www.millsandboon.co.uk

Break Up to Make Up

For Janine, my ever-capable friend,

who gave me inspiration.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

ADELE fought the urge to run from the bathroom screaming. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and ordered her hands to stop shaking. When she felt her heart rate slow a little, she opened her eyes again.

Nothing had changed. Eight legs and a fat, hairy body still inhabited her bath. She took a few steps backwards, never letting her gaze off the spindly legs, checking for any twitch that indicated it was thinking of making a sudden move.

Once the edge of the tub obscured her view of the intruder, she fumbled on the shelf above the sink. Toothpaste and toothbrush went flying as she grabbed the glass they sat in. All she needed now was something flat and not too flexible. Her eyes darted round the room, hardly taking anything in. She made herself look again, more slowly this time.

Balanced on the washing hamper was the magazine she’d been reading last time she’d been having one of her ritual soaks. The sort of soak she ought to be having right now, if it weren’t for the intruder. Righteous anger bubbled in her chest. How dare that nasty little…squatter…spoil her plans for the evening?

She seized the magazine and marched towards the bath, trying not to let her steps falter as she drew close. It had been much easier when she’d had someone else to do her spider-catching. But those days were gone. This was between her and eight-legged Freddy over there.

She lifted the upturned glass in her hand, hoping it wasn’t going to slip. Even her fingertips seemed sweaty. Her breath came in gasps, punctuated by long gaps when the air stayed locked in her chest. Two more steps and she’d be close enough.

The glass was only inches away from the creature now. Everything went very still. Even the spider—as if it sensed her approach. And then it darted. Straight towards her up the side of the bath.

Adele didn’t stop to think; she just threw both glass and magazine in the direction of her attacker and raced out of the bathroom. And while the sound of shattering glass echoed in her ears, she slammed the door and leant against it. Just in case it was thinking of trying the door handle.

See? This was why she shouldn’t be doing this! Her phobia made her irrational. She would have moved away from the door at that point, but a noise from inside the bathroom made her grip the door handle tighter.

If only…

No, she wasn’t going to do it. She wasn’t going to wish him here.

She did not need a man to catch a spider. Especially that man.

Her fingers forgot the door knob as she let out a long sigh and ran them through her long dark hair.

I can do this, she thought as she stood there in the silence. I’ve got to. No one else is going to do it for me.

Her hands shook as she smoothed down the folds of her spotlessly white towelling bathrobe and tightened the sash. It was a pointless gesture. Her furry friend in there didn’t care what she looked like, but somehow she needed to present a calm and cool front, to be the Adele she knew how to be, the Adele who wasn’t fazed by anything or anyone.

She turned to face the bathroom door and imagined herself in one of her business suits, her hair in its usual coil at the nape of her neck, not fanning over her shoulders and falling over her face. It was all about mental attitude, wasn’t it? You could do anything if you put your mind to it.

She’d been sent on some stupid training seminar when she’d worked at Fenton and Barrett. She had pretended she was listening, but really she’d been plotting how she was going to start her own firm of management consultants. She’d made her dreams come true since then and she could certainly use the same trick now.

What had those people waffled on about? Oh, yes. Visualisation. She concentrated, and in her mind’s eye the creature in the bath became a butterfly, brightly coloured and fragile.

Anyone could pick up a butterfly, couldn’t they?

She wrenched the door open and marched over to the bath. Shattered glass covered the bottom, but the creature she sought was now halfway up the side under the taps. If she didn’t know better she’d think it was giving her a cocky look.

‘Butterfly,’ she murmured under her breath as she extended her hand forward and closed her fingers over it. The distance from the edge of the bath to the window suddenly stretched to the size of a football pitch. She tried to walk slowly, but after a step and a half she was running. ‘Butterfly!’ she shouted as the legs started to twitch in her hand and she fought the reflex to gag.

‘Yuck! Spider, spider, spider, spider!’ she yelled as she opened the catch with her free hand and threw the horrible thing out of the window. Then she shivered and rubbed her hand on her robe over and over again until she thought she’d wear the little loops away.

She really needed that bath now. But before she could do that, there was a whole lot of glass to clean up. There was no one here to catch spiders and there was no one here to pull the shards out of her bottom if she missed a bit, so she’d better do a good job.

Her head was practically in the cupboard under the kitchen sink when the doorbell rang. The sun had only just set and it was light enough not to have to turn the lamps on, but dark enough not to be able to see what she was looking for. Her fingers stretched into the shadows at the back of the cupboard.

Where was that darn dustpan and brush? It had to be here somewhere.

The bell went again and Adele banged her head on the top of the cupboard. She did not have the kind of doorbell you could ignore, all soft chimes, indicating someone was waiting patiently at the door, flowers in hand. Oh, no. This was one of those insistent ones that grated like an old-fashioned bicycle bell.

All she’d wanted to on a Saturday evening, after spending all day at the office, was to sink into a silky rich bubble bath and read the next four chapters of her book. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

She rubbed the back of her head as she took silent, quick steps to the front door and yanked it open, not even caring she was in her bathrobe.

She was going to deliver a brisk ‘Yes? What do you want?’ But the words died on her lips. Leaning against the wall, with a twinkle in his eyes and a dimple in each cheek, was the most infuriating man she’d ever had the displeasure of knowing.

She knew her mouth was hanging open, but she couldn’t seem to get it closed again. He smiled and the dimples deepened.

‘Hi, Adele.’

‘N…Nick!’

In the last few minutes the sun had tucked itself even further below the suburban skyline of slate roofs and chimney pots and the glow from the porch light made him seem warm and golden in contrast.

He looked so…real. Not like the Nick she’d been screaming at in her head for the past nine months, anyway. In her memory she’d made him shorter, more boyish and much less attractive. She could feel the familiar chemistry starting to frazzle her brain already.

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 Adele defrost was a wonderful thing. She started off all spiky and hard—like one of those puffer fish—and he’d just keep being impossible until he could see the glint in her eyes and the way her jaw worked overtime to keep a straight face. If he timed it right, he’d give one last smile, one last look, and she’d let out a big puff of air and deflate, becoming the warm, passionate woman he loved so much.

He let his head fall back onto the sofa cushion and closed his eyes.

He knew what she thought: that her husband had chosen a once-in-a-lifetime job over her, but that wasn’t the way he saw it at all. Adele was too busy being self-righteous to see that she was the one who had refused to budge an inch. It had been her decision to put the marriage on hold.

There might be two sides to every story, but Adele was always, always convinced hers was the right one. The annoying thing was, most of the time she was right. However, now and again she got things spectacularly wrong. And when she did, it was usually something big.

He wiggled into a more comfortable position. The jet lag was catching up on him and this sofa was so comfy. The jacket of one of her business suits was draped across the back. It smelled of her perfume, warm and spicy. If he closed his eyes, it was almost as if she were sitting next to him.

They’d spent many happy evenings cuddled up together on this old sofa with glasses of wine after the evening meal was finished. And there had been other times when they used the sofa for much less relaxing pursuits…

He smiled to himself as he drifted off to sleep. Less relaxing, but so much more fun.

The kitchen door creaked slightly as Adele pushed it open. She paused. It was quiet. Too quiet. Nick was like a naughty toddler in that respect. If he was silent, he was probably up to no good. The door swung wide and she spotted him, sprawled all over the sofa, sleeping like a baby.

Even that made her want to scream. How did he do that? Turn off all the tension between them and lapse into unconsciousness? She was nowhere near relaxed. Drink ten espressos—doubles—and you’d have an idea of where her nerve levels were. Then she looked at Nick again and a sigh left her chest unbidden.

Fast asleep like that, he looked so angelic. His hair was just that little bit too long to be spiky and there always seemed to be a bit that fell across his forehead. Many a time she’d woken early in the morning, smiled at him and brushed the wayward strand away. It was all she could do at that very moment to stop herself crossing the room and repeating the gesture.

She had to get out of here. Now. Before she forgot all the reasons why Nick Hughes should not be let within a five-mile radius of her heart.

She grabbed her handbag off the counter and closed the kitchen door. Moments later she was fully kitted out in coat, scarf and gloves and was making her way down the road. Mid-February in London was invariably damp and cold, and this night was happy to follow the trend.

She found herself at Mona’s house. Her precariously balanced life had just fallen off a precipice and she needed her best friend. Mona answered the door with a baby on her hip.

‘My God, Adele! What’s happened?’

‘It’s Nick.’

Mona gasped and put a hand to her mouth. ‘Is he…? Was there an accident?’

‘No. Worse.’

‘Worse than falling off the side of a mountain?’

‘I’ve no idea whether he’s been climbing or not recently, but I do know where he is right this very minute. My extreme-sports-loving husband is alive and well and fast asleep in our kitchen—my kitchen.’

Mona’s brows gathered together like thunderclouds. She pulled Adele into a gruff hug that was both sudden and unexpected. ‘You’d better come in and tell me all about it.’

When Adele pulled away she had baby drool on the front of her jacket. She stroked her goddaughter’s head and gave her a kiss then let Mona lead her into the sitting room.

‘He just turned up out of the blue.’

‘No warning at all?’

Adele gave her friend a knowing look. ‘What? Nick? The man who is so bad at forward planning that he can’t even decide what he wants to eat for dinner until he’s hungry?’

Mona popped Bethany on the floor and gave her a rattle to play with. ‘What does he want?’

Adele shrugged. ‘Who knows? I tried asking him, but he just got all…Nick…on me. He says he wants to talk.’

‘About what?’

Adele let out a breath and felt her stomach plunge downwards. ‘I suppose he could be back to ask for a…you know…divorce,’ she said quietly. ‘That would explain why he didn’t just want to launch into it. Even Nick wouldn’t just turn up after nine months—’

‘Nine and a half, actually.’

Adele closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. ‘Well, however many months…Even Nick wouldn’t just turn up and say, Hi, honey, I’m home—and, by the way, you’re history.’

Mona nodded. ‘Of course, you’ll want to get in first.’

Her friend looked so serious Adele dared not mention that she hadn’t thought of that. But she should have. Where was her old fighting spirit? Suddenly the furnace of indignation was about as lively as the rain-soaked coals on a typical English barbecue.

Mona sat back and gave her a questioning look.

‘Please don’t tell me you want him back!’

A reflex answer should have popped out of Adele’s mouth at that second. A firm no. Of course not. Never in a million years. Instead she closed her eyes and rubbed the sides of her face with her hands.

‘Adele?’

‘I thought I wanted him gone for good. It was an easy decision when he was thousands of miles away, but now he’s back and…I don’t know…divorce just seems so…final.’

‘Don’t you dare let him wear you down with that boyish charm of his, Adele!’

‘I’m not!’

‘Pah! You’re weakening. I can see the cracks from here. Have you forgotten how he treated you when he left?’

No, she hadn’t forgotten. She remembered every last detail of the day he’d dropped the bombshell.

His work as a special-effects designer for TV and films had really been taking off, after years of only just scraping by. Seemed he’d actually been doing more than just messing around in the shed at the bottom of the garden with bits of scrap metal and rubbery stuff.

After a couple of popular TV commercials, he’d been asked to do the effects for a low-budget independent film. Against all expectation, the film had been a huge hit and Nick’s name had been put firmly on the map. They’d both been so pleased at the time. She’d even been able to put up with the strange hours and the fact he could disappear for days at a time, often arriving back with no warning at four in the morning. If she’d have known what was going to come of all of it, she might not have been so thrilled for him.

One day, he’d burst into her office and announced the big news, wearing a grin so wide she’d thought his face would split. He’d been offered a job on a big Hollywood project, some scifi film, and he had five days to pack and get himself out to California to meet with the producers. If they liked him, he needed to start almost straight away.

That was when things started to go seriously wrong. Nick had been so busy in the following months that Adele had almost felt as if she were single again. Often the only evidence that he’d come home at all when she woke up in the mornings were the plans for the next contraption he was going to build doodled in the margins of one of her reports.

And then he’d wanted her to leave her business behind and move halfway across the world at a moment’s notice. As if. For the first time in her life she’d had roots. A home. A purpose. There was no way she was going to throw all of that away on a whim. It had been time to put her foot down.

They’d had a huge fight. The worst one they’d ever had—and that was saying something. Even so, when she’d yelled, ‘Take the stupid job if you really think it’s that important!’ she hadn’t expected him to take her at her word and jump on a plane.

Mona’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘Come on, girl. You’ve got to be strong.’

‘I am strong,’ Adele said, her face drooping. At least, she wanted to be. Month upon month of pretending she’d been fine without Nick had been exhausting.

Mona’s husband had upped and left when baby number two had arrived only ten months ago. She and Mona had got through the early months of their individual crises by channelling their anger into weekly ranting sessions in Mona’s front room.

The period after Nick had left had been the worst in her life and she was not going to give him the opportunity to send her spiralling back to that dark, lonely place.

She sat up straighter. ‘No, you’re right. Who needs men? Stuff ‘em!’

‘That’s more like it. Now, how are you going to deal with the daredevil who’s currently snoozing in your kitchen?’

Fire him into next week with one of his homemade canons?

Tempting. Very tempting, in fact. She should encourage that feeling, let it grow and swell, and then she wouldn’t do the other thing she was sorely temped to do—run back home just to look at him while he slept. Kiss him awake and show him how much she’d missed him.

But she couldn’t weaken like that. She wouldn’t.

He’d done the one thing he’d promised never to do: he’d left her, and she wasn’t about to give him the chance to hurt her that way again. At least, that was what her head was telling her. Her heart had a crazy agenda all of its own.

Adele shook her head. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to go and talk to him at some point. I just can’t face it tonight. When Nick catches me on the hop, I always end up agreeing to one of his crazy schemes. I need to be prepared. Focused.’

She could not let Nick know he still had the power to make her quiver every time he came near. He’d use it against her. He’d make her believe they’d have a chance then he’d yank the rug right from under her feet again. It was inevitable.

She needed to protect herself. Nick had to believe she was totally immune to him and there was no way she was going to convince him of that tonight. She was still in a state of shock and likely to do something stupid—like tell him she’d been joking about the spare room.

‘Stay here,’ Mona said. ‘We can make battle plans over a bottle of red wine.’

‘Thanks, Mona. You’re a lifesaver.’

Mona picked up Bethany, who was starting to grizzle, and stood up. ‘Come on, young miss. Time for bed.’ She turned just before she headed out of the living-room door.

‘Does he know about…you know?’

Adele threaded her fingers together and squeezed until her knuckles hurt. ‘No. I never told him.’

CHAPTER TWO

THERE WAS A HAND brushing his face. Nick sat up, suddenly wide awake, and realised the fingers were his own. He had hooked his elbow behind his head while he’d been sleeping and now his hand felt fat and numb.

The lights were still on in the kitchen, but it was dark outside and he had no idea what time it was. He shook his dead hand until he could feel the blood prickle then took a look at his watch. Six a.m. No way!

He shook his head and looked again. No wonder he felt so stiff. He’d spent the last twelve hours on a two-seater sofa, crunched into goodness-knew-what strange positions.

Adele would probably be up in an hour or so. She had always been an early riser, a complete contrast to his night-owlish tendencies. He felt crumpled and stale, not just from his strange sleeping place, but also from the long flight from LA the day before. No point trying to sweet talk Adele if he was looking rough and smelling even worse. He’d better hop in the shower and spruce up before he tried talking to her again.

He dragged his bag upstairs, and almost barged into the master bedroom on autopilot. An idiotic mistake. He’d have to think quicker than that if he wanted to get on Adele’s good side. Even he wasn’t daft enough to think he could jump back into his life after all this time as if nothing had changed.

Only he wished he could just slide back into his old life. He and Adele had been so happy. One moment of rash anger had probably cost him his marriage. He hardly ever lost his temper, but Adele had pushed and pushed and pushed until he’d erupted.

It just proved to him that his usual technique of sweeping everything negative under the carpet and wisecracking until it all went away was a much safer option. If he’d done that last May, maybe things would have been different. He wouldn’t have had to live with the ache deep inside that just wouldn’t go away, no matter how many practical jokes he’d played on his colleagues to distract himself from it.

Half an hour later he was shaved, dressed and making coffee in the kitchen. The idea was to catch Adele on the caffeine high after her obligatory morning coffee. He knew all the little tricks to get her onside, had employed them so many times it was almost habit.

Of course, this time he had to be extra careful. It was a bit more serious than the incident in which he’d finished off her designer make-up in an attempt to get a latex head he was about to split with an axe to look a little more lifelike.

And then, of course, there had been the time he’d used her best casserole to mix up gungy alien blood. She had not appreciated the green food colouring that wouldn’t come off no matter how hard she’d scrubbed. He’d learned the hard way to stay clear of Adele’s kitchen utensils. She was unusually finicky in that area.

No, this time he was going to be sensible and talk properly to her. That was plan A. Then he had to get her to agree to plan B, which hopefully would lead to fulfilling plan C. Plan C was the big one: making Adele see they were meant to be together.

He just couldn’t fail at that one, so he was going to pull out all the stops. It couldn’t hurt to smooth the way a little—with caffeine and smiles and dimples.

He turned the coffee machine on and sat himself at the table, opposite the door. Any moment now, she’d appear.

But Adele didn’t appear. And patience was not one of Nick’s strong suits.

Perhaps his wife would like breakfast in bed? Or was that taking the schmoozing a bit too far? When he’d left, Adele had not been one for Sunday-morning lie-ins. Not unless he’d been there to convince her there was something worth staying in bed for.

He leant back in the wooden chair, deflated. He’d missed Adele. Really missed her. When he’d got back to California after his first trip home, he’d been surprised how long the anger had bubbled inside him. He hadn’t been able to shake it off as normal. But then, that was understandable, wasn’t it?

Anyone would be angry if their wife had dumped them at the first tiny hiccup. They could have worked something out about their jobs and his six-month contract in Hollywood, but she hadn’t even bothered to consider it. She’d been too busy screeching at him about how important her job and her life and her friends were to her. It had come as a rude shock to find that he was bottom of the list—if he was on there at all.

His job was just as important to him, but Adele never took him seriously, even when someone had pulled out of a contract and he’d been offered a last-minute chance to work with highly acclaimed producer Tim Brookman. He was practically Hollywood royalty. It had been an opportunity he just couldn’t refuse, and it hurt more than he cared to admit that she hadn’t enough faith in him to support his decision.

Irritation started to buzz round his head. He swatted it away and checked the clock. It was half-past eight now. Surely Adele wasn’t still sleeping? Perhaps he’d better go and check she was OK.

He raced up the stairs, but slowed his pace as he neared their bedroom door. He smiled as he remembered the way she snored softly sometimes. It was so sweet. And it was strangely gratifying to know that perfect Adele had one tiny flaw.

But there was no snoring now. In fact, there was no sound at all.

He nudged the door open and blinked as he saw the room was unusually bright. The curtains were drawn and cold February sunshine lit up the empty bed. The covers were neatly in place and the elaborate arrangement of scatter cushions at the head of the bed was undisturbed.

His stomach bottomed out, just the way it had when he’d walked into the bedroom almost a year ago and seen the empty wardrobe, doors flung wide, hangers bare like autumn twigs.

Then he’d found the crisp, polite note saying she was staying at Mona’s and didn’t want to see him. He’d turned around and gone back to America, appalled his wife had bailed out on him so easily. At least he’d managed to persuade Mona to get her to move back into the house after he’d left.

He marched over to the wardrobe and wrenched the door open. Breath whooshed out of his lungs as he found the neat row of jackets, blouses and dresses—grouped by function and then by colour. If Adele found a pair of cargo trousers among her summer dresses, she’d get all itchy about it.

Now he was just plain confused. Adele’s clothes were here, but Adele wasn’t.

He turned and headed back downstairs and was just at the bottom step when he heard the front door open.

Adele jumped back, startled.

What the heck was going on?

Adele’s face turned a fiery red and she was unusually flustered.

A horrible thought scratched at the back of his mind to be let in.

‘Have you been out all night, Adele?’

She fumbled with the Sunday paper tucked under her arm. ‘I think that falls into the category of none of your business, don’t you?’

None of his…? The woman was priceless!

‘You’re still my wife!’

She refolded the newspaper and gave him a long, hard look. ‘Well, we can always do something about that.’

Nick saw an uncharacteristic flash of red behind his eyes. Seismic activity he was surprised she could still provoke after all this time. He stormed through the house, down the garden path and into his workshop, slamming the door behind him.

None of his business!

He should have stayed to have it out with her, but his feet had been moving before his brain had engaged. He didn’t feel much like going back into the house now, anyway.

Ethel, the shop mannequin he’d rescued from a skip, was still holding a pose in the corner of his workshop. At least she was predictable. Once upon a time, he’d have sworn Adele was too, but her refusal to compromise about his job had shattered that illusion. Like the dummy, he’d discovered she could be hard and cold in a way that had taken him totally by surprise.

‘What do you think my chances are, Ethel? I need a woman’s perspective.’

Ethel stared out of the window, her bright blue eyelids unblinking.

Nick sighed and fiddled with the soldering iron sitting on the bench.

‘Yeah. Thanks for nothing, babe.’

Adele was working on her laptop when Nick came to find her. She was still all jittery after their confrontation in the hall. She’d almost faltered—almost. But in the end she’d managed to pull herself together and Nick would never know how close she’d come to soothing his anger away with a kiss.

She tried to pretend she wasn’t aware of him standing in the doorway of the little box room they used as a study.

‘I’m busy, Nick,’ she said eventually, without looking round.

‘We’ve got to talk some time.’

She shrugged and tried to concentrate on the words on the screen. None of them seemed to be recognisable as English any more. She read a sentence for the third time then gave up.

‘OK. We’ll talk.’ She swivelled round in her chair and folded her arms. ‘Fire away.’

Nick shook his head. ‘Not like this. Let’s get onto neutral territory. How about I take you out to lunch?’

Once upon a time, she’d loved spending long, lazy Sunday lunches with Nick. They’d sit outside in the pub garden in summer and huddle up to the fire inside in winter. She didn’t want to be reminded of happier days, but he was right. They had to talk at some point and she might as well get it out of the way.

‘OK, but you’re paying.’

‘Of course.’

Nick flashed his dimples and Adele had the feeling she was agreeing to a whole heap of trouble.

‘What’s this all about, then, Nick?’

They’d sat through most of the main course talking about nothing. Whether that was a good thing or not, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that the small talk was getting to her and she had to know one way or the other. Her heart broke into a trot at the thought of the ‘D’ word that might come out of his mouth. Bizarrely, it was the last word she wanted to hear, despite the fact it had been the one at the forefront of her mind since last summer.

Nick played with a roast potato on his plate.

‘It’s Mum’s sixty-fifth birthday this year.’

Adele nodded. ‘I know.’ Then she frowned.

What was he up to? She leaned forward and tried to catch his gaze. He seemed to be absorbed in shepherding all his peas into a little pile with his knife.

‘How is Maggie?’

She’d been a bit of a coward on that front after Nick had left. Everyone knew she was useless at keeping up with correspondence and she’d hidden behind that as an excuse to keep contact with Nick’s family to a minimum. Yes, she’d dashed off the odd email and sent a Christmas card, but she’d avoided the messages on the answering machine, pretending to herself she was too busy with her work. In the last few months, everything had gone a little quiet.

The truth was, she was just plain scared. Scared, now she and Nick were no longer a couple, that maybe his mother and sisters would go cold on her. Just as her own parents had. She’d only been part of the family by default, after all. It had been easier to avoid anything deep than risk finding out her fears had some foundation.

He poked the pile of peas with his knife and sent them scattering. ‘You know Mum…’

Adele tried not to let the shame show on her face. She’d been a coward, plain and simple.

She knew Nick’s mother better than she knew her own. Which wasn’t difficult, seeing as the last time she’d seen her parents in the flesh was a good three years ago. But that was nothing unusual. It had been that way since they’d packed her off to boarding-school so her mother could flit around the world with her father as he moved from exotic location to exotic location with his job.

Maggie Hughes was the sort of woman she’d fantasised about having as a parent in her teenage years. Her house was always full of children and grandchildren, who complained constantly that she had her nose in their business just a little too much, but it never seemed to stop them coming. She had a big heart and had made sure Adele always felt part of the family, always felt wanted. She was a little too indulgent with her only son, perhaps, but nobody was perfect.

‘Give her my love when you speak to her, won’t you?’

Nick coughed. ‘Well, I was kind of thinking you could tell her yourself—in person.’

‘And when would that be, exactly? You haven’t forgotten with all your Hollywood high-flying that she moved in with Auntie Beverley last year, have you? Scotland is a long way to go for a cup of tea and a chat.’

‘She’s having a big birthday bash. Charlotte is organising it and, of course, my other sisters have been roped in too.’

Adele could imagine it. Nick had three older sisters. They were a formidable force en masse. Their only weakness was a huge soft spot for their baby brother. She’d heard plenty of stories about the scrapes Nick had got himself into as a cheeky young lad, and for every misdemeanour there was a matching tale of how one or all of the sisters had bailed him out, duffed up the bully, or cleaned up the resulting mess.

‘What’s this party got to do with me?’

Nick looked at her from under the wayward tuft of hair. ‘Mum wants you to come. In fact, she’s insisting.’

‘Why?’ Maggie was always so sensible. ‘Surely she knows that having both of us together at the party would just make things awkward. Why would she want to risk her big night like that?’

‘Er—that’s the thing, you see. I haven’t really told her about…us.’

Adele felt the band of tension across her forehead tighten a few notches. ‘Us?’

‘About our…you know…problems.’

The plate on the table swam before her eyes. The sinking feeling that he’d done it again—walked away from a difficult situation, leaving someone else to deal with the fallout—crept up on her and sat on her shoulder whispering nasty little words in her ear.

Surely, not even Nick could be that daft? She looked at him. That lopsided cocky smile said it all. He always pulled that one out of the bag when he knew he’d done something that was going to make her blood boil.

It was all Adele could do not to pick up his plate and pour the contents, gravy and all, over his head. She should have had a medal for managing to stand up and walk stiffly from the restaurant without spontaneously combusting.

She gulped in a lungful of winter air and hoped it would cool her down before he caught her up. She did not want to make a huge scene in the car park of The Partridge.

This was typical Nick! Why had she even let him open his mouth in the first place? She had known no good could come of it, yet she’d trotted down the road with him like the class-A doormat that she was.

She caught a flash of a brown leather jacket at the corner of her eye and knew Nick had managed to pay the bill and give chase.

Well, tough. She wasn’t ready to talk to him right now. Thankfully, they’d decided to walk down the road to the nearest pub for lunch. It would only take her ten minutes to get home.

She listened to the staccato rhythm of her boots on the pavement as she stalked off in the direction of the house. Make that eight minutes, if she kept up this pace.

Nick could see Adele strutting from the car park and followed. He really wanted to sprint, but a little voice inside his head whispered that it would be better to let his wife cool off a bit. He compromised by jogging.

Boy, she could walk fast when she took off like this. It was a minute or so before he gained enough ground to get within talking distance.

‘Adele!’

She didn’t even turn round, just held up a hand in his direction. The face obviously wasn’t listening.

‘Come on, Adele. Please?’

She had to stop at that moment to cross a road and he caught her up.

He started to open his mouth.

‘Don’t! Just don’t,’ she warned.

He shut it again.

‘You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Nick. I can’t believe you’d turn up here after nine months of no contact and invite me to a birthday party.’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘This is a new level of insensitivity, even for you.’

Now, hang on a minute! How many times had he called and tried to apologise in the days after he’d left? How many times had she slammed the receiver down before he’d been able to get more than a syllable out? If they hadn’t communicated for nine months, it was more to do with Adele than it was with him. At least he’d tried.

In the end he’d done what she’d obviously wanted and let her be. And now she was blaming him for it?

‘Well, maybe you’ve got all the answers, Adele, but I certainly haven’t.’

She stepped back from the kerb and looked at him. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean, I’m not sure myself what is going on between us. What is this? Are we separated, or was it just a really long cooling-off period after a fight? If I can’t figure it out, how am I supposed to define it for anyone else? You wouldn’t talk to me. I have no idea what’s going on in your neat and ordered little head.’

Adele shook her head and crossed the road. He had to wait for a couple of cars to turn the corner before he could catch her up again. No more hanging around waiting for her to fill him in. He’d waited nine months and he was going to get his answers right now.

‘What did you tell people, then, Adele? What was your take on it?’

And then he shut up. He knew exactly what Adele would have told her friends. Mona would have had every last grisly detail and would be in no doubt that Nick was the black-hearted villain of the piece, while Adele came off snowy white and smelling of roses. The woman was so blinkered sometimes.

He marched along behind her in silence. He should have listened to his gut instinct. Adele was in no mood for even reasonable explanations. Anything he said would just make it worse while she was in this state.

While he waited for her to unlock the front door, the sparks flying off her were almost tangible.

‘I’m going upstairs,’ she said, and marched off, leaving the door open.

He stepped inside and closed it. Despite the twelve hours of sleep he’d had the night before, he was starting to flag again. He went into the living room and switched the television on. Maybe he could doze in front of it for a bit.

Adele would calm down soon enough. She always did. Her anger was quick to flare up, but it usually burnt itself out pretty quickly too. He flicked the television on and dropped into his favourite armchair. Just fifteen minutes watching the footie and he’d make her a cup of tea as a peace offering and see if they couldn’t discuss things without world war three starting.

A little later, just as he was considering hauling himself out of his chair and switching the kettle on, he heard Adele coming down the stairs. Or, to be more precise, he heard a whole lot of bumping and crashing, then thump, thump, thump—as if there were two of her jumping down each step.

He arrived in the hall just in time to see Adele wrestling his bag down the last three stairs.

‘Adele? What on earth are you doing?’

Adele stopped what she was doing, partly to answer, partly to catch her breath. Her arms were aching. How did a bunch of rumpled shirts weigh so much?

‘I thought that was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? I’m throwing you out.’

The look on his face was classic. If she weren’t ready to kill him, she’d want to laugh. Finally, Nick Hughes had come across a woman who refused to melt at his feet and he was totally floored.

‘You can’t throw me out. I live here too.’

‘Not any more. You can find some other poor sucker to rope into your hare-brained schemes. I’m finished with the whole lot of it.’

Her stomach dipped as she realised the implication of her own words. Was this really what four years of marriage had come to? She looked at Nick and the sickness sank right into her toes. That had wiped the dimples off his face. She should be feeling pleased he was finally getting the message, but suddenly she felt her eyes moisten.

‘I’m sorry, Adele. Really I am. I should have told Mum…something.’ He shook his head. ‘But she loves you like a daughter and I didn’t want to upset her. She’s not very…’

He swallowed the rest of the sentence. She felt her heart squeeze as he struggled to find the words.

‘She’s been…I mean, going to be really sad for us. I didn’t want to tell her until I knew for certain there wasn’t any hope.’

No hope.

Her lip quivered and she pressed her mouth into a thin line to disguise it. Nick gave her a rueful smile. Now, this was the smile that really did some damage. It was heart-wrenchingly lopsided and utterly genuine.

The fault lines started to widen. Hadn’t he said he didn’t know how to define their relationship? Did that mean he hadn’t made his mind up, that maybe he didn’t want a divorce after all?

And, even if he did, why should she punish Maggie for her son’s abandonment of his wife? Although there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel for her and Nick, she didn’t want to cause bad feeling in the family.

She breathed in and out once, sharply. Family. For four years she’d been a part of a family and that had been wonderful. Phone calls on her birthday. Loud, overpopulated Sunday lunches with too much food and too little elbow room. The world was going to seem horribly empty when all that had gone for good.

She closed her eyes. No. She had to be strong. She couldn’t weaken now. Missing out on one last chance to see them all—to say goodbye to them—was the price she’d have to pay to keep her sanity and her heart intact.

She had to focus on the fact that, once again, he was asking her to drop everything and trot off after him. And there were no guarantees that he wouldn’t leave again after it was all over. He hadn’t mentioned wanting to get back together again, had he? He just needed her to save his skin.

Too bad. He could save his own sorry hide.

He had no idea of the torment she’d been through after he’d left. She had to remember that black place and all the reasons why she never wanted to go back there.

So as Nick lounged against the door jamb, she let the blackness feed her anger until it was good and bubbling. And then she hauled his bag the short distance to the front door and flung it onto the garden path. When Nick let out a strangled hey and dived after it, she slammed the door and locked it behind him.

She punched the button on the remote control again and again. Celebrity chefs. TV’s Worst Mishaps. Top Ten Pop Stars She Didn’t Recognise. Why wasn’t there anything good on the telly? She had more than fifty channels to choose from, for goodness’ sake. There had to be something mildly interesting. Even a schmaltzy TV movie would be better than nothing.

Mind you, it was almost three o’clock in the morning.

She yawned. Normally she’d have been tucked up in bed hours ago, but tonight she just couldn’t calm down enough even to bother with the pretence of going upstairs and getting changed into her PJs. And there was something oddly comforting about sitting in the dark with only the flicker of the television for company.

Mona would say she was wallowing. Mona would probably be right.

But a girl was allowed to wallow after she’d kicked the man she loved out of her life for good.

She threw the remote onto the sofa cushion next to her and tried to concentrate on the sitcom rerun she’d stopped at.

It was no good denying it. She loved Nick. He wouldn’t make her half as crazy if she didn’t. She might try to kid herself she was trying to lock him out of her heart as well as her house, but, in reality, there was no point. He was firmly embedded there.

But that didn’t mean they were capable of building a life together.

They had different priorities. No, it was more than that. They were so utterly different that she wondered how things had lasted as long as four years. Five, if you counted the year before they got married. And then there was the year before that, when Nick had steadily pursued her and she had steadily refused until he’d worn her down and made her laugh.

She’d been very firm with him. One date—no more.

Only she’d discovered one date wasn’t enough. Well, that was how it had seemed at the time. Maybe she’d have been better off listening to her feminine intuition—the alarm in her head that had yelled code red, code red every time Nick was in range.

She sighed and let her eyes wander round the room. It was stupid to feel so desolate at the thought of saying goodbye to Nick for ever. She’d made up her mind months ago.

The light on the answer-phone was blinking. Her heart hiccuped into action. Nick?

She jabbed the button and waited for the message.

‘Hi, Nick. It’s Debbie.’

Sister number two.

‘Mum thought you might have got back by now. Hope the jet lag’s not too bad. Anyway, just to let you know that Mum is over the worst of her last round of chemo, so it’s all systems go for the party. Give me a ring and I’ll fill you in. Tell Adele there’s a chocolate torte with her name on it waiting for her. Bye.’

Chemo?

Nick’s mum had cancer? The whole world seemed to somersault. Maggie couldn’t die. She was too resilient, too vital. Why hadn’t Nick told her?

Because you never gave him a chance, a little voice whispered. Too busy feeling sorry for yourself. You shut him out while you were grieving and then, when you were ready to listen, he’d given up. And she’d been too proud to call him, too battered and hurt to risk losing him again if he rejected her. She’d lost so much already. It had been easier to blame him and nurse her grief.

If only she could call him now. He must be feeling awful. But she’d slung him out without a thought as to where he might go and she had no idea how to contact him.

Whereas she had a few close friends she had known for years, Nick always seemed to have a nebulous cloud of acquaintances. He was popular, but he was always giving up one interest to try another, tiring of the same sports clubs and restaurants quickly.

The only one who’d been constant was his old college mate—what was his name? Kelvin? Connor? No, Callum. That was it. But she’d only met him twice and had no record of his address or phone number.

She sank back into the sofa and clicked the television off. The room was plunged into darkness, but she just sat there staring at nothing, for what seemed like hours.

Then she heard a rattle at the front door. She held her breath. It must be the wind, surely? She strained to hear more but it had all gone quiet again. The door had two locks, anyway. She was just about to breathe out when she heard the noise again.

No. This time it wasn’t just a rattle. She could hear the lock turning. Goose-pimples broke out all over her arms and her stomach nosedived, but somehow she couldn’t move. All she could do was huddle herself into a ball in the corner of the sofa and try to slow the rise and fall of her chest.

If only Nick were here! Why couldn’t this have happened last night when the big lunk had been asleep in the kitchen?

Then came the sound she had been dreading: the second lock clicked and she heard the door creak open. She held her breath and, as quietly as she could, she eased herself off the sofa and hid behind the armchair. Her ankles cracked as she crouched down and she was sure the noise was as loud as a gunshot.

Someone was in the house! She began to shake. The phone. She needed the phone.

But it was across the other side of the room, and the intruder was moving down the hall towards the living-room door. She couldn’t risk it. Even if she could creep over there and make it back in time, she’d be heard talking once she made the call.

She peered out over the arm of the chair just as the living-room door brushed across the carpet. A shadow moved towards her and she froze.

CHAPTER THREE

THE burglar felt down the side of the armchair. He was so close his breath warmed the air near her. He didn’t find what he was looking for and moved his arm to reach behind the side of the chair where she was hiding.

Adele did the only thing she could think of. He wasn’t wearing gloves and when his hand was only inches from her face she lunged forward and sank her teeth into the exposed skin of his wrist.

He let out a yelp of pain and jumped back, tripping over his own feet as he did so.

‘What the…?’

Adele had been preparing to scratch and bite and kick and do anything she could think of to get out of there safely. Her leg was draped across the arm of the chair, ready to spring over it and out of the door while he was off balance.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose. That voice…

‘Nick?’

There was a shuffling noise as he got to his feet.

‘Thanks for the warm welcome, sweetheart!’

‘What are you…? What do you think you…?’ The adrenaline surge quickly converted fear to anger. Given a choice of fight or flight, Adele was ready to get down and dirty. However, the heightened state of awareness seemed to be short-circuiting her ability to form a coherent sentence.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and tried again.

‘What the heck are you doing creeping round my house in the middle of the night?’

‘Our house.’

‘Stop nit-picking! You scared me half to death!’

‘I was looking for—’ Nick leaned over and turned on a table lamp ‘—this.’

He reached past her and picked up a leather wallet lying by her foot.

‘And this.’

A mobile phone was only a few inches away.

Adele stared at it. It wasn’t the one he’d used to have. For some strange reason the knowledge made her very sad.

‘I took them out of my jeans pocket earlier on. I discovered that it’s actually very hard to find somewhere to stay with none of my friends’ phone numbers and no money for a hotel.’

She was so dazed she didn’t know what to say. One minute she’d been wishing him here and, now her wish had been granted, she was ready to boot him out of the door again. All her anger suffocated in a cloud of bafflement.

‘How did you get in?’ she asked, still staring at the phone.

Nick reached into his back pocket, pulled out a set of keys and dangled them from the tip of his finger. Adele focused on them slowly.

He shrugged. ‘I thought you’d be in bed. I’d planned to slip in quietly, get my things and disappear again. You would never have known I’d been here.’

‘You have keys?’ Why were the most basic concepts so hard to grasp all of a sudden?

‘Yup.’

She tightened her forehead until her brows puckered. ‘So, if you still have keys, why didn’t you use them when you first turned up here?’

‘Dunno. I was trying to be polite, I suppose.’

Nick? Trying to be polite? Did not compute.

He’d dive-bombed into her life again in his size-eleven boots, tried to manoeuvre her into going to a party five hundred miles away and he was worried about letting himself into his own house? It was so absurd she couldn’t even start to get her head round it.

So she did the only thing she could; she collapsed into the chair, one leg hanging over the edge, and started to laugh. And then she found she couldn’t stop. Pretty soon, tears were running down her face.

Only Nick could do this. The man was impossible, intolerable and impossible some more.

For once, Nick didn’t have a cheeky grin plastered all over his face. He just kept staring at her and blinking. He looked so lost, and when he looked like that he was impossible to resist.

She let the rest of the mirth out on one long breath and shook her head. ‘You’ll never find anywhere to stay at this time of night. You might as well go and get your things and put them in the spare room. We’ll talk later.’

When Adele swept into the kitchen at six-thirty that morning she found Nick sitting at the table waiting for her. She stopped in her tracks and tilted her head to one side.

‘You’re up early.’ About three hours too early for his normal routine.

‘You said we were going to talk.’

She pushed up the stiff cuff of her blouse and looked at her watch. ‘I’m not missing work today, Nick. I have a life and I’m not putting it on hold for you.’

He grimaced. ‘Yeah, and don’t I know it.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He rubbed the corner of one eye with his index finger. ‘Ignore me. I’m tired and grumpy. The rest of us mortals don’t spring out of bed before dawn without a hair out of place like you do.’

He might not be dressed, but he was looking much better than mortal with his pyjamas done up on the wrong button and his hair sticking up in five different directions.

Hold on. Since when did Nick wear pyjamas?

But then her thoughts veered dangerously to what he normally wore in bed and a blush crept up her neck and kept going until it was under her hairline. Pyjamas were definitely better for her blood pressure than the alternative.

Adele looked down at her skirt and blouse and her high heels then smoothed an invisible hair into the twist at the back of her head.

He’d done it again. Sometimes, all Nick had to do was be in the same room as her and she was questioning herself. When she’d walked down the stairs this morning she’d felt confident, efficient, ready to face the world. Now she just felt…overdressed.

‘I’m just up and ready for the office, that’s all. Some of us can’t spend all our time locked in the garden shed until three in the morning and call it work, you know.’

Nick yawned and covered his hand with his mouth. ‘I’m too tired to have this argument again. Can we just take it as a given that I act like a three-year-old and you’re the grown-up? Then we can skip all the shouting.’

She wanted to say ‘No, I don’t want to skip it,’ but that would make her the three-year-old, so she bit her tongue and made her way to the coffee-maker. Much to her surprise, it was already on and hot, steaming coffee was waiting for her.

Nick got up from where he was sitting and handed her a mug.

‘The office doesn’t open until nine. We’ve got time to talk.’

Adele opened her mouth to speak.

‘Yes, I know you always like to be in before eight, but even then we’ve got time.’

She closed it again and nodded. However, once she and Nick were seated either side of the table again, the room fell into silence.

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. It’s time you stopped stampeding over other people’s lives. It’s time to take responsibility for your actions.’

His mouth thinned into a line, but while he wasn’t answering back or flashing his dimples she needed to forge on.

‘I will do you this favour if you agree to a divorce. When we get home from Scotland, I’m going to see a solicitor.’

He couldn’t have looked more stunned if she’d actually reached out and slapped him round the face. Her stomach lurched as she heard her own words echo in her ears.

There. She’d said it out loud; she couldn’t undo it now.

‘It’s time to move on. I’ve got a life of my own to lead. I can’t spend the rest of it clearing up after you.’

Nick looked her straight in the eye and this time she did squirm. He seemed greyer, with all the boundless energy sucked out of him.

‘Fine. At least I know where I stand now.’

The sticky edge of the envelope refused to behave itself. Even when Nick had finished trying to smooth it down it was still bumpy and slightly off to one side. He propped it up against the coffee-maker—Adele’s first stop after a busy day at the office.

His bag was waiting for him in the hall, standing guard almost. He picked it up, hauled it outside and closed the door gently behind him. Then he stared at the glossy black paint on the front door for a good ten seconds.

The keys were warm when he pulled them from his back pocket. The letterbox felt icy in comparison, still cold from the overnight frost. He pushed against the stiff flap and dropped the bunch of keys inside. When he heard them jangle against the mat, he turned and walked away.

The air seemed curiously still when Adele opened the front door and dropped her briefcase in its usual spot. She tried to work out what was missing as she wrestled herself free of her coat and hung it away in the cupboard.

Nick must be in his workshop, rummaging for his famous recipe for fake blood. She’d make them a nice dinner and they’d discuss the situation calmly and rationally. They just didn’t work well together as a couple, that was all. There was no reason why the separation couldn’t be amicable. They could still be friends.

The envelope was the first thing she saw as she walked into the kitchen. She frowned. Nick’s handwriting in bright green felt-tip.

She picked it up and opened it, using her index finger as a paper knife, and pulled out a couple of thin sheets torn from a ring-bound notepad.

Adele, I’m staying at Craig’s for a couple of nights—thought it was best we both had a bit of space. Mum would like us to be up in Invergarrig on Friday night for a family dinner. Let me know if that’s not convenient and we’ll travel up on Saturday instead. I’ll give you a call in a couple of days when we’ve both had a chance to cool down.

N

Cool down? She was perfectly cool!

She folded the sheets in half, even smoothing down the frilly edges where they had been torn from the notepad, and placed them back inside the envelope. Then she didn’t know what to do with it, so she propped it up against the coffee-maker again and walked out of the kitchen.

She made her way upstairs and absent-mindedly turned on the bath taps.

Who the hell was Craig, anyway?

She got undressed and left her clothes in an uncharacteristic heap on the floor and tried to let the hot water wash away her disappointment. It was the coward’s way out—leaving a note like that. She should know.

She leaned forward and twisted the hot tap until the water splashing into the bath was just short of scalding.

At least she’d had a proper reason for not being able to face Nick last May. Leaving a note might have been gutless, but it had been all she could manage at the time.

Why was he so surprised at her request for a divorce? They hadn’t been living together—hadn’t even spoken—for months. What did he think was going to happen?

Since the bath was threatening to overflow, she reached forward and turned off the taps. Then she sank back into the blissfully hot water and tried to loosen her shoulder muscles.

She scrubbed her face and tried not to notice the way every sound echoed round the bathroom. Echoed round the house, even. It had taken her months to get used to living alone.

She’d only ever envisaged their Victorian terraced house as a nest for her and Nick, somewhere they could be impossibly happy and gradually fill with children. When he’d disappeared, taking the possibility of all that with him, she hadn’t been able to stand being there any more. Too many daydreams burst like balloons.

All she’d wanted was a home that seemed warm and inviting, a place you could walk into and feel the love. She and Nick had spent a couple of years doing it up, but now it didn’t seem to matter if they’d got just the right door knobs for the kitchen cabinets. A home was more than furniture and fixtures. Of all people, she should know that.

Her own family home had been a suburban palace, fitting for the business king who owned it. Pity it hadn’t been designed with children in mind. ‘Don’t touch’ and ‘Look what you’ve done!’ had seemed to echo round the high-ceilinged rooms. Her mother had been forty-one when she’d had her—a complete shock by all accounts. Adele suspected her mother had never quite got over it.

She’d certainly never let the existence of a daughter slow her down. She’d hired a nanny and continued to travel the world with her husband. To Adele she’d always seemed a little far-off and glamorous—a bit like the queen.

Adele rested her head on the bath and stared at the ceiling.

She’d had such great plans for this house—for her life—and, in one swift move, Nick had turned everything upside down.

When he’d left she’d tried to give it a new identity. A few new prints on the walls, different pot plants in the living room.

Of course, she’d cleared up all his things and stuck them in a box in the wardrobe almost immediately she’d returned from her stay at Mona’s, but the lingering stamp of Nick on the house had been harder to erase.

Eventually she’d managed to stop expecting to find his jacket slung over the back of the sofa, or to have to close the back door he’d left open after racing down to his workshop to try out his latest brainwave.

He’d only been back a couple of days and now she had to start all over again. And it wasn’t as if his stuff was scattered round the house this time. No, this time it was all in her head, and she wasn’t sure she had the energy to spring clean it right at the moment, not when she had to spend the weekend with him. Better save it for Monday.

She wouldn’t tell Mona, though. Mona would get the wrong idea and think she didn’t mean what she said about the divorce.

Nick stayed true to his word—he didn’t phone for a few days. That didn’t stop Adele jumping out of her skin every time she heard it ring. In the end, she decided to let the answer-phone save her from any more breathless hellos. It was getting embarrassing.

Then, on Wednesday night, at eight forty-three, she heard his voice on the speaker and froze.

‘Adele? It’s me. I…um…we need to decide what time we want to leave on Friday morning.’ There was a long pause. ‘I’ll call again later and see if I can catch you in.’ Five seconds passed—Adele knew because she counted them in elephants—and then he hung up.

She carefully slid her laptop off her thighs and onto the sofa and walked over to the phone. The caller ID revealed a number she didn’t recognise. The accommodating Craig’s, she guessed.

She pressed the dial button and waited while it rang.

‘Hello?’

The voice was young, blonde and was still halfway through a giggle. Adele stiffened.

‘Could I speak with Nick, please?’

‘Sure. He’s just in the other room.’ There were muffled noises as the girl covered the mouthpiece with her hand. She didn’t do a very good job of it, because Adele still heard everything she said.

‘Nicky?’ she yelled. ‘It’s for you…I think it’s your mum.’

Nicky? Adele shuddered. And she wasn’t even going to think about the other comment.

She could hear him laughing as he made his way to the phone and held her breath as he picked it up.

‘I’m wearing my clean underwear just in case I get run over by a bus, Mum, I promise.’

‘Bully for you.’

‘Adele!’

‘Craig sounds a lot blonder and squeakier than I thought he would.’

‘Huh? Oh, no. That’s Kai. She’s his girlfriend—this week. How did you know she was blonde?’

Adele rolled her eyes. ‘Lucky guess.’

‘I take it you heard my message.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, are we going up Friday or Saturday?’

She bit her lip. An extra day with Nick was going to be difficult, but it might be the last time she got to see her in-laws. A family dinner sounded wonderful.

‘I can do Friday.’

She heard him exhale. ‘That’s great. We’re going to have to leave early, though.’

‘How early?’

‘Dunno. Haven’t settled on a time yet.’

Typical. He hadn’t thought about this at all.

‘Well, what time is the dinner?’

‘Hang on a second—Mum rang me with all the details. I just need to find them.’

The phone at his end clattered onto a hard surface and she heard a rustling noise. It must have driven Maggie mad not to send him a little card with all the details in it, just in case he forgot. Honestly, she’d put little notes in his packed-lunch box if she could.

‘OK,’ he said, sounding slightly breathless. ‘It starts at eight.’

‘Let’s aim to get there for six at the latest. It should give us a bit of time to stretch our legs and freshen up. How long will it take us?’

‘Debbie says it takes her nine hours, but she’s about an hour closer, so I’d suggest we leave at eight.’

‘Let’s make it seven. We’ve got the M25 to deal with.’

Nick groaned.

‘What time are you picking me up, then?’ Adele asked.

Silence for a few seconds.

‘You’ve got the car, Adele. I didn’t sneak one back into the country in my hand luggage, you know.’

Adele closed her eyes and dropped onto the sofa. ‘So, not only am I going to be stuck in a car with you for eleven hours, I’m going to have to do the driving as well?’

‘We can share. I’ll let you do the first leg.’

‘Gee, thanks.’ She opened her eyes and gave the ceiling a long, hard look. ‘You’d better tell me Craig’s address. I want you standing on the doorstep at seven o’clock sharp or I’m driving away without you.’

Now who was sounding like his mother?

‘Whatever you say.’

Adele just knew he was doing a little cocky smirk at the phone. Her lips curled into a smile anyway.

Impossible. The man was impossible.

If it weren’t the crack of dawn, Adele would’ve been leaning on the horn with all her weight. It was bad enough she’d ended up as chauffeur, without being made to wait around in her car in sub-zero temperatures. The heater was a bit dodgy and would only produce something approaching warmth once her foot was near the floor.

The clock on the dashboard ticked. Seven minutes past seven. He had until ten past and then she was aborting the mission.

She shook her head. Aborting the mission. What kind of phrase was that? She was starting to sound more and more like Mona with each passing day. Anyone would think this was some kind of military operation.

Adele jabbed the radio on with a gloved finger.

Maybe she was on to something.

Maybe if she treated this like a campaign she might emerge, if not triumphant, at least with her heart and her dignity intact. She couldn’t let Nick worm his way past her defences this time. If she failed, and had to pick up the pieces afterwards, there wouldn’t be enough bits left over to glue back together to make a whole Adele. She’d never be the same.

The only problem was she knew nothing about warfare. Only a few jumbled phrases from World War Two movies and things her rather stern grandfather had used to say.

Know your enemy.

Well, that was easy enough. She knew Nick inside out. Didn’t help much, though. The more she thought about him the more she seemed to turn to mush. And this soldier wasn’t going to do mush, thank you very much.

Always keep the element of surprise.

Adele smiled and stroked the steering wheel, a smile widening across her cheeks. Nick was going to go mad when he saw the car. She smothered a giggle with her hand and the fluff of the angora glove tickled her lips.

It was about time Nick had a taste of his own medicine. She rubbed her hands together. So, this was what it felt like to be bad. The scary thing was, it felt kind of good.

The second hand of the clock juddered towards the twelve. It was nine minutes past seven…and forty seconds…and forty-five seconds. Adele turned the key in the ignition.

True to form, Nick burst from the front door of the flat with a holdall and a small backpack. He hadn’t spotted her yet. A stocky guy with red hair handed Nick what looked like a sports bag. Nick clapped him on the back and smiled.

Then the smile dropped off Adele’s face. Something blonde and skinny ran from inside, flung its arms round Nick’s neck and plastered a big kiss on his cheek. Adele growled then suddenly stopped, surprised at herself.

A few seconds later her soon-to-be-ex-husband was down the garden path and looking up and down the street. Adele wound down her window and waved. Nick waved back—and then did a double-take.

She grimaced. He was striding this way and he didn’t look very happy.

‘Adele! What have you done with the car?’

‘Shhh! It’s seven o’clock in the morning.’

‘I know what blooming time it is. I want to know what you’ve done with my car!’

‘Our car—and I sold it.’

‘You…you…’ He looked heavenwards then pressed his lips together and shook his head. She flinched as he opened the boot and threw his bags inside. One of them jangled, which was a bit odd, but she didn’t stop to think about it. She had more pressing matters holding her attention.

Nick got in the passenger seat, slammed the door closed and turned to face her.

‘Well?’

‘We didn’t need that boxy old thing any more. It’s not practical for the city.’

Nick seemed to be mouthing the words boxy old thing.

She swallowed. Perhaps she’d gone a bit too far.

Selling their Jeep had been the only bit of revenge she’d had. She’d wanted to shred his shirts to ribbons with a razor blade, but she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it. They’d still smelled of him.

‘I needed something smaller, more efficient—a little runabout.’

He poked at a button on the dashboard. Nothing happened.

‘A little rust bucket, more like,’ he muttered. ‘If this is all you got for the money you should have got from my Jeep, then you were well and truly done.’

She gave him a sideways glance. ‘I’m not stupid. I didn’t spend all of the money on this. I’m perfectly capable of buying a car without your input, you know.’

He snorted. ‘Adele, capable is your middle name. Why would I ever think you needed me for anything?’

‘Now you’re just being ridiculous.’

Nick turned away to do up his seat belt.

Adele followed suit. ‘I suppose you’d like me to be a bit more like blondie over there, falling all over you and worshipping at your feet? Does she always wander round in just a vest top and a pair of knickers? She must be very resilient to the cold.’

Nick’s lips stayed firmly clamped together as he smiled. ‘She’s from Sweden. She’s used to it.’

Adele crunched the gear stick into place and checked the rear-view mirror, scowling.

‘Of course, sometimes she forgets to wear the vest,’ he added.

She yanked at the handbrake.

Nick chuckled. ‘I’m kidding, Adele. Lighten up. We’ve got a long journey ahead. I thought we could stop in the Midlands around lunchtime. Let’s make nice, polite conversation until then.’

‘You do the talking. I’m driving.’

‘OK. Now, what shall we talk about? I know. Going back to our earlier conversation, there was at least one thing you needed me for. Begged me for on occasion, if I recall rightly.’

Adele hunched over the steering wheel and said nothing. At this rate, Nick would be lucky if he was still alive by lunchtime.

CHAPTER FOUR

A LORRY hulked past in the outside lane and Adele gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. What was it about being overtaken by one of those monsters that made you sure you were going to veer off the road and end up in a heap of twisted metal?

Nick was fumbling in the rucksack at his feet. She flicked a look over and breathed a sigh of relief. He had one of his gadgets in his hand—probably his iPod—and she’d have a few moments’ peace if he plugged himself in.

Much to her annoyance he started fixing a big sucker with an arm attached to the windscreen.

‘What on earth are you up to now?’

Nick just grinned. ‘Just wait and see. You’ll love it.’

Another truck decided to overtake with millimetres to spare and she fixed her eyes on the motorway lane in front of her. When she had a chance to look again, Nick was huddled over the gadget, pressing buttons in rapid succession. It beeped back at him. He reached over and fixed it into the cradle stuck to the windscreen.

‘Satellite navigation,’ he said proudly.

She rolled her eyes then concentrated on keeping well back from the car in front.

‘I should have guessed that eventually you would get a whole host of gizmos to do your thinking for you, especially now I’m not around.’

‘You’re sitting right next to me. You are around.’

‘You know what I mean. You’re a typical man. God forbid you actually pick up the road atlas.’

‘Adele, you would never let me within ten feet of the road atlas. Admit it, sweetheart, you just don’t like giving up the control.’

‘So not true. I just like having something to do on long journeys.’

And she’d been looking for a distraction, something to take her mind off the man sitting so close to her that all her nerve-endings were sizzling with awareness and she was constantly on edge.

Come on, who liked being replaced by a machine? She glared at the contraption as it sat in its cradle.

‘What happens if that thing gets you hopelessly lost?’

Nick leaned back and stretched his legs out. ‘Impossible. That’s the beauty of it. The information is always at your fingertips. It pinpoints exactly where you are, night and day.’

She stopped glaring and studied the display. Maybe she should give it a go?

‘It never goes wrong?’

Nick shrugged. ‘It’s a machine. It has its moments but, on the whole, it’s as accurate as you would be. Just about perfect.’

Adele sighed. Perfect. How she was learning to hate that word.

She knew all about the pressures of having to be right one hundred per cent of the time, of having everyone expecting you to be perfect. No, not just expecting—relying on you being perfect. It was such a strain to have to juggle everything and never having the luxury of knowing that, if you dropped a ball once in a while, it didn’t matter.

The rattle from the engine warned her that her foot had been heavier on the accelerator than she had intended. Eighty-five? Whoops. She carefully eased off the pedal.

A cut-glass, metallic voice pierced the silence. ‘In nine hundred feet, take the next exit.’

Adele squinted at the display, but the sun was on it and she couldn’t see it properly.

‘That means get over into the other lane, Adele. We’re going to miss the exit if you don’t.’

Easier said than done. Half the traffic on the motorway was trying to leave by that exit and there wasn’t a space to slip into. She tried to find a gap without causing a pile-up, but there were too many cars all packed too closely together.

‘Take the next exit. Take the next exit.’

By the time she had checked her mirrors again and tried to slow down, it was too late. The rust bucket sailed right past the cluttered slip-road.

Nick threw his hands in the air. ‘Great!’

She glared at him. ‘It would have been easier if you’d just let me rely on my own eyes and ears and read the signs! I’m not used to using this stupid—’

The sat nav interrupted her with a persistent binging noise. A huge question mark flashed on its screen. ‘Perform an U-turn as soon as possible,’ it ordered in an infuriatingly calm manner.

‘Be quiet, you bossy woman!’ she yelled back. ‘We’re on a motorway. I thought you were supposed to know that!’

Nick threw his head back and roared with laughter.

Of course, he would find it funny.

The service station was a welcome sight, although not the most glamorous of locations. Adele leapt out of the car and headed for the Ladies’. Once there, she placed her hands on the shelf in front of a wide mirror and leaned forward to let them take her weight.

She breathed out and stared at herself. Her hair was still in its pony-tail and she looked as neat and tidy as always, but as she studied her reflection she could tell she was coming slightly unravelled. It was something about her eyes, a slight downturn of her mouth.

She stared until she thought she would go cross-eyed and then she straightened, pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin.

It was a familiar routine. One she’d learned at school when she needed to present a brave face to the world. She hadn’t had the charm and easy wit of some of her classmates, but what she’d lacked in confidence she’d made up for with observation and hard work.

She’d spent hours studying the popular girls, the way they stood and talked. Even their laughs and hand gestures. Then she’d got up early and practised in the bathroom mirror while everyone else was snoring. Pretty soon she’d had friends and the teachers seemed to notice her more and, by the end of her days at Lumley College, she’d been head girl.

No one need know the geeky girl still lurked under the surface. She was hidden by the right body language, a certain glint in the eyes. It was like slipping on a cloak, an outer skin that nobody bothered to look beneath.

She could normally make the transformation with a single bat of her eyelashes, but today had been especially trying and she needed the reassurance the mirror could give her.

Over the years her alter ego had spent more and more time in the limelight. Nowadays the real Adele only peeked out when safely within the sanctuary of her own home. Maybe one day the shy little girl would get drowned out by this alternate persona altogether and the brisk efficiency, the confidence, would be real.

She smiled. Eventually she’d named the other side of her personality. Super Adele she’d called her. Only instead of a cape and unforgiving Lycra, her costume had more to do with the way she held herself, the smile gauged to be just bright enough without being obviously fake. The precise dimensions had taken years to perfect.

Carefully, she added another layer of mascara and brushed the lipstick across her lips. There. Ready to face the world—on the outside, anyway.

She hoisted her handbag squarely back onto her shoulder and walked over to the door.

Super Adele had seemed such a good idea in the beginning. Everybody loved her. And, for a while, she’d revelled in the attention. Nowadays, the adoration had lost its warm glow.

It’s her they love, not me.

Even Nick. He’d fallen in love with Super Adele.

When they’d first been married, she’d gloried in the way he’d thought she could do anything, be anything, but after a couple of years it had just got tiring. She’d tried to climb down off the pedestal, but Nick wouldn’t let her. He was holding fast to Super Adele and wasn’t going to let her go.

The impulse to sag and let her shoulders droop was almost overwhelming, but she straightened her spine further. The restaurant was just in front of her and she could see Nick sitting at a table waiting for her.

Oh, how she longed to just slump into the moulded plastic seat, lay her head on the table and sob.

Sometimes she hated her alter ego.

Nick let Adele sweep off and made his way to the café. An abundance of bright plastic and the smell of greasy food greeted him. He avoided the ageing sausages and other offerings—they looked as if they had been sitting under the heat lamps for at least a week—and bought two cups of grim-looking coffee instead.

He settled into an off-white seat near the streaky windows that filled one side of the room and waited for Adele to appear.

The restaurant was practically deserted. An elderly couple were working their way through a rubbery-looking fried breakfast with excruciating slowness, a businessman took refuge behind a crisp newspaper and a teenager in a dirty apron was only just pretending to clean the tables.

She soon appeared and sat down, all stiff and starchy, in the seat opposite him. He hated it when she did that. She didn’t need to put on a front with him.

‘Come on, Adele. It’s not the end of the world. It didn’t take us long to find the next exit and work our way back to the right motorway.’

Adele nodded and sipped her coffee. As always, her anger had run out of fuel and she was left feeling drained.

He caught her eye. ‘Have you ever maybe thought that your standards are a little too high? You set yourself punishing goals and are tough on yourself if you don’t achieve them. You don’t have to prove yourself over and over, you know. It was just a wrong turning. Everybody goes the wrong way at one time or another.’

‘I’m not trying to prove anything or impress anyone. I just like things to be done right. I only ask of myself what I expect in others. It would be hypocritical if I didn’t.’

He nodded slightly to himself. Talk about hitting the nail on the head. To live up to Adele’s standards you needed to be able to pole-vault.

‘I think the closer people get to you, the higher the pass mark is.’

‘Don’t be silly. People don’t need to sit an exam to be my friends.’

Oh, no? Then why did he feel as if every word, every movement he made was being weighed and judged?

‘I think you want everyone to do things the way you do.’

She shook her head while she swallowed a sip of coffee.

‘Just because I don’t plan everything a year in advance, it doesn’t mean I’m hopeless,’ he continued. ‘I’m different from you, Adele, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get things done or I don’t care. I do. I’ve never missed a deadline or broken a contract. It might look like I’m winging it to you, but I’m not. We just have different methods for achieving our goals.’

‘I know that.’

He wanted to hold his stomach and laugh out loud until the retired couple gave him dirty looks.

This was pointless. If he couldn’t make her see sense, he might as well settle for improving her mood. He should have got a little gold star for resisting the urge to crack a joke and try and force a smile out of her.

‘Do you want a pain au chocolat? I saw some on the counter.’

She nodded again, a hint of a smile on her face. He jumped up and paid for it quickly. If Adele didn’t get a blood-sugar boost soon, she’d never cheer up.

He tipped his head to one side and took a good look at her. ‘You look wiped out.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

He reached forward and took her hand. She looked tired, all the fight sucked out of her, but she was still incredibly beautiful. Not in a showy way, but there was a strength in her delicate features that gave an indication of her drive and tenacity, an intelligent light behind her eyes that warned him to keep on his toes.

‘I’ll drive the next leg. Are you insured for that?’

Just for a nanosecond, she visibly sagged. ‘It’s me, Nick. Of course I’m insured. For everything—flood, fire, acts of God, spontaneous combustion…Go on, make a joke about that.’

He squeezed her hand. He’d always loved her fingers—long and fine. He’d missed them.

‘You go back to the car and sink into the passenger seat. I’ve got a couple of things to get from the shop.’

He watched her as she walked away. She always stood so straight, so proud.

How he was going to demolish those proud barriers, he didn’t know. But one thing was certain: he wanted his wife back, and he was going to do everything in his power this weekend to remind her how much she wanted him too.

Just as well he had a few tricks up his sleeve to help nudge her in the right direction.

Pretending to be asleep could in fact be very tiring, Adele decided. She twitched open an eyelid and took a sideways look at Nick. Look at him humming to himself and acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Only a few days ago she’d told this man she wanted him out of her life for good. Yes, he’d looked a little angry at the time, but now it didn’t seem as if it bothered him at all.

She relaxed her eyelid and it dropped closed.

She wasn’t a vindictive person, but part of her was really upset that he wasn’t more upset. Deciding to walk away from their marriage had been the hardest decision of her life. She wanted Nick to look at least a little shell-shocked.

A huge sigh juddered from her body.

For a person who had a pathological need to be right, she wasn’t taking much joy in the fact that, once again, her instincts had been spot-on. Nick didn’t take her seriously, didn’t take their marriage seriously. If he had, he wouldn’t be so blasé about the whole thing.

Then again, if he’d cared, he wouldn’t have left in the first place. He might say he loved her, but he didn’t love her enough. The job had meant more to him.

But now he was back, looking all delectable. And he’d kissed her in the kitchen, hadn’t he? Was there a possibility that he’d regretted his decision to abandon her?

When she’d stood at the front of the church with him, and they’d exchanged their vows, she’d thought it was going to last for ever. She’d been swept along by the intense chemistry between them and hadn’t even stopped to question if there had been enough there to sustain a fifty-year relationship. It had just seemed as if all the right ingredients were there and she hadn’t bothered to dig any deeper.

He’d made her believe they were two contrasting halves of the same whole. Sweet and sour. Light and dark. But, in the end, it had turned out that they were just too different. More like oil and water.

The analogy just didn’t hold up. As soon as the sun arrived, night was swallowed up and it was daytime again. They couldn’t co-exist without one destroying the other—and neither could she and Nick.

A voice she was learning to hate cut the silence. ‘In one thousand feet, take the next exit.’

She opened her eyes and sat up. They were leaving the motorway already? Had she really been asleep and missed most of the journey? A crazy flame of relief flickered in her chest.

It was raining, but instead of the craggy hills and pine trees she’d expected to see, there were rolling fields and hedgerows. And the landscape was depressingly flat. It all looked far too English.

‘Why are we coming off the motorway, Nick? Where are we?’

‘Somewhere just outside of Stafford. Pit stop,’ he added by way of explanation.

Despite the empty feeling in her tummy, she felt her taste buds rebel at the thought of more plastic service-station food. ‘I’m not sure I’m really…Why are we leaving the motorway?’

His co-conspirator saved him from answering.

‘Take the next exit and continue left.’

Nick did as he was told for once and soon they were driving through country lanes.

She was too tired to ask. Nick was going to do what he wanted to do, whether she minded or not, so she might as well save her breath.

After about fifteen minutes they turned down a driveway and he brought the car to a halt. They were parked outside a city-dweller’s fantasy cottage: leaded windows, gabled roof, a pretty fence enclosing a half-tamed garden that looked spectacular, even at this time of year.

Nick let out a sharp blast on the horn and Adele winced.

Moments later a man in his thirties came bounding out of the cottage and grinned at Nick as he emerged from the car.

‘Nick! Glad you managed to make it after all. Have you got that washing-machine motor you promised me?’

‘Sure have. It’s in the car, but before I let you have it you have to keep up your end of the bargain—a hearty lunch for two weary travellers.’

The man grinned. ‘Phoebe’s made one of her famous soups. If you’re not careful she’ll make you drink a whole vat of it before she lets you continue on your way. Women, huh?’

Adele opened the door and stretched her journey-stiffened legs.

‘And talking of women, this must be your missus,’ he added. And before Adele could say ‘How do you do’ he’d ignored the hand she offered and pulled her into a bear hug. She sent Nick a pleading look over the man’s shoulder, but all he did was grin back.

‘Adele, this is Andy—we’ve worked on a few projects together.’

Well, that explained the fascination for odd bits of junk and anything mechanical.

Andy finally let her out of his grasp and she gave him a shaky smile.

‘Nice to meet you, Adele. I’ve heard a lot about you. Nick never stops going on about his beautiful, successful wife. I think he’s secretly hoping he can give up messing about on film sets and that you’ll keep him in the style to which he’d like to become accustomed.’

‘Oh.’

Eloquent, Adele. Very impressive. That’s a wonderful way to live up to the picture Nick’s painted of you.

But Andy didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy chatting to Nick as he led them into the cottage. Adele trudged along behind them, forgotten. She let out a large breath and ran her hand through her hair. Thanks to Nick’s build-up, Super Adele was going to have to stay for lunch. And, at this precise moment, her alter ego’s super powers were glaringly absent.

She watched the two men as she followed them inside and into a cosy lounge complete with inglenook fireplace. Andy dressed like Nick: worn jeans and tops with funky logos or slogans on them. He even had that same mischievous glint in his eye. There had to be a special-effects designers’ code or something: must never grow up and must always be obsessed with green goo and rubber latex body parts. A whole organisation of Peter Pans. Now, there was a scary thought.

She heard footsteps in the hall and turned to see a woman enter the room. Nick was instantly off his feet and squeezing the life out of her—much the same kind of greeting that Andy had blessed her with.

‘Phoebe! It’s great to see you again. How’s it going?’

Phoebe laughed and smiled as Nick hugged even tighter and rocked her from side to side until she began to lose her balance. A stabbing feeling in her tummy caught Adele by surprise. It didn’t ease up, not even when Phoebe whacked Nick on the arm and told him to let her go.

Phoebe wrestled herself away from Nick and turned to face her, still beaming.

‘You must be the famous Adele.’

Adele rose from the sofa she was sitting on, her arms and legs suddenly feeling stiff and brittle. She held out a hand. Phoebe raised an eyebrow just a fraction, but shook it anyway.

Words of greeting failed to form an orderly queue in her head. What could she say? These people seemed to know all about her but, until five minutes ago, she’d not even known of their existence. Why? Had she really tuned Nick out every time he’d talked about the fine details of his work? Had she really been that self-absorbed?

‘Hello,’ she said, trying to smile, but feeling like a cardboard cut-out.

Phoebe smiled back. A proper smile. She’d obviously decided to give her guest the benefit of the doubt. Adele felt as if she’d shrunk an inch or two. If only there were a telephone box somewhere around where she could do a twirl and come out as her.

‘Come out to the barn, Nick. I want your input on something I’m building. I’m supposed to be making a crazed tennis-ball machine for an ad I’m working on, but it’s just refusing to be as diabolical as I want it to be.’

‘If you want diabolical, I’m your man,’ Nick answered, already starting towards the door.

Phoebe shook her head.

‘Lunch will be ready in about twenty minutes, you two. Don’t make me come and fetch you, OK?’ She turned to Adele and gave her a wink. ‘Boys and their toys, right? Our two are worse than most, I suspect. Why don’t you come through to the kitchen and we can chat while the men start pulling that machine to bits?’

‘Sure.’

She wanted to be bright and sparkling and charming—Super Adele—but her super powers seemed well and truly buried under a whole heap of other junk. Out of order. Please try again later.

Phoebe seemed really nice. She would go into the kitchen and make small talk and be as pleasant as she knew how to be and ignore the unsettled feeling fluttering in her stomach.

Suddenly, being stuck in the little hatchback with Nick seemed like an attractive prospect. Being here, watching Phoebe potter round the kitchen, was like watching a horror movie. Only this movie had a difference: instead of everything being much, much worse, it was far, far better—what her life should be like, but wasn’t.

It was like having her worst failure served up for her so she could choke on every mouthful.

They had it all: the home, the happy marriage. They had roots. Despite herself, she was insanely jealous.

More than anything, Adele wanted roots.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHATEVER Phoebe was stirring in that pot smelled utterly fantastic.

‘I hope you like soup. It’s broccoli and Stilton.’

‘That sounds lovely.’ Adele sat down at the breakfast bar and stared blankly at Phoebe’s back as she stirred. Then she remembered her resolve to make polite conversation, but it was a bit like when she’d first learned to drive. Nothing came naturally. Every word had to be planned and mentally rehearsed. It took all her concentration.

‘How long have you lived here?’

Phoebe tasted the soup and frowned. ‘About two years,’ she said, adding more salt as she spoke. ‘We decided to slow down a little. We both had such hectic work schedules that we hardly saw each other—but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about that.’

Adele dipped her head and fiddled with her fingers. She’d assumed their hosts didn’t know about her marital problems. Although she’d been cross Nick hadn’t told his family the truth, it wasn’t comfortable having her problems out in the open and sullying the atmosphere of perfect domesticity in this cottage.

‘My hat goes off to you and Nick if you’ve found a way to make it work without one of you cutting back on your work.’ Phoebe gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘I’m sure Andy and I would have been heading for the divorce courts if we hadn’t moved here.’

She opened and shut her mouth. Just a lucky guess, then. Her secrets were safe after all.

Phoebe was stirring the soup again. Thank goodness she didn’t seem to mind the long gaps in the conversation.

Adele fiddled with a lemon from a bowl on the central island. A move to the country wouldn’t have saved her marriage. That would just be a geographical shift. Nick would still be Nick, and Adele would still be Adele, and roses round the door weren’t going to suddenly make them compatible.

Phoebe banged the wooden spoon on the saucepan. ‘Done. Do you think you can keep an eye on it while I call the lads and get Max?’

Adele nodded. A dog called Max. That was the name she and Nick had picked out for the puppy they were going to get when their respective projects had been put to bed. But then there had been another deal, another project, and the time had never come.

Nick and Andy entered the kitchen a few minutes later, still deep in conversation about mechanics and motors. She shuffled in her seat and waited for Phoebe to return. At least with another female in the room there was a vague possibility the conversation might turn towards something that didn’t sound like Klingon.

Phoebe’s footsteps outside the kitchen door helped her perk up.

These were nice people. She could chit-chat, if she really put her mind to it. She just needed to get into character, telephone box or no telephone box. She bared her teeth in the beginnings of a smile, but then Phoebe pushed the door open and every molecule in Adele’s bloodstream turned to ice.

Max wasn’t an Alsatian, or even a Jack Russell. It was much worse than that.

Max was a baby.

A pink, gurgling bundle that sat in his high chair and blew bubbles at Adele while she tried to get her pulse rate under control.

It was official. Babies were now top of her things-to-be-terrified-of list. Worse than spiders by a long shot.

It was OK if she was warned, as she was when she went to Mona’s house, but when little dimpled creatures appeared out of the blue she went into a tail-spin. A crawling feeling in her tummy made her want to push back her chair and run.

She couldn’t look at him. He was too cute. His intoxicating baby scent was drifting towards her and it was killing her. She sipped warm liquid off her spoon and tried to block it all out.

The chatter around the table filtered away, almost as if she were listening to them talking underwater, and she was left alone with the knowledge that, if things had not gone so disastrously wrong, she would have had a crumpled pink newborn to call her own right this very minute.

She sucked in a breath through her nostrils and tried to shake the images away without actually moving her head. Pictures of her and Nick: laughing in a large cream kitchen, eating soup and taking turns to pace the room with a tiny bundle on their shoulder as it hiccuped.

And then the images became even more disturbing. The confusion she’d felt only days after her husband had walked out on her when she’d found the second pink line on the pregnancy test. The horror a couple of weeks after that when the bleeding had started. And finally, the deep blackness that had shrouded her for months afterwards.

She blinked and her lids stayed closed only a fraction of a second longer than was necessary.

I am not going to cry. I will just harden and harden until I can’t feel any more and then I will chat and finish my soup and leave as if nothing was the matter.

It wasn’t Andy and Phoebe’s fault. She shouldn’t punish them by falling to pieces at the lunch table.

It wasn’t even Nick’s fault. The doctor had said it was one of those things—as though she’d left her umbrella on the bus—and that there was no reason why she shouldn’t try again in a couple of months. Only that had been a bit tricky when her husband and his vital ingredients had vanished from her life, never to return.

Adele watched her hosts as, in a strange kind of slow-motion, Andy passed the basket of warm bread to Phoebe and she gave him a little smile.

Such a lot passed between them in that tiny moment and Adele’s heart clenched at the memory of times when Nick had looked at her that way. Now he was just glaring at her over his soup.

She’d been wrong. This wasn’t a horror story; it was a fairy tale.

And, if she’d believed in fairies and magic, she’d have stepped through the looking glass and taken their places. But this was real life, and real life was cold and hard and ultimately lonely.

There was no way she and Nick were headed for a happy ending.

Nick’s eyes never left Adele as he shovelled soup into his mouth. At first everything had seemed fine—the conversation had been flowing, but then he realised it was flowing around her as if she were a rock sat in the middle of a gushing stream. None of it made an impact.

He should have known she’d react like this. It wasn’t part of her neatly manicured plan and Adele did not like veering from the plan. Not one little bit.

But, stupidly, he’d hoped that bringing her here might remove the blinkers she wore so firmly strapped to her head. She wasn’t even trying. Slow-burning anger warmed his belly.

Phoebe had asked her a question and she hadn’t even pretended to be interested. She’d just stared into space and ignored her. He’d seen the hurt look on Phoebe’s face, caught her eye and shrugged an apology.

How dared Adele do this?

Maybe he should have warned her about his little detour. Maybe he should have warned Andy and Phoebe that things were less than cheery in the Hughes household. But that did not give his darling wife the excuse to behave like a spoilt child. He was going to drag her into this conversation even if she came kicking and screaming. A little civility was not too much to ask.

‘What do you think of the soup, Adele?’

She turned to look at him slowly. ‘Hmm?’

‘The soup. What do you think?’

‘Oh.’ She hurriedly took another spoonful. ‘It’s nice.’

Well, monosyllables were better than nothing.

He faced Phoebe and grinned. ‘The closest we ever came to home-made soup was buying the over-priced ones in cartons and emptying them into a pan.’

‘I’ve got some recipes for really tasty but easy ones, if you’re interested,’ Phoebe said, looking hopefully at Adele.

Adele smiled back. Sort of. Progress at last.

‘Thank you, but I really don’t have time.’

She went back to playing with her soup, although hardly any of it made its way into her mouth.

He’d have done better if he’d let her stay in a sullen lump at one end of the table. Jumping right in and hoping Adele would follow had been a bad idea. That was what he’d tried to do with this whole trip in the first place, and look how that was turning out.

When was he ever going to learn?

The kitchen seemed darker and more oppressive than it had done when they’d started eating and it took Nick a few moments to realise it had nothing to do with Adele’s mood and everything to do with the fact it was about to rain. Huge grey clouds hung precariously in the air, darkening the sky as if the sun had just set.

Andy stood up. ‘Give us a hand, mate? We left half that motor outside the barn and the bits will rust if they get left out in the rain.’

Nick ran out to join Andy as they scooped various bits of scrap metal off the grass in front of the barn he used as a workshop and dumped them inside. It had always fascinated him how cogs and shafts and odd little shapes fitted together to make something useful. Something that worked—each bit playing its part.

The rain started to splash down in big drops that ran through his hair and down his face as he collected the last pile of stuff.

He’d been so confident when they’d started their journey this morning that he’d be able to win Adele round, but now he wasn’t so sure. Their marriage wasn’t just on hold, it was lying in pieces and he wasn’t sure they could put it all back together and still have something that worked.

Adele swished a damp tea towel round a soup bowl then placed it on the stack with the others. At least she couldn’t mess up helping with the dishes. The added bonus was that it was a chore that involved very little talking. None at all, if she were lucky.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Phoebe wiping her son’s face and unbuckling the harness of his high-chair. He smiled at her as she lifted him up and immediately thrust his chubby little hand into Phoebe’s hair and tugged. She didn’t seem to mind. She just laughed and kissed him on the nose.

The dish Adele was wiping slid through the soggy tea towel and didn’t even attempt to bounce off the tiled floor.

Nothing could go wrong while wiping up, huh? Famous last words.

‘I’m sorry, Phoebe. I should have changed to a fresh towel when this one got damp.’

Phoebe shook her head. ‘Don’t worry. I drop stuff all the time. I now only ever buy cheap white crockery from the market. It’s never hard to find something that matches when the inevitable happens. I’ll go and get the broom. Here—’ she extended her arms and held Max towards her ‘—if you could take him, I’ll be back in just a tick.’

Adele looked at the little legs swinging in mid-air and swallowed. However, before her mind had made a conscious decision, her hands had found their way under Max’s armpits and she drew him to her chest.

Phoebe disappeared out through a little wooden door and Adele was left alone in the kitchen with a warm little body in her arms.

Max had stretched his neck to breaking point almost to follow his mother as she crossed the kitchen and, now that she was gone, he let out a squeal of part-rage, part-despair.

Max didn’t understand his mummy was coming back in just a minute and it would do no good to calmly explain that, just because he couldn’t see her for a bit, it didn’t mean she was gone for ever. Adele stroked his hair and whispered what soothing words she could. The truth that Mummy was coming back soon did nothing to negate this little one’s sense of abandonment. She just couldn’t communicate that to him. He stiffened against her, arched his back and screamed.

Know how you feel, she thought. Only she’d learned early on that stamping and screaming never worked when the people you loved disappeared. They left anyway and they didn’t come back, no matter how good you tried to be.

She tried bouncing Max up and down, hoping his life turned out better. But there was no way Phoebe and Andy would leave this little one to wither away at boarding-school, spending some of the school holidays with distant relations that didn’t really have room for him.

Thankfully, Phoebe returned and Max stopped yelling. He seemed quite happy to take hold of her jumper with his fists and babble to himself as long as he could see Phoebe sweeping up the pieces of the broken dish.

He even looked up at her and beamed now he felt safe again. Adele’s heart stuttered. He was so adorable, with his tufty black hair and toothless smile. And he smelled so good—of baby powder and innocence. It was all she could do not to cook up a kidnapping plot.

Baby smiles, she decided, were as effective on her armour plating as hydrochloric acid.

Phoebe had just about finished clearing up the mess Adele had made.

‘Phoebe? I’m really sorry about the plate. And…and about lunch too. I wasn’t a very good guest. I’ve just got a lot on my mind at the moment. It was nothing personal.’

Phoebe put down the dustpan and brush and turned to lean her bottom against the counter. ‘Nick?’

‘How did you know?’

‘After the looks you were giving each other over the soup, it wouldn’t take a genius to work out things aren’t peachy in paradise at the moment.’

‘Is it that obvious?’ Adele’s shoulders sagged. ‘We’re supposed to be fooling the rest of his family we’re still madly in love with each other in less than eight hours. The whole thing is going to be a disaster.’

Phoebe tipped her head to one side and looked at the ceiling. ‘And let me guess…the idea to wow the in-laws with a united front was…’ they both nodded and spoke at the same time ‘…his.’

‘Are you psychic as well as being a fantastic cook?’ Adele asked.

Phoebe laughed. ‘You seem to forget that Nick and Andy were obviously separated at birth. I’ve had to put up with similar daft scenarios over the years.’

‘Then what’s your secret? How have you managed to stay with him without wanting to smother him in his sleep?’

Phoebe gave a rueful smile. ‘I have a few techniques I’ve picked up. Parenting books are a mine of useful information. Turns out that treating him as if he actually was a big kid actually works. I ignore the negative behaviour and praise the good stuff.’

Ignoring the bad stuff? Was that possible? Every time Nick pulled one of his stunts it was like a match to the touch paper. Could she really learn to live with his harem-scarem ways?

‘And I’ve learned to roll with the punches, relax a little. I don’t sweat the small stuff any more; I go with the flow.’ Phoebe shrugged. ‘I’ve run out of clichés now.’

Adele laughed and Max bounced up and down in her arms and gurgled too, even though he had no idea what was funny. Phoebe walked over and took Max out of Adele’s arms.

‘Most of all, you have to remember that what they do for a living is create illusions. I don’t know about Nick, but Andy is certainly guilty of forgetting that sometimes his version of reality isn’t the real deal.’

Adele frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. Was that why Super Adele was a constant shadow? What if Nick could see through the illusion to the real Adele underneath?

Funnily enough, that idea filled her with an even greater sense of dread. He’d never known the gawky child that found it hard to make friends and didn’t get the grades her parents had expected. She’d worked hard to turn that all around and be who she was now. And that was the woman Nick had loved, maybe even might still love a little bit.

‘I’d better go and change this one’s nappy.’ Phoebe hoisted Max onto her hip and headed for the door.

‘Phoebe?’

Phoebe halted, hand on door frame.

Adele smiled. ‘Thanks.’

‘No problem. Us special effects widows have to stick together.’

Adele sat down at the kitchen table and rested her chin in her hands. Phoebe made it all sound so easy, but it felt like giving in to Nick to treat him like a wayward toddler. She didn’t want a big kid to discipline; she wanted a partner. Someone to share the burden, not add to it.

She sighed.

Nick was outside playing with bits of metal, and if she didn’t go and get him they would never get to Scotland today. It seemed as if her choice was already made for her.

Nick clenched the steering wheel and tried not to let the words racing round his head burst out on one long, continuous yell.

So much for his brilliant plan.

He’d visualised the visit as the perfect opportunity to show Adele how happy Andy and Phoebe were, and how they had managed to make their different lifestyles mesh together.

Come on! If their home were any more perfect, little cartoon bluebirds would be coming to rest on Phoebe’s fingers when she hung the washing out!

But Adele couldn’t see any of that. She was stuck in her it-can-never-work rut and would not be pulled out of it. The scary thing was, he suspected he was teetering on the edge and was just about to slide down into the ditch to join her.

Where was the funny, sexy woman he’d married? Sure, she’d always been a little high-maintenance, but that was half the fun. When they’d first got together, he could have honestly put his hand on his heart and sworn she was the perfect woman. And even after their big fight, he had still believed it. It was only when she’d shut him out of her life completely that he’d started to suspect she might be slightly tarnished.

And part of him was angry with her for that—for not living up to the promise on the outside of the box.

The swirling words got too much for him and he realised he had to let some of them out before he imploded.

‘What the heck was wrong with you back there, Adele?’

See? She’d always said she wanted the direct approach and now he was giving it to her. She ought to be proud of him.

Adele didn’t move her forehead off the passenger window, but answered in a weary voice. ‘I’m not talking to you when you’re being like this.’

‘Like what? Rude? Like you were at Andy and Phoebe’s?’

She closed her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. Just drop it, Nick.’

‘No, I won’t drop it. You embarrassed me in front of my friends. If you ever do something like that again, so help me I’ll—’

‘What? Divorce me? It’s too late for that threat, remember?’

He pressed his teeth together until the muscles at the sides of his jaw started to twitch. He turned the windscreen wipers up a notch to deal with the rain pounding on the car.

The metallic voice of the satellite-navigation system pierced the atmosphere.

‘In thirteen hundred feet, continue right.’

Adele snorted. ‘Continue right? What does that mean?’

He tried to keep his voice even. ‘It means the left-hand lane is about to feed into the slip-road and we need to keep right if we want to stay on the motorway.’

‘Can’t we turn the stupid thing off?’

Nick took his eyes off the road momentarily and looked across at Adele in the passenger seat.

‘What is it about the satellite-navigation system that really bothers you?’

She stiffened. ‘It doesn’t bother me. It’s just unnecessary. We’re on a motorway going north for the next hundred miles at least. All it does is tell us the obvious.’

‘You hate it.’

She fidgeted in her seat.

‘I…Oh…’

‘And shall I tell you why you hate it?’

Adele turned to look at him. He was about to turn psychologist on her? This she had got to hear!

‘Fire away, professor.’

‘You don’t like handing the control over to somebody else, even if it’s just a bit of machinery that could make your life easier.’

‘That is so not true. I use machines at work all the time.’

‘Not the point. You’re so flipping independent, Adele. I’m surprised you actually let your computer crunch numbers for you instead of getting your abacus out and doing it yourself.’

‘Well, that was a very grown-up response. I’m glad you took the time to share that.’

‘Don’t do that.’

‘I’m not doing anything other than trying to be the adult in this scenario.’

‘Well, it’s a pity you didn’t think of that back at Andy and Phoebe’s house, isn’t it? You acted like a spoiled brat, so don’t come all high and mighty and I’m being the grown-up on me!’

Adele folded her arms and glared at what she could see of the carriageway through the driving rain.

She didn’t have an answer to that.

And the reason she didn’t have an answer was that Nick was spot-on.

Her voice was soft when she answered a minute later. ‘I apologised to Phoebe while you were out in the shed.’

He shot her an incredulous look, but didn’t accuse her further.

‘Well, I’m glad you came to your senses. They’re a great couple.’

‘I know.’

He flicked the indicator and overtook a caravan.

‘Why do you insist on cutting yourself off from people, Adele?’

‘I…’

She frowned. Did she?

‘Do I?’ she asked.

Nick shook his head. ‘You certainly shut me out.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘You talk to Mona, but you won’t talk to me. Why am I always kept at arm’s length?’

She didn’t know. It was just easier to be herself with Mona. She was a good friend, but her world wouldn’t crumble if they fell out. So much more was at stake with Nick. She didn’t want to let him down.

She looked at him. She’d already disappointed him today. There wasn’t much point in digging herself in deeper by making more excuses.

Nick shook his head then indicated at a sign on the grass verge. ‘Service station. I need a break.’

CHAPTER SIX

THERE was a sharpness in the air Adele hadn’t expected when she stepped out of the car. The Lake District wasn’t far away. They were two hundred and fifty miles north of London and it was noticeably colder. Snow dusted the fells to the north. She reached inside her pockets for her gloves.

Nick seemed happy to hurry into the low building of the service station, but she took her time as she walked across the car park.

She loved this kind of landscape. It was proud, ancient and soul-achingly lonely. Rolling green hills covered in scrubby grass dipped down into a valley where a rocky little stream gurgled along. Sheep dotted the banks, meandering in and out of neighbouring fields through the crumbling dry-stone walls.

Clean, cold air filled her lungs as she took one deep breath. Just being here was detoxifying. She turned one full circle before entering the services, just to take it all in.

The building was obviously not owned by one of the large chains—there were no fast-food counters or slot machines and as she entered the restaurant she was relieved to see wooden tables and chairs, real plants and exposed timber beams supporting the roof.

Nick was standing at the counter waiting to order coffee and she stood silently next to him. When his order came he handed her a large latte and the fattest, moistest slice of chocolate cake she’d ever seen. Then he walked off to a table and sat down without saying a word.

She slid into the chair opposite him.

‘Talk to me, Nick.’

He stirred his coffee. She’d never seen him like this before. Where were the smart retorts? The jokes? Suddenly she missed them. Usually he had the irritating ability to just snap out of being angry, as if he’d flicked a switch or something.

‘I’m sorry I let you down, truly I am.’ Nick dropped his spoon in surprise. She knew it wasn’t often that word passed her lips. ‘I was out of my depth and you kind of sprang the visit on me, after all.’

‘I didn’t think visiting friends would be such a big deal. I thought we’d have a nice time.’

‘Your friends, though. I didn’t feel comfortable at all. What on earth had you told them about me? What was all that “famous Adele” business?’

He snorted. ‘Great! Now I’m in trouble for saying nice things about my wife?’

She pressed her lips together and pondered her answer. How could she tell him it was very hard to admit she was going under? All she heard was: You’re so wonderful, Adele, or You can do anything, Adele. He always seemed to expect her to cope with everything he flung at her, and so she did.

‘No, that’s not it at all. I used to love the fact you believed in me so much, but you don’t understand the pressure it puts me under. You’re just like my parents in that respect. I didn’t want to disappoint you.’

He put his coffee-cup down and stared at her. ‘Well, you did.’

‘See? As soon as I admit I’m not the oh-so-perfect picture you paint of me, I’ve let you down. Sometimes I just want to be Adele, without the adjectives. Not “successful” or “famous” or “fabulous”. Just me.’

‘But you are all of those things.’

The look he gave her made tears prickle behind her eyes. She knew he thought that and, while it melted her heart that he held her in such high regard, on the other hand she wanted him to see right through the illusion.

‘I’m not who you think I am.’

He took a sip of his coffee and studied her. She refused to flinch under his gaze.

‘I’m starting to see that.’

Suddenly she wanted to take it all back, to stop him seeing what a fraud she was. It felt too raw to have him peeling away the layers one by one.

They sat in silence while Adele took comfort in her chocolate cake and they finished their coffees. As she started to pile the crockery up on the tray, he spoke.

‘Maybe I’ve been guilty of asking the impossible of you, believing in you too much, if you like, but you do the opposite. You don’t believe in me enough.’

She stopped stacking, opened her mouth to speak then paused as a cup slid off the pile. She carefully replaced it, only letting go when she was sure it was perfectly balanced.

She spoke without taking her eyes off it. ‘Is this about the job? Because you know—’

‘It all comes back to the flipping job in America, doesn’t it? Are you ever going to be able to forgive me for that?’

She didn’t answer.

‘We could have worked something out, you know. It would have been difficult for a few months, but it wasn’t the end of the world. You could have come with me, even just for short visits.’

‘But my job, the house—’ Her roots.

‘Are the most important things in your life. I know that now.’

‘I couldn’t just drop everything at a moment’s notice. You didn’t even give me time to work out a plan. It was now or never. And you chose now for the job and never for me. How do you think I felt when I realised you hadn’t just gone down the pub to cool off, when I got your text message saying you’d call me when you landed in LA?’

He shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in his seat. ‘You were the one who told me to get on the plane.’

‘I was angry, Nick! I didn’t think you’d actually do it! Stop being so pigheaded.’

‘Then why, if you wanted to sort it out later, did you not answer any of my calls? It gave a pretty clear message, you know.’

She swallowed. She couldn’t tell him here. Not like this. The backs of her eyes stung. How could she tell him that at first she’d been too thrown by what should have been the happiest news of her life to know what to do? Then, just as she’d been gearing herself up to ring him and say ‘Guess what? You’re going to be a dad!’ it suddenly wasn’t true any more.

She hadn’t been able to tell him. She hadn’t been able to tell anyone. Only Mona. And Mona only knew because she had been there when it had started, had held her hand at the hospital. Then she’d taken her home and hugged her until the tears had run dry.

Those were things he should have done! He should have been there. And she’d been so angry at him for being thousands of miles away she hadn’t been able to talk to him.

Her lip did a micro-quiver, but she bit down on it before it developed into the real thing.

The one time she’d really needed him, he hadn’t been there for her. And it didn’t matter that the sensible side of her brain understood that he hadn’t known, that he’d have been there if he could have been. The messy, illogical side of her couldn’t quite forgive him. Somehow it had summed up all that was wrong with their marriage—Nick happily bounding along, oblivious to her feelings.

Even now the anger was raging inside her.

‘It doesn’t matter now, Nick. It’s water under the bridge. We both know it would have ended sooner or later. We just don’t work as a team.’

His voice was emotionless. ‘So you say.’ He let his gaze wander round the room and she saw him stare as something caught his interest.

She twisted her head to catch a look. Over in the far corner a woman sat with a baby, trying to comfort it as she waited for its milk to warm in a jug of hot water. Adele turned back to look at him. He looked downtrodden.

He shrugged it off. ‘Just as well all that “trying for a baby” stuff was a disaster. What a mess that would have been.’

She nodded. The words were caught up in the back of her throat with her next breath.

She wanted him to make a joke of it as he had done all those months ago. Every time the pregnancy test had been quietly negative he’d given her a hug and said, ‘Never mind, we’re having fun practising.’ She’d loved him for making her smile, even though she’d known he was bitterly disappointed too.

She needed him to do that now, to make the sick feeling go away.

But he looked blank, as if all the cheeky humour had leached out of him. And even worse was the knowledge that she had been the cause. She’d eventually brought him down to earth and it was killing him.

Nick picked up the tray. ‘Are you finished?’

Yes, she was finished. The whole thing was finished.

The sun was low in the sky as they got back on the motorway, giving a warm glow to clouds that otherwise had an ominous hint of steel. Nick stared out of the passenger window. Adele was back in the driving seat—in more ways than one.

‘How are we going to handle the party, Nick?’

What was to handle?

‘How do you mean? We walk in, we smile, we talk, we eat, we leave.’

Adele sighed. ‘As always, you haven’t thought this through, have you?’

He hunched down in his seat a little further. ‘Obviously not.’

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

Maybe there wasn’t, but it made him feel better. Adele had sat as judge and jury on their relationship and she wasn’t about to share the power and let him have a second chance. He understood that now.

‘OK, OK. What have I missed?’

‘Look at us! We’ve both got faces like a wet weekend. No one’s going to believe we’re love’s young dream. Phoebe sussed us out in an instant.’

His eyebrows inched up. ‘She did?’

‘Women spot these things. Your sisters will be on to us in the blink of an eyelid.’

‘We’ll have to smile an awful lot more and convince them.’

Adele went quiet and they sat with the sound of the engine for company for a while. Big fat splashes started appearing on the windscreen and he realised that it wasn’t rain this time, it was snow—big, fluffy flakes of the Christmas-card variety.

Adele turned the wipers on and the action seemed to kick-start her brain again too.

‘It feels too much like lying to them, Nick. I don’t like it.’

‘All we’ve got to do is be civil to each other, talk, smile a bit. We can still do that, can’t we? We don’t have to be all over each other on the dance floor or anything.’

She didn’t sound convinced. ‘I suppose so.’

‘We can split up and circulate. All my family will be there and they’ll want to hear about my job in LA. Hell, they’ll be wrestling me to the ground and demanding free tickets to the première if I know them!’

Miracle of miracles, Adele cracked a smile.

‘OK. That sounds like a plan. We arrive together and we circulate as much as possible, meeting up every now and then for a progress report. Your sisters will all be keen to fill me in on the latest news about our myriad nephews and nieces—that should take up a fair chunk of time.’ She nodded to herself as she stared at the carriageway. ‘Yes. It might work. But only if we keep our distance from each other.’

It was crazy enough to work: stay apart to convince everyone they were together.

If only Adele didn’t seem so overjoyed at the prospect of avoiding him for the whole of the evening.

As they drove further north, the snow eased off. They’d obviously driven under the snow cloud and out the other side. They reached the fringes of the Lake District and the temperature dropped further. A thin coating of snow carpeted the valleys and clung in drifts to the craggy peaks.

But this wasn’t fresh snow. There must have been a fall last night. He had no idea if more was supposed to be on the way. He did, however, know a woman who would.

‘Adele? What’s the weather forecast for this area today?’

She hesitated—he guessed she was considering feigning ignorance; she hated being thought predictable—but instead she gave in and spoke in a weary voice.

‘Rain with the possibility of icy showers, clearing towards evening. That’s what the man on the radio said, anyway. We should have seen the worst of it by now.’

‘Good. The roads are clear enough at the moment, but I wouldn’t like it to get any worse. That would really slow us down.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s just before four. We’re a little behind schedule, but we should still be there with an hour or more to spare.’

Adele’s smile was wry. ‘Be careful, Nick. You’re starting to sound organised.’

‘What I really meant to say was: shouldn’t we be going south if we’re heading for Scotland?’

‘That’s more like the Nick Hughes I know.’

She missed out the and love. He smiled anyway. ‘I don’t like to disappoint a lady.’

Nick laid his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. What he’d said was spot-on. She wasn’t the only one disappointing her spouse. He might have just brushed over the truth of it with a joke, but just once he would like her to look at him the way she had in the early days of their marriage. She’d thought he was wonderful then. He hadn’t changed; he was still the same old Nick, but nowadays everything he said and did seemed to be wrong.

‘Oh, bother!’

He opened his eyes to find out what had caused Adele’s outburst. A string of red brake lights snaked up the hill in front of them. Very soon they joined the back of the queue. The traffic was moving at ten miles an hour at best.

Nick stared angrily at the bumper of the car in front. ‘Well, that’s just great! If we don’t get moving again quickly, we’re going to miss dinner.’

The line of cars was at least a mile long, and possibly longer, as the road curved up and round a hill, blocking his vision.

‘Do you think it’s the snow?’ Adele asked as she spritzed the windscreen with screen wash for the fiftieth time. ‘We all know it only takes three flakes of the stuff to bring the great British transport system to a halt.’

‘Shouldn’t be. The gritters have been out and the carriageway is clear. It’s probably an accident—some fool going too fast in these conditions.’

‘I hope it isn’t serious,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Me too.’

Five minutes later they were hardly moving at all.

‘My calf muscle is aching from keeping my foot on the clutch,’ Adele moaned. ‘I’d prefer to be at a complete stop than this interminable crawling along. I don’t want to get stuck in this. Do you remember that story on the news a few years ago? It snowed and hundreds of people got stuck on the motorway in East Anglia and had to spend the night in their cars.’

‘That’s not going to happen here.’

‘How do you know? We’re only doing…’ she peered at the speedometer ‘…two miles an hour. Any slower and we’d be going backwards.’

Nick frowned but didn’t say anything. Adele craned her neck to look out of the back window. ‘There’s at least a hundred cars behind us as well. It’s not like we’ve got much choice.’

An idea started to sharpen out of the fog at the back of his brain. ‘Maybe not.’

She shot him a look of desperation. ‘Please, don’t tell me you’ve been taking stunt-driving lessons, as you’ve always threatened you would, and you want to drive over the top of all the other cars until we’re clear.’

‘Tempting—but no.’

Adele punched him on the right arm.

‘I’ve been climbing in this area a few times, remember? I think we’re not far from Kendal. If I’m right, there should be a junction in a mile or so. We can take the road into the town then get on the A6. After about ten miles, it runs almost parallel to the motorway. We could leapfrog over the jam and join the motorway again at the next junction.’

‘That sounds frighteningly like a good plan.’

He did a little bow—well, as much as his seat belt would allow him.

Adele flicked the sat nav with her finger. ‘See? It’s saying nothing. Your little gizmo couldn’t come up with an idea like that.’

‘Nope. She’s a lot like you.’

‘Don’t call it she. And do not start comparing me with that thing. I hate it.’

He laughed. ‘Well, I see a certain similarity. She’s programmed to get to Invergarrig by the quickest route and she’s going to stick doggedly to the plan, no matter what. She won’t be of any use to us if we wing it.’

‘Are you saying I’m a machine? That I can’t…’ she paused, as if it was difficult for her to even say the words ‘…wing it?’

‘Calm down. I’m just saying I don’t need two bossy women in my life at the moment.’

As Adele breathed in, the atmosphere in the car thickened.

‘Well, I’ve told you I’m seeing my solicitor as soon as we get back. I can’t clear off any quicker than that! If you didn’t want me around, you shouldn’t have asked me to come with you.’

He leaned forward and pressed a button on the side of the satellite-navigation unit. His voice was gentle when he spoke. ‘No, you daft woman. I didn’t mean you; I meant her. She’s got a fixed idea of where she’s going and how she’s going to get there and she’s just going to make a fuss if we deviate. It’s time to turn it off and follow our instincts.’

‘Oh.’

Nick risked a look at her when she was concentrating on the road ahead. Her shoulders had dropped an inch and the faint remnant of a self-satisfied smirk lingered round her lips.

‘You, I can deal with,’ he said, reaching across and rubbing her forearm as it rested on the gear stick. ‘Her—going bing, bing, bing and please do a U-turn— not so much.’

They smiled at each other and it was as if all the tension had melted away. For once they were united against a common enemy, even if it was an electrical harridan.

Perhaps there was hope. Perhaps it could be him and Adele against the world again, instead of the pair of them clawing away at each other. And, for a moment, Adele seemed to echo his thoughts.

She smiled a sweet smile at him and his stomach did a triple flip. Then she opened her mouth and the flimsy hopes he’d balanced one upon another tumbled.

‘See, Nick? As friends we work. Now we’ve made a decision about our future we don’t have to push and pull any more. If we can keep this up for the rest of the weekend we’ll be home and dry. It’ll be better for your family too. Once they know the truth, they’ll see we can maintain a civil relationship and the news of our separation will be easier for them.’

The voice in his head had a hard edge of sarcasm. How thoughtful of you.

There she went again. Making sure everyone else was OK—especially Adele. God forbid anyone should ever think she was less than perfect. All this treacly stuff about being better for his family was tosh. Adele just didn’t want to be the bad guy in this scenario and she was pleased as punch she could walk out on their marriage without a pang of guilt.

And all the time she was bolstering her own defences, she was twisting the knife one more time into his unguarded flesh.

She just carried on chattering as if she’d had the greatest revelation ever.

‘We were good friends once, before we started going out, weren’t we?’

He nodded.

‘Well, we can have that again, can’t we?’

Why did she have to end every sentence in a question that required a yes or no answer from him? He didn’t want to be pushed into agreeing with her. Couldn’t she just leave him be?

He answered because he had to. ‘It worked once.’

‘Exactly. Just friends.’

He sneered. Just as well she was changing gear so they could edge forward once again and she didn’t see it. ‘Friends it is.’

Only he’d never wanted to be just friends with Adele. That had been her idea. From the moment they’d been introduced at a dinner party held by a mutual friend he’d known she was different. Special. He’d been captivated by her quick mind, her drive, the prim exterior with just a hint of something else simmering underneath.

He’d agreed to exactly the same thing the first time she’d turned him down.

Friends it is.

He’d been lying then and he was lying now.

It had taken time to crack her tough outer shell and get her to agree to a proper date. When he’d kissed her at the end of the evening all his fantasies about her had been proved right. Adele was a passionate and deeply sexy woman. She just liked to hide it well.

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