘I propose we deal with this in an adult manner. I’ll go to Scotland with you. I love your mum and I wouldn’t want to upset her, but—’
Nick leapt up from where he was sitting and hauled her into his arms.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘I really mean it. This is going to mean so much to Mum. You don’t know how grateful I am.’
She would have told him how much she understood if he hadn’t been squeezing her so tight she thought her lungs would collapse. So much for dealing with this in an adult manner.
Her hands made contact with his shoulders and she was going to prise herself from the hug, but then the smell of him, the warm feeling from his arms around her started to work on her senses. It had been so long since she’d hugged anyone.
In fact, she didn’t think she’d had a proper cuddle since Nick had left. Mona didn’t do mushy stuff, as she put it. That left baby Bethany and her older brother, Josh. But even those hugs were bitter-sweet, reminding her of what could have been, but now never would be.
She told herself to let go, to ease herself out of his arms now his grip was loosening, but he smelled so good and felt so warm that she had to hang on for a couple more seconds. And then a few seconds more.
Slowly, she became aware that the hands that had been squeezing were now flat against her back. The fingers started to move, softly stroking, and a shiver skipped up her spine and kept travelling upwards until the tingle concentrated somewhere behind her ears.
Then she heard him inhale, as if he were breathing in her scent and couldn’t get enough of it, and it tipped her completely over the edge. Moisture welled in her eyes and collected in her lower lashes.
She yearned for the days of blissful ignorance when she’d thought they’d last for ever. She missed the knowledge in that, in at least one person’s eyes, she was special, good enough. It was such a pity that reality had eventually had to intrude on the fantasy.
He pulled back to look at her and she saw an answering ache in his eyes.
‘Adele,’ he whispered as he lowered his head.
She meant to duck away from the kiss, but somehow she couldn’t. She was trapped by a magnetic force that kept her clinging to him. Maybe it was a trick of memory, or maybe it was because she’d been unknowingly waiting for this moment for the last nine months, but this kiss was even better than the ones she tried not to remember, more electrically charged, more tender, more sweet, more…everything.
It was only as her fingers wandered to the top button of his skew-whiff pyjamas that she came to her senses. What was she doing? Was she mad?
She mustn’t forget that when she’d faced the worst crisis of her life, he’d abandoned her. She hadn’t been able to depend on him. No matter how much they cared for each other or how good the chemistry was, it didn’t mean they could survive a future together without tearing each other into tiny shreds.
She left the button in its proper place and scrabbled away from him.
He reached for her and she shook her head. ‘This changes nothing.’
In fact, it had. It made the path she had to take even clearer. If she were to keep her heart safe from this man, she was going to have to take drastic measures. She slipped into business-mode, all starch and crisp efficiency. It was the only way to get through this.
‘As I said, I propose we deal with this in an adult manner, no matter how daft it is that you’ve been keeping your mum in the dark.’
Nick’s smile wavered altogether. ‘I was trying to save her extra stress at a time when she already had enough on her plate. Breast cancer is pretty serious, you know. I wouldn’t call what I did juvenile.’
Inwardly Adele squirmed, but she didn’t twitch a millimetre on the outside. Not even an eyelash. She made very sure of that.
‘I know cancer is serious. I’m not stupid. I’m just saying you went about this in entirely the wrong way. You just bounded in like you always do and played the situation from moment to moment, rather than considering what the long-term consequences would be. You have to tell her the truth about us.’
‘What is the truth, Adele? One minute you’re pushing me away, the next you’re…What happened just now, for instance?’
She shuffled backwards until her bottom bumped against the counter. ‘That was you getting over-enthusiastic, as usual.’
The wary look in his eyes said he wasn’t buying it completely. So what? Neither was she, but that didn’t mean she was going to cave in and admit it.
‘You make me sound like a Labrador.’
Adele swallowed. She hadn’t meant to insult him, only keep him at arm’s length the best way she knew how—with words. Sharp, nasty, barbed-wire words.
And the truth was, at his best, he was like a Labrador—loyal, loving and with boundless energy, but that didn’t make him any less destructive, and she had more at stake than a pair of soggy slippers or a chewed newspaper.
‘And you seemed fairly enthusiastic yourself,’ he added.
He was right. How pathetic had she been? She’d spent almost a year carefully building up her defences against him and he’d turned them to marshmallow in just over twenty-four hours.
She had to do something to safeguard herself, to make sure the barbed wire was nailed firmly in place.
‘You want an answer from me about where this relationship is going?’
He threw his hands up, asking a question. ‘I was hoping that we’d have a chance to work that one out on the drive to Invergarrig.’
‘You don’t have to wait for the weekend; I can tell you now.’
Nick just stared at her.
‘I’ll go to the party with you, Nick, but there are some conditions.’
‘Conditions,’ he echoed.
‘Yes.