The Wedding Party Collection. Кейт Хьюит
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him and the links to the ‘For Sale’ information. He attached his father’s rough estimate of what it would cost to make it habitable.
‘Where’s the river?’ she emailed back, some ten minutes later.
He didn’t wait ten minutes to reply. ‘Below the hill. It’s a mostly lazy river prone to brief yet frenzied flooding. That’s why the house is on the hill.’
She didn’t write back.
Trig decided not to think of her lack of response as defeat. She’d answered his call and she’d answered his email and it was a start. He’d never thought that winning Lena’s forgiveness was going to be easy. He didn’t want easy. He’d never courted that.
He wanted Lena.
The next morning, before work, he emailed her links to a bunch of mosaic tile manufacturers. For the bath-house floor, he wrote. And left it at that.
She called him that evening when he was on his way home from work.
‘I need help filling out a form,’ she said.
‘What kind of form?’
‘There’s three columns. Column one is what happened to us in Turkey, otherwise known as “The Facts” column. Column two is what I want to happen from here on in. Column three is what you want to happen. It was Ruby’s idea.’
‘I love that woman.’
‘You say that a lot. You can understand my confusion.’
‘I love you more.’
Lena sighed. ‘May I send you the form?’
‘Have you filled out your column yet?’
‘I filled out the first two columns. It took me two days.’
‘What if I don’t agree with The Facts?’
‘Feel free to amend them. Ruby said you might want to. Something about reframing.’
‘Smart woman.’
Silence filled the car.
‘You’re smart too,’ he added hastily. ‘I know that.’
‘It’s probably better if you don’t talk,’ she said, and hung up.
* * *
Trig made it home in record time and only marginally exceeded the speed limit. He grabbed his personal laptop from the floor beside the couch, carried it through to the kitchen and sat it next to last night’s empty pizza box. He opened it up and switched it on. He grabbed a cola from the fridge and waited for his computer to wake up completely. He grabbed a stool, sat on it and started jiggling his leg. He vowed to get a faster computer along with a speedier Internet service. He hated waiting. Finally, he found Lena’s email and opened it up. She hadn’t bothered with an introduction. She’d started with column one.
The Facts:
1)Lena loves Trig (and not like a brother). Romantically. Inescapably. No one else has ever measured up to him. Not even close.
Trig hadn’t been aware of this fact until now and snorted cola up his nose and then all over the counter on account of it. But he was totally on board with this fact. He read it again, just to make sure he’d read it right before moving on to fact number two.
2)Trig loves Lena.
No surprises there.
3)Everyone but Lena and Trig knows that Lena loves Trig and that Trig loves Lena (this fact has been substantiated by Ruby, Poppy, Poppy’s Seb, Damon and Damon on Jared’s behalf).
Some people were so smug.
4)Lena and Trig went to Istanbul to find Jared. They found him.
Nothing but the facts.
5)Lena fell and hit her head, lost her memory and thought she was married to Trig.
True.
6)Trig let her believe that she was married to him.
Loaded word, ‘let’. It implied some semblance of control.
7)Lena wanted to bed Trig.
Trig grinned in spite of himself and downed half a can of cola, this time without getting it up his nose.
8)Trig resisted.
‘Yes, I did. And it wasn’t exactly easy.’
9)Lena still wanted to bed Trig.
Trig liked these facts.
10) Trig resisted. Some might call that chivalrous. Lena found it frustrating.
‘Try being me.’
11)Lena seduced Trig.
That was one interpretation.
12)Trig let her.
He really thought she was misusing the word ‘let’. He wanted a new word. One that described active participation.
13)Lena saw Jared, regained her memory, realised she wasn’t married to Trig and got confused and angry.
Succinct.
14)Lena thought she might have coerced Trig into something he didn’t want.
‘What?’ When had he ever given her the impression that he didn’t know exactly what he wanted? Namely her. Unless she was talking about those times during those first few nights when she’d wanted him to be cosy with her and he hadn’t...and then later when she’d wanted a wedding night to remember and he’d developed a fondness for long showers and a predilection for performance anxiety... Okay, so maybe she had a point. But surely proclaiming his love for her before, during and after her memory loss had to count for something?
15)Lena thought Trig might have coerced her into something she didn’t want. She didn’t know what to think and she didn’t know what was real.
‘Figure it out,’ he begged her. ‘Believe.’
16)Lena temporarily ignored the fact that she loves Trig and Trig loves her and that they could probably work something out.
That was the end of The Facts according to Lena. Trig ran a shaky hand across his face. There were some high points, sure. The first two points and the last. Love. Remarkable things could happen in the presence of love. But there’d been some low points too. Sighing, Trig moved on to the next column.
What Lena Wants:
1)Lena has never really thought about what she wants.
Not helpful, Lena.
2)She followed Trig and Jared into the special intelligence service because it seemed like a good fit for her and because she wanted to maintain her connection with them. Her heart wasn’t always in the job but she was with Jared and Trig so she was mostly happy.
Trig frowned. Thinking that Lena needed to reconsider her options on account of her recent physical limitations was one thing. Having Lena admit that she’d never been completely on board with a career in special intelligence was quite another. Sure, it was good news in the overall scheme of things now, but you’d think he might have noticed. Or that Jared might have noticed. Why the hell hadn’t anyone noticed that her heart wasn’t in it? Mostly happy. What the hell was that?
3)Working for ASIS doesn’t seem like such a good fit for Lena any more.
Trig