An Inconvenient Desire (18 page)

He stepped closer. “I can’t. I’m falling in love with her.”

Her gaze flew to his. His eyes were clouded, a muscle throbbed in his jaw. “Don’t do that either.”

“Who’s Isaac? Is he that guy you were draped all over in those photos?”

Guy I was draped all over?
“Oh, you must mean Tony. My agent sent him along to get some couple shots.”

“You looked at him like a lover. And he had his hand on your breast.” Jonathan’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“He’s a model. I’m a model. We were working. It means nothing.” She didn’t want to have this discussion with him now. She turned around and tried to remember which cupboard held the mugs.

“Olivia, talk to me. Who’s Isaac?” Jonathan reached around her, removed two mugs, and closed the cupboard door. She had to steel herself not to melt against him as his chest brushed her back.

Every time he said the name, her heart ripped open a little more. “Can we have a cup of tea first?”

He made the tea and they sat across from each other at the table. She had to drink half the cup before the lump in her throat eased enough that she could talk.

“Isaac is the name I gave my baby. He died.”

“Oh God, Olivia, I had no idea.” Jonathan reached across the table and took her shaking hand in his. He stood as if to come around the table, but if he touched her, if he took her in his arms, she’d fall apart. And she needed to be strong so she could walk away. Like she had seven years ago.

“Sit down, Jonathan. And I’ll tell you.” Surprised, he sat again. But he didn’t release her hand. She took a deep breath and stared past him. “When I was fourteen, my mother had a really nasty boyfriend; he used to smack her around. One day I came home and she was unconscious on the sofa. Her boyfriend saw me in my school uniform and called me a tease. Then he raped me. I tried to scream, but he stuffed his dirty shirt in my mouth. After he left and she came to, I told her what happened. She slapped me and told me it was all my fault. But he never came around again.”

“Olivia.” He squeezed her hand tighter but she still didn’t look at him.

“Three weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant. I looked at the positive pregnancy test, then at my mother, passed out on the sofa yet again, and thought,
I’m going to end up just like her
.”

“You could never be like her,” he whispered as though not trusting his voice. “What did you do?”

“At first, I didn’t want that monster’s child. But then I realized that it was my child as well—someone to love. I didn’t have to turn out like my mother. I could say no to drink and drugs and work my way to providing for my baby. I’d already been approached several times when out with friends about doing some modeling.”

“What did your mother say?”

“I didn’t tell her until I was almost three months along. I don’t know why, but I expected her to be sympathetic, understanding, maybe even caring. It was stupid, really; she’d never been any of those things. I guess I thought the shared experience would somehow make us a real mother and daughter.” She’d been so naïve.

He ran his hand up her arm in a comforting gesture. “How did she react?”

The gentleness of his tone was such a sharp contrast to her mother’s reaction. Even seven years later she could still recall Ellen’s shrill voice. “She screamed at me. Said I had already ruined her life and now I was adding insult to injury. What man would want her when they found out she was a grandmother? She tried to get me to drink some concoction she mixed up, but I refused. She needn’t have bothered, because a month later I had a miscarriage.” She swallowed twice. “It was my fifteenth birthday.”

“I’m so sorry.” The simple words held a wealth of emotion.

She blinked back the moisture in her eyes but one tear must have escaped. Jonathan reached across and wiped it from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Then placed the moisture against his own lips.

“No one at school knew I was pregnant, so when the blood poured down my legs, they called an ambulance. I was taken to the hospital and they performed a D&C. But I developed an infection so they kept me in for a few days. That’s where I met Sophia.

“The hospital kept calling Ellen and she kept saying she was coming. But she never showed once while I was there. Sophia had already decided to run away from home so I joined her. We walked out of the hospital wearing our bloody school uniforms—they were all we had. Sophia’s family tried to find her, but my mother never even reported me missing.”

Jonathan’s hand on the table was clenched in a tight fist. “I have no words.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s the past. I’m a successful model with a bright future.” She forced a smile, but it withered under his gaze. He wasn’t buying it. Of all the men she’d dated, Jonathan was the only one who could see through her mask to the woman inside. The real her.

She finished her tea and then drank half of Jonathan’s abandoned cup. It could’ve done with a slug of brandy to give her courage for what she had to do next.

• • •

Jonathan felt like he’d been repeatedly punched in the stomach. Olivia’s story had winded him and he physically ached for the teenage girl who had endured so much. He wanted to track down the man who had raped her and the mother who had failed to protect her and beat them senseless. He wanted to take Olivia in his arms and promise her that everything was going to be okay. He wanted to look after her for the rest of her life. But she’d crossed her arms over her stomach again as though holding herself together for the next big reveal.

“Friday, on the dales, you said I had to decide between modeling and you. I’ve made my decision.”

The ice in her tone warned him it was not the answer he wanted to hear. It set off a burning pain in his heart. “I also said we would enjoy the weekend with no issues.”

“Yes, but I can’t do this anymore. Hannah doesn’t need me. She has a big, loving family who will care for her. You don’t need me—”

He stood so abruptly that his chair fell over backwards. “Like hell I don’t—”

“Jonathan, sit down and let me finish.” Her voice was strained and her fists were clenched. He picked up his chair but couldn’t sit. “You don’t need me.” She held up her hand when he was about to object again. “You want me. Maybe even love me a little. But I’m not what you need. You need a woman who will give you the conventional life you had as a child. Someone who can give Hannah that life, too. I’m not that woman.”

“You could be.” He didn’t recognize his own voice it was so broken.

“No, I couldn’t. I have to be true to myself or I’m nothing. And there are hundreds of young girls who do need me. Girls like me and Sophia were. I’m going to run a program to help at-risk youth realize their potential. Give them hope. And the only way I can do that is if I’m a successful model. If I can legitimately say, ‘See, I was just like you. But look at me now. You can do the same.’”

“Olivia.”

“Thank you for giving me a taste of family life. I have loved every minute of being with you and Hannah. But I have to do this. I’m sure your mother will look after Hannah until you can make other arrangements. I’m going to take the first train back to London. I’ll come and collect my things from your house sometime in the week when you’re at work.”

“Olivia. No.” He couldn’t get any other words out. His throat was thick and his chest was so tight it hurt to breathe.

“Yes, Jonathan. In a few days you’ll see this is for the best. I’m leaving Hannah while she’s at her happiest. She’ll hardly know that I’m gone.”

“And me?”

“Don’t, please. This is killing me, too.” Her voice broke and she stared at the table for a minute before lifting pain-filled eyes to his. “Will you call a taxi to take me to the station?”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No. I can’t sit beside you in the car for half an hour and then say goodbye again.”

“Don’t do this, Olivia.”

“I have to. I hope one day you’ll understand.”

She ran from the kitchen and up to her room, only coming down when the cab honked its horn in the driveway. Her face was blotchy and her eyes didn’t meet his.

“Please tell your mother thank you for me.” She climbed into the taxi without looking at him.

Barefoot, he stood in the driveway. As the taxi’s taillights disappeared down the road, a light drizzle began to fall.

“Come inside, Jonathan. You’ll catch your death.” His mother stood in the doorway.

“She’s gone.”

“I know. But standing out here in the rain isn’t going to get her back.”

“How do you know I want her back?”

His mother’s “harrumph” was answer enough.

• • •

Six hours later, he again stood in the driveway. Shoes on, bag at his side, ready to return to London. Alone. His mother handed him her car keys. “You drive. I’m going to talk,” she said.

He glared at her. But his death stare just bounced off her I’m-your-mother-and-you-will-listen shields. Every muscle in his body ached. He’d had to keep an upbeat attitude for Hannah, who had asked for Bibya as soon as she woke. He’d then lied to his daughter and his whole family, saying Olivia had to go back to London urgently for work, although what would constitute a modeling emergency he had no idea. Still, everyone had bought it, except his mother.

Before he’d even reversed out of the driveway, she was glaring at him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Driving would be the obvious answer. Anything other than that, I have no idea.”

“I don’t need your smart mouth. I mean what are you doing with Olivia? She left in tears this morning. And you just watched her go.”

He heaved a sigh. “I couldn’t exactly throw her over my shoulder, carry her upstairs, and hold her captive. That’s against the law.” Although he’d considered doing it.

“You could have told her you loved her.”

“I tried. It wasn’t enough.” Last thing he needed was his mother’s advice right now.

“You obviously didn’t try hard enough. Don’t screw this up, Jonathan. She’s the best you’re going to get.” He wasn’t sure if that was praise for Olivia or an indictment of his appeal.

“She’s a model. I can’t marry another model.”

“Pull over right now.”

He swerved to the curb. “Why? Are you sick?”

“No, I just didn’t want you to crash when I hit you.”

“What?”

“You’re going to throw away a legitimate chance at love and happiness because it doesn’t meet your preconceived idea of what it should be?”

“Remember, I’ve been here before. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again, expecting a different outcome.”

“Love is insanity. The best kind.”

“Love isn’t the problem. Real life is the issue. I want—no, I need what you and Dad have. I need stability, especially for Hannah. I need to come home and know my wife will be there, waiting for me. I don’t care if she works or not, just as long as it’s local. Not somewhere halfway around the world, wrapped around another man.”

“I hope they pay you for your looks and not your brain at that fancy job of yours. Because that is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Thanks, Mum.”

“No, I’m serious. You want immediately what it took your father and me forty years to achieve. Do you think that at the start of our marriage we were perfectly in synch? I worked nights nursing at the hospital and your father worked days in construction. It was years before we were on the same schedule. And even then things weren’t rosy. Marriage takes work, Jonathan. And compromise. So unless you’re willing to make the effort, then you tell that girl there’s no hope and let her find a man worthy of her.”

He opened his mouth to answer. A vision of Olivia with another man filled his mind, making his chest tighten and his stomach roil. But could he give up his dream of a normal family life to be with her? And what about Hannah? She had to factor into any decision he made.

“I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.”

“You do that.”

He already knew what he had to do.

Olivia closed the door of her tiny flat behind her and slid to the floor. Five hours of keeping it together because the early train had stopped at every two-pub town in all of England had done her in. Thankfully, the friend she’d let stay at her flat while she was at Jonathan’s had made up with her boyfriend and moved out. She couldn’t do company right now. She didn’t know if she could do breathing right now. God it hurt.

She crawled over to the sofa and stared at the ceiling. So this is what heartbreak felt like. Odd that the pain wasn’t restricted to just her heart. It should be called everything break. No matter how hard she’d tried to be sensible and practical, she’d fallen in love with Jonathan. At least she hadn’t slept with him. Her bitter laugh filled the room. Some consolation.

Her phone rang and for a stupid, idiotic second she thought maybe it was Jonathan. Begging her to come back. As if.

Still her heart raced until she checked the caller display. Her agent. Maxine was probably calling to say the corporate clients wanted someone else—that Olivia had just given up everything for nothing.

She took two deep breaths and lowered the volume on her phone before she answered the call.

“Hello, Maxine.”

“You’ve made it, darling. I’ve been in negotiations all weekend but we finally nailed down the biggest contract of your career. You are the new face of Rêve Privé perfume. Television advertisements, billboards, magazines, the whole works. Three years. Five million pounds a year. They said they’d even consider sponsoring that charity thing you wanted to do. But they want exclusivity. You can’t model for anyone else. I said you wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

“I—”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, darling. I just wanted to share the good news with you right away. Meet me at my office at 9
a.m.
sharp and we’ll go through the details.” There was a tinkle of glassware in the background and then Maxine giggled. “Actually, better make that eleven.
Ciao
, darling.”

Olivia tried to process the news. She’d just been handed her dream.
So why don’t I feel happy?

Everything she’d ever wanted. Except Jonathan. The hollowness inside threatened to consume her. Her heartbreak had become a black hole sucking in her dreams.