Adored (37 page)

The fucking bastard. The fucking, fucking bastard.

Outside Camille’s apartment, the cold night air was like a slap in Max’s face, jolting him out of his hangover and any residual drunkenness and bringing starkly home to him the enormity of what he had just done.

He began walking aimlessly down Vine toward Hollywood Boulevard, where he supposed he could get a cab. But to go where? Back to Siena, poor, darling, lovely Siena who right now was probably lying innocently asleep in their bed, trusting him and loving him and waiting for him to come home?

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t pollute her with what had happened tonight. Dammit, he was such a fucking fool! And all because of his stupid pride, his insane jealousy, his terrible, uncontrollable temper.

Why couldn’t he be a decent, honest, faithful guy like Henry? No wonder he didn’t have a happy family or a successful career. He didn’t deserve to. He felt like he wanted to cry, but he was so out of practice, the tears refused to flow. Instead, he glanced around for a cab. He wanted to get as far away from Camille as he possibly could.

“Taxi!” he shouted as a weary-looking Mexican cabbie slowed down to pick him up. Max clambered into the back of the cab, which was filthy and smelled of stale Taco Bell. “Take me to the beach,” he said. “Venice.”

He would swim in the icy salt water and scrub at himself until all traces of the girl were gone from his body. Then maybe he could sleep down there on the sand for a couple of hours until dawn, clear his head, and get his story straight before he went home to face the music.

He had already decided he wasn’t going to come clean with Siena. He couldn’t face losing her or hurting her more than he already had. She would never know he had betrayed her. And he swore to himself, by everything he held dear in this life: He would spend the rest of his days making it up to her.

Siena was so deeply asleep that she barely registered at first when he slipped into bed beside her. He must have already been to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, because she could smell mint, combined with seawater, sweat, and stale alcohol fumes that no amount of toothpaste could fully disguise. Opening her eyes a fraction, she glanced at the bedside clock. It was five-thirty in the morning.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, cuddling in to her back and wrapping his arms around her tightly. “Please forgive me.”

She was so overwhelmed with joy and relief that she swiveled around and smothered his face in kisses. Reaching up to put her hands in his hair, she stroked his back lovingly, touching his skin in wonder as though checking he was actually real.

“I’m sorry too,” she said between kisses. “I love you so much, Max.”

“I know you do, honey,” he said, his voice cracking. “I know you do.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Henry Arkell had spent the best part of a thoroughly miserable day at Pablo Ruiz Picasso Airport in Málaga, where a baggage handlers’ strike had left thousands of British tourists stranded after their holidays. The terminal was heaving with exhausted, overweight mothers bawling at their bored and unruly offspring, or struggling to snatch a few hours’ sleep on the hard red plastic chairs. Henry watched their depressed-looking husbands in silent sympathy as they packed into the one small bar upstairs, a swarm of beer bellies covered in shiny red soccer shirts, hoping to drown their sorrows with warm Spanish beer.

Like them, he longed to get home, although in his case, the marital strife would not begin until he landed in England. There could be no more putting it off now. He’d have to tell Muffy everything.

“Sorry for the wait, sir,” said the briskly polite young stewardess as he handed her his boarding pass, having finally been shown through to the plane. At least he was flying business class at Gary Ellis’s expense. “Would you like me to hang up your jacket for you?”

“Sure,” he said, easing his big shoulders out of his ancient tweed. “Thanks.”

Sinking down into the spacious seat, he accepted an immediately proffered glass of champagne, not that he had the slightest reason to celebrate, but at least he’d be able to get drunk with that bastard Ellis’s money.

He’d flown out to Spain yesterday, feeding Muffy an unlikely story about going to some conference on a new EU directive for dairy quotas, and driven straight up into the hills for a meeting with Gary at his pink monstrosity of a villa.

“’Enry. Good to see you, mate.” The developer had greeted him warmly, pumping his hand between his own clammy palms and leading him out to the poolside bar.

Gary was topless and barefoot, sporting a lurid lime-green pair of Bermuda shorts over which his big sunburned stomach spilled unashamedly. He had an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth and could not have looked more like a criminal on the run if he’d put on a striped suit and a black eye mask. Henry instantly regretted having worn a suit.

“’Ere, let me tike your jacket, you must be roasting.” Henry gladly complied and sat down on one of the bubblegum-pink poolside chairs. A maid immediately arrived with a tray of iced water. The cool liquid tasted delicious, but he couldn’t seem to keep the ice from clinking noisily against the side of the glass as his hands shook. He felt guilty, out of place, and unaccountably nervous. Gary, on the other hand, looked relaxed and in control.

“So, Mr. Ellis,” Henry began stiffly. “What was this offer you wanted to discuss with me?”

“Gary, please,” said the developer, with another confident smile.

If Henry had never really liked Ellis, the feeling was entirely mutual. Gary had never forgotten the way he had been frozen out by the elitist, upper-class Cotswold social set in Batcombe when he first moved into the village. That buffoon Christopher Wellesley and his stuck-up cronies had made sure that he was never admitted to their inner circle, the glamorous world of hunt balls and private dinner parties to which he had secretly longed to belong. He remembered the patronizing way Henry had looked at him at that dinner party at Thatchers, when he’d first admired the Manor Farm estate. He’d made Gary feel like a bit of dog shit stuck on the bottom of his shoe, the snooty little wanker. But the shoe was well and truly on the other foot now.

He’d first gotten wind of Henry’s financial troubles about a month ago and decided to make a move almost immediately. It wasn’t just the social slight that had been burned on his memory. He also remembered how prime that land had been, how perfectly ripe for development. And then there was the lovely Mrs. Arkell. How satisfying it would be, he thought, to take the bastard’s farm
and
his wife, if the opportunity should present itself. Heavy debts, he knew from experience, could put a big strain on a marriage.

Today, however, he hid his inner resentment and made sure he was charm personified. On his own home ground, and holding all the cards, he could afford to play a waiting game.

“All right then,” he grinned. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? I wanna buy you aht.”

“Buy me out? Do you mean the whole farm?” The color had drained from Henry’s face. Despite the heat, he looked white as a sheet. “I assumed . . . I mean, when we’d met before, you’d only seen the lower pastures.”

“Everyfink.” Gary lapped up his discomfiture.

“I’m sorry,” said Henry quietly. “It’s not for sale.”

“No?” Gary raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing sitting ’ere then?”

Henry was silent.

“It’d make a lovely golf club,” said Gary viciously. “Two point six. Tike it or leave it.”

Two point six million pounds. It was more than the farm was worth. A good 30 percent more. That sort of money would solve all their financial problems in one stroke. But a golf club? His father and grandfather would be turning in their graves at the very thought of it. Henry could feel himself sweating and looked miserably down at his feet. Why couldn’t the slimy bastard have offered less? If he’d come up with some stupid, greedy, lowball figure, it would have been easy to tell him to stick it, to fly back home with his conscience clear, if not his balance sheet. But this was a more than generous offer. By any rational standards, he’d be crazy to refuse.

“I’ll need to talk to my wife.”

“Fair enough,” said Ellis briskly. “But the offer only stands for forty-eight hours. It’s nuffink personal,” he explained, suppressing his inner glee at Henry’s panic-stricken features. “Just business. I’m about to exchange on annuver bit o’ land a coupla valleys over from you. I’d rather ’ave yours, but I need to know.”

That conversation was almost six hours ago. As he sat on the plane, miserably knocking back one drink after another, Henry still had no idea what he was going to do or how he was going to begin to break the news to Muffy.

She was there to greet him at Luton, looking adorable as ever in her blue gardening cords and one of his ancient, tattered Guernsey sweaters. She almost never bought anything new for herself—not that she’d ever been terribly into clothes, but since their money troubles she had gone to extra lengths to cut back on even the smallest unnecessary expenditure. Last week she’d proudly told him that she’d started reusing tea bags and saving torn wrapping paper. Henry could have wept with guilt.

Looking at her across the airport, he felt his heart bursting anew with love for her and with shame for himself. How could he have let her down like this? Mercifully, none of the children was with her. He couldn’t have coped with Maddie’s endless questions or the boys’ demands for presents all the way home. Not today.

“So, how was the conference?” she asked him, ignoring his protests and taking the lighter of his bags from him. “Was it worth it?” At first, when he didn’t answer, she assumed he hadn’t heard her. But as soon as she turned and looked at his ashen face, she knew something was seriously wrong.

“Henry,” she said, her voice full of concern. “What is it? What on earth’s the matter?”

And right there in arrivals, he told her.

The drive back to Batcombe was one of the longest of Henry’s life. His wife was not given to hysteria, and there had been no screaming fits at the airport as he’d recounted every painful detail of their spiraling debts, his desperate attempts to rectify things with Nick Frankl, and finally, Gary Ellis’s offer. Muffy, in fact, had listened in complete silence while he miserably unpicked every thread of her security. She calmly paid for the parking and loaded his bags into the trunk without so much as a word of interruption or reproach. It wasn’t until they’d been driving for twenty minutes, with Muffy insisting on taking the wheel, and he’d come to the end of his desperate stream of explanations and apologies, that she had finally allowed herself any sort of reaction.

“What I don’t understand, Henry,” she said quietly, her eyes fixed on the road ahead, “is why you didn’t tell me about all this months ago.”

“Oh God, I don’t know.” He ground his fists against his temples in frustration with himself, not her. “I mean, I
do
know. I should have. But I suppose I hoped you’d never have to know. I thought I’d be able to sort it out on my own.”

“How?”
Her own frustration was starting to find a voice. “How on
earth
did you think you were going to sort it out?”

“I don’t know.” He stared down at his lap, defeated.

“And
why
would you want to do it all alone anyway? I thought we were partners. I thought we trusted each other.”

“We do!” said Henry, but she shook her head angrily.

“Rubbish! You’ve been lying to me since before Christmas. You obviously don’t trust me at all.”

“That’s not true. I never lied to you. I was trying to protect you from all of this.” He reached out and put a hand on her thigh. She didn’t remove it, but still she wouldn’t look at him, biting down on her lip to stop herself from crying as she desperately tried to focus on the traffic in front of her.

“Does Max know?” she asked irrationally. She didn’t know why, but the only thing that could make this worse would be the thought that Henry had confided in somebody else, but not her.

“No. Of course not,” said Henry. “Why would you think that? I’ve hardly spoken to him since Christmas. Besides, he’s totally broke himself, and far too wrapped up in Siena McMahon to listen to my problems. Look, I don’t know what else to say, Muffy,” he pleaded. “I love you, and I’m really, truly sorry that I kept all this from you. But, well, you know now. And we have to make a decision.”

“Oh, it’s
we
now, is it?” she bit back angrily. She didn’t want to lose her temper with him. She could see he felt dreadful, and she knew that however unjustified his deceitfulness may have been, he had never actually intended to hurt her. But it was all too much to take in. Henry had had weeks, months even, to get used to the idea of losing the farm. And now she was expected to say yea or nay to Ellis’s offer in a matter of minutes.

For the rest of the drive home they sat in stony silence, Henry too guilty and Muffy too upset to initiate any further conversation. Back at Manor Farm, they did their best to be normal and cheerful at supper for the children’s sake. It wasn’t until nine-fifteen that Muffy came downstairs, having finally tucked Charlie into bed, and found Henry staring morosely into a pan of boiling milk on the Aga. She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, and he turned and hugged her, overwhelmed with relief at this gesture of forgiveness.

“Here, give that to me. It’ll burn.” She lifted the milk pan off the stove and poured it into his waiting mug of chocolate.

“Thanks.” Taking the steaming drink, he sat down at the table, while she automatically squirted some soap into the pan and left it in the sink to soak before coming to join him.

“I’m sorry, Muff,” he said again, burying his head in her neck. She stroked his hair and kissed the top of his head. The kitchen was a mess, full of the detritus of the kids’ earlier painting play, with plates of half-eaten fish sticks and beans littering the table and countertops. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Muffy looked around the room and felt her heart swelling with a pride bordering on real love. She had redone the kitchen herself over many long years, as the first profits from the farm had begun trickling in. She hadn’t touched the wonderful, time-buckled flagstone floor and the tiny, ill-fitting lead-light windows that had so captivated her when Henry first brought her here, back when his father was still alive. But she had replaced the old man’s ancient death trap of a stove with her beloved Aga, and she and the boys had had great fun helping Henry paint all the cupboards a cheery bright red, now long since faded to the color of unripe cherries. More than any other room, the kitchen made the manor feel like a home. For the last ten years it had been the living, beating heart of the old house. Sitting there now, with Henry, she knew for certain what their decision must be.

“Stop saying sorry,” she whispered. “It sounds so defeatist. This isn’t over yet, you know.”

He pulled back and looked her in the face. “You mean, you think we should turn Ellis down?”

“Of course we’re turning him down,” she said sternly. “That creep will turn this place into a golf course over my dead body. Yours too, I hope.”

Henry put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her face toward his, kissing her passionately on the mouth. He didn’t think he’d ever loved her more than he did at that moment.

“We’re running out of options though, Muff,” he said gravely when he finally released her. “If we don’t find seven hundred and fifty grand in the next few weeks we’re going to have to sell to someone. And probably for a hell of a lot less than what Gary’s offering.”

“I know,” she said. “I know. Well we’re just going to have to think of something, then. Aren’t we?”