Summer At Villa Rosa Collection. Kate Hardy
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It was obvious that he’d had something on his mind, that this conversation had always been coming, but she still felt a momentary touch of nausea.
Breathe, breathe...
‘I was going to tell you yesterday, when we were having lunch in the harbour, but it was such a lovely day that I didn’t want to spoil it.’
‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘It’s not.’
After their earlier closeness, he now seemed so distant. She knew something had spooked him at Matt’s cottage; he couldn’t wait to get away, to put some space between them, run, and she felt him slipping away from her.
‘Shall I come and sit beside you?’ From being the comforter, she was now the one who needed to feel him close, touch him. ‘I’ll hold your hand if it will help.’
He shook his head. ‘I need to see your face.’
Rachel had been the love of his life and all this ring stuff, talk of dresses had forced him to confront the reality of what he was about to do. He was going to tell her that he couldn’t go through with it. Or worse, that he would marry her but that their relationship would be platonic.
She shouldn’t have kissed him. He’d responded because he hadn’t wanted to embarrass her and because he was flesh and blood but now he felt guilty.
Breathe.
‘Cleve, you’re frightening me.’
‘I’m sorry, but we’re getting married in a few days and you have a right to know...’
And now he was the one taking a deep breath. How bad could it be?
‘Know what?’
‘You have a right to know, I want you to know, that the baby Rachel was carrying when she died was not mine.’
‘Not...’
She stared at him in disbelief. She’d had no idea what was coming but that was the very last thing she could have imagined.
They had been aviation’s golden couple. Andie’d been wretched when she’d discovered that Cleve was married but he and Rachel had been so perfect together that she’d accepted it with only a bucket or two of tears.
Her heart had ached but he’d kept his promise and given her a job when no one else would even look at a newly qualified pilot with no experience. And she’d got on with her life.
More or less.
‘Who...?’ She shook her head. It didn’t matter who.
‘No one I knew.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘We’d been struggling for a long time.’
‘That’s why you didn’t go to Phuket.’
‘Not exactly. When she booked the holiday I thought she wanted a break, a chance to restart our marriage and I was willing to give it a try.’
He looked so bleak that it was all she could do not to reach out and hold him but this was something he had to get off his chest and she held onto the rock to keep her anchored in place.
‘You didn’t go,’ she prompted after a while.
‘A couple of weeks before we were due to fly out, she told me that she wanted to go alone. That she needed space to think things through.’
‘So you invented a crisis?’ She shook her head, barely able to take in the fact that his marriage had been in trouble. ‘No one would ever have guessed.’
‘Rachel put on a good show but the fact is that she was well beyond thinking things through. After her death I found photographs on her phone. She wasn’t alone.’
She didn’t know what to say. The whole idea of Rachel being unfaithful to Cleve was so unbelievable...
‘I suspected there was someone else. I didn’t blame her for having a fling; she was unhappy and I was unable to do anything to make things better. I only discovered that she was pregnant when I picked up her phone by mistake and found myself looking at a message from the antenatal clinic.’
‘But...’
‘I’d been sleeping in the spare bedroom for six months.’
Without thinking she moved, crossed the pool, sat beside him because, like Cleve, she knew that Rachel, who’d always said that there was plenty of time for a family, was not the kind of woman to get pregnant by accident.
It had been a lot more than a fling.
She took his hand and he grasped hers so tightly that it was all she could do not to squeak but he must have felt her wince because he immediately eased his grip. ‘I’m sorry.’ He managed a smile. ‘I knew it would be a mistake to hold your hand.’
‘Hold on as tight as you want.’
He lifted it, kissed her knuckles then let go, leaving it, leaving her, feeling empty.
‘What did you do?’
He shrugged, the droplets of water from his shoulders coalescing and running down his chest. She dragged her eyes away as he said, ‘Pretty much what you’d expect. I told her that I wanted her out of the apartment, out of my life. She retaliated by saying that the way it worked was that I would be the one packing my bags and if I wanted a divorce she would take half of Goldfinch.’
‘Cleve...’ What on earth was he going to tell her?
‘She said a lot more. Some of it true.’ He was avoiding her gaze now and she knew that she had been included in the vitriol. ‘She was angry. She said I’d never loved her, that I should never have married her and that our marriage was an empty sham, and she was right.’
‘Why did you?’ The challenge was out before she could recall it. ‘Sorry, sorry...’ She held up her hands. ‘That’s totally none of my business.’
‘We are getting married, having a child together. Everything about me is your business, Miranda.’
He closed his eyes for a moment as if trying to summon up the words that would explain how it had happened.
‘Rach flew for me as a temp when I needed an extra pilot. The business grew, she was a good fit and she joined the team. I had no time for a social life and when she invited me to a New Year’s party we both knew where it was going. Midnight struck and we were kissing, by one o’clock we were in bed. Within months she’d pretty much moved in with me and by the end of the year everyone was asking when we were going to get married.’
Of course they were.
Cleve and Rachel, handsome, beautiful, clever, both flyers with their lives invested in Goldfinch Air Services. You couldn’t make it up.
‘Then Rachel’s parents announced they’d sold their house and were moving to France in June, at which point the “When are you two getting married?” question had an answer.
‘There was no big scene where I went down on one knee,’ he said. ‘The truth is I let it happen because there was no reason not to.’
And he was about to do it all over again, she realised, her heart sinking like a stone.
‘What happened, Cleve?’
‘I told her that I’d see her in hell before she got as much as a breath of Goldfinch’s tailwind. She couldn’t stay to argue the point because she had a flight booked but told me to start packing and left with a suitably dramatic door slam. It was my rest day and I went for a run. Despite what I’d said I knew she would be entitled to half of everything and I needed a clear head to work out how I was going to survive.’
Her hand tightened in his, knowing what was coming.
‘I spent the rest of the day working through the figures and I was about to ring my accountant