CHAPTER ELEVEN

      HELENA HADN’T WANTED to go home—not least because she wasn’t entirely sure where home was. But by mid-morning the next day, after Helena had spent the night sleeping in a very uncomfortable armchair next to her dad’s bed, Isabella was back, looking well rested, immaculate but still with an edge of fear in her eyes.

      ‘Helena, darling, go home and take a shower. Flynn will be waiting for you—you haven’t even seen your new marital home yet!’

      ‘I’m fine here, really,’ Helena said, wishing she couldn’t feel the creases on her face where she’d fallen asleep against a striped cushion. ‘Besides, all my stuff is still at Dad’s house.’ That was a thought. Maybe she could just nip back there long enough to shower and change, now she wouldn’t have to share the space with Isabella.

      ‘No, it isn’t.’ Isabella laid down the words like a trump card. ‘I had everything packed up and moved over to the town house the moment we returned from Italy. All your clothes, books, personal belongings—they’re all there waiting for you in your new home.’

      Along with a husband who couldn’t bear to look at her. Perfect.

      ‘I want to wait until Dad wakes up.’

      Isabella’s expression grew concerned again, and she turned to tug Thomas’s sheet a little higher over his chest. ‘Shouldn’t he have woken up already? The doctors don’t seem concerned, but even here I don’t feel you ever really have one-on-one attention, do you?’

      ‘They’re taking good care of him.’ Helena tried to sound soothing, and also tried to forget that she was talking to her father’s married lover. ‘The best care. And they say he shouldn’t wake up until this evening, so—’

      ‘So you have plenty of time to go home, shower and see your husband,’ Isabella finished for her, leaving Helena to realise, too late, that she’d been outmanoeuvred by her mother-in-law.

      She spent the cab ride to the town house rehearsing what she’d say to Flynn in her head, but it proved unnecessary. Whether he’d gone to the office or his parents’ house, or even back to Italy, Helena had no idea, but Flynn was not home. Not in their home.

      She wandered the half unpacked rooms, filled with unfamiliar possessions, taking in the trappings of what should have been her future. In what she assumed was supposed to be the library she found two empty crystal tumblers and a bottle of Scotch—the only real evidence so far that Flynn had even been there at all.

      She dropped into one of the chairs, bone-weary, and wondered if this was where he’d sat the night before. Wondered if he’d ever speak to her again, if she’d ever get the chance to explain herself. If it would even make a difference.

      She frowned, squinting at the fireplace in front of her. What was that? Leaning forward, she fished out the papers and immediately wished that she hadn’t.

      As she flicked through the pages of what should have been her post-nuptial agreement, Flynn’s plan for their future, she felt the tears begin to fall at last, hot and thick against her cheeks. And, as the words blurred in front of her, she began to rewrite them in her mind, to imagine them the way they should be.

      A future she’d want to live. Not one based around who got what or a schedule they had to follow. But a future that grew organically, from the love between two people.

      She didn’t want a piece of paper compelling her to live her life bullet point by bullet point. And if Flynn thought that was what he needed...he was wrong. He’d spent his whole life so far trying to place order on an existence that had started in chaos—with not belonging, with bad timing, with uncertainty and manipulation. But he couldn’t do that forever. Life didn’t work that way.

      She only had to look at her father in his hospital bed to know that.

      Or think about the moment she’d crossed out her sister’s name on that wedding invitation.

      Life leapt out at you when you least expected it, and all you could do was hold on for the ride. And someone needed to teach Flynn Ashton that fact.

      Maybe even her.

      Wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, Helena reached into her handbag and pulled out a pen. Deliberately, and with several thick black lines, she crossed out the boring legalese title and replaced it with her own.

      A Manifesto for a More Spontaneous Marriage.

      She smiled at the words for a moment, her mind suddenly filled with ideas and possibilities and a world of impulsive romance. Of amazed joy.

      And then, starting on the back of page one, she began to write out every hope and dream she had for her future.

      Even if she had to accept it would never have Flynn in it.

      * * *

      Flynn couldn’t stay in the house so he went to the only place he really ever felt at home. The office.

      He arrived while the place was still abandoned and dark, even the most conscientious employees still tucked up in their beds. He turned on his computer, settled back in his chair and lost himself in emails and memos and contracts for as long as he could.

      By the time the sun was fully up, he’d caught up on everything that had happened since he’d left for Italy. He almost wished he hadn’t spent so much time keeping on top of his emails when he was away—it would have given him more of a distraction now, when he needed it.

      And more time to spend with Helena, before everything he’d thought they were building together came crashing down.

      ‘So, you made it back.’ His father’s creaky voice jerked Flynn out of his own dark thoughts. He looked up to see the old man standing in his doorway, staring down at him the same way he’d always done when Flynn’s school reports came in, however good they were. ‘I heard tell you’d cut short your honeymoon. I assume you got your wife to sign the papers, as we discussed?’

      Of course, that was all he was concerned about. His best friend