He looked deep into her eyes and she felt another few brain cells pop into nothingness.
He hitched an eyebrow. ‘The one and only.’
She shook her head, not even knowing where to start. Why was he here? How long had he been back in the country? And more importantly, why was he standing on her front doorstep as if nothing had ever happened?
‘Can I come in?’
She wanted to slam the door in his face, tell him he could get lost and contact her through her solicitor if he had to, but somehow she found herself nodding. He’d always seemed to have the irritating knack of getting her to go along with almost anything he said. And although he meant well, she was the one who always seemed to end up getting hurt or having to tidy up the resulting mess.
It had been a really bad idea to let Nick Hughes into her life.
It had been an even worse idea to marry him.
Adele marched down the hall and Nick followed. She turned to face him once they got into the kitchen. ‘What do you want, Nick?’
This was the moment he’d been waiting for, the moment he’d rehearsed so many times in his head he’d lost count. Never once in all his daydreams had he felt this nervous.
Adele turned to look at him and he tried not to wince. He’d been afraid of this. He’d hoped that after all this time she’d be in more of a mood to talk. Obviously not. Time had made no impact whatsoever on the healing process.
Diving right in and telling her why he was here wasn’t going to work; he would have to build up to it slowly. He swallowed the heartfelt plea on his lips and replaced it with the widest, cheekiest smile he could muster.
‘That’s a nice way to greet your husband.’
Adele’s eyes narrowed.
He took a deep breath. He had to do something to stop her throwing him out on his ear. Somehow he had to stay in the same building as her long enough to get her to listen. The urge to wisecrack was overpowering, like an itch begging to be scratched, but he managed to mumble something less inflammatory.
‘How about a cup of tea?’
She just continued to stare at him, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. OK, not one of his best efforts, but his brain was like fudge after what seemed like a week on a plane and a cup of tea would give him at least another fifteen minutes to talk Adele round.
‘I’ve had a really long trip,’ he added.
She stayed as still and hard and cold as the granite on the kitchen worktops. And just when he thought she’d solidified and was going to stay like that for ever, she shook her head and marched over to the kettle. He kept a very close eye on her. When Adele was in this kind of mood, she was just as likely to throw the kettle at him as she was to switch it on.
She filled it with water, her back still to him, as she repeated her earlier question.
‘What do you want, Nick?’
He waited until she turned to face him.
‘We need to talk.’
Nothing funny about that statement. It seemed his valiant efforts to ignore the old joke-when-stressed reflex were paying off.
She shook her head. ‘No. We needed to talk months ago. It’s too late.’
‘I’ve got something important I need to discuss with you.’
‘Hah!’
He flinched. ‘What do you mean, hah?’
‘You don’t do important, though, do you, Nick? Or responsible, or reliable, or anything that might involve getting serious in the slightest.’
Adele was on the attack. All his good intentions crumbled and he resorted to the only form of defence that worked. A slow smile turned the corners of his mouth up. ‘It’s part of my charm.’
‘It’s why our marriage fell apart.’
There wasn’t a flicker of a smile on her lips. It definitely wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He was so tired he could hardly think straight and he tried the one thing left in his arsenal that was guaranteed to get a reaction.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. It was time to break out the dimples.
He widened his smile just that little bit more and watched Adele’s eyes closely to see if he could detect a thaw. She couldn’t resist his dimples.
‘Stop it, Nick.’
The air of innocence in his shrug should have won him an Oscar.
‘I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work.’
That’d be a first. Obviously Adele had grown another inch of armour plating while he’d been away. But there were always chinks; it was just a case of locating them. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place, the frosty outer shell hiding a scorching core. Fire and ice—that was Adele.
He walked towards her and she backed away from him. ‘You said you wanted to talk? Well, I’m busy at the moment.’
‘I can see.’ He looked her up and down and felt a familiar surge of heat as he saw one shapely leg revealed by the split in her bathrobe.
Adele straightened and yanked the knot of the sash even tighter. ‘Call me at the office next week. I’m in the middle of a big project, but I may have a few minutes to spare on Thursday. Where are you going to be staying?’
Nick raised his eyebrows and looked around the room.
‘No way! You are not staying here.’
He blinked. ‘It’s my home too.’
‘Correction. It might be your house, but it stopped being your home the moment you waltzed off across the Atlantic and didn’t bother to come back for nine months.’
Adele crossed her arms and looked at him. Now was not the time to remind her that he had come back, as soon as he’d been able to. Two short weeks after their massive fight, he’d travelled five thousand miles to patch things up. But he’d walked into the house and found it empty. Adele had moved out and was staying with her best friend.
No, it wouldn’t do to remind her. She wasn’t in the mood to be confronted with her mistakes at the moment. To be honest, he didn’t think he could face the memories either. So he tucked them away at the back of his brain and ignored the sick feeling building in the pit of his stomach.
He took off his jacket, slung it over the back of one of the chairs surrounding the big pine dining table and dropped into the squashy sofa tucked into the corner of their country-style kitchen.
He was in a big enough hole as it was. He might just as well carry on digging. Anything to keep her mind off shoving his six-foot frame through the front door. Adele might be petite, but she was surprisingly strong.
‘How about that tea?’
Adele closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. He’d won the first round, but he felt like kicking himself in the behind for making her look so tired and world-weary.
‘Get it yourself. I’m going upstairs. And if you think you’re putting that bag you dumped in the hallway in my bedroom you can think again. You know where the spare room is.’
Ouch.
Nick grimaced as Adele spun round and stomped up the stairs. He had not handled that well, but arguing back would have made her dig her heels in deeper. He’d learned long ago that getting her to laugh was the solution.
She had a good sense of humour; she just kept it on a tight leash most of the time. And if there was one thing he was good at, it was making his wife smile.
Seeing