Escape for the Summer (51 page)

Andi nodded. The time for secrets and hiding from the truth was over. She was exhausted and the pain of maybe losing him all over again was lurking, but this time she knew that she wasn’t going to run away.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Chapter 45

The Kingfisher Inn
was a small hotel set on the banks of the River Dart, which wound its slow way through the heavily wooded valley like a midnight ribbon. When Jonty threw open the French windows to the balcony, light spilled from them and trembled on the water while the muslin drapes whirled and danced in the breeze. The scent of the roses that wound their way around the balustrade and tumbled from the crumbly brick walls filled the room like a Jo Malone fragrance.

Andi looked around and her heart lifted. Jonty was right: this was a healing place. The inn was set well away from the road, so the only sounds were the slapping of the river against the shore or the odd call of waterfowl. She stepped onto the balcony, breathed the sweet night-time air and felt the tension begin to slide away. The sky arcing above the black smudges of woodland was inky and dusted with stars; Tom and Rock and all of her fears seemed very far off.

It was a good feeling.

“Is this OK?” Jonty joined her on the balcony. Although she couldn’t see him, Andi sensed his shy smile in the darkness. His hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder, his thumb gently caressing her skin, and her whole body suddenly came alive.

“It’s perfect,” Andi said, because it really was.

If there was ever a place that spoke of peace and mental freedom, then this was it. The room was simple but filled with elegant and understated luxury in every detail, from the stripped and waxed floorboards to the huge bed swathed in snowdrifts of linen and plump with pillows, to the billowing curtains. Andi’s brow creased; Jonty had just passed his card over to the concierge as easily as though checking into a Travelodge, but this boutique hotel was clearly in another league altogether. This was a guy who lived in his sister’s pool house and eked out a living fixing boats and doing gardening for the minimum wage. She couldn’t expect him to pay for all this.

“I don’t expect you to have to—” she began, but couldn’t speak any more because he pulled her into his arms and kissed the words away. The world dipped on its axis and time stood still. It was enough just to be there; nothing else was important.

Finally they broke apart and, slipping his hands around her waist, Jonty brushed his lips against her temple. She could feel the drumming of his heart racing in tandem with her own.

“Do you feel ready to tell me about it all?” Jonty asked. His breath fluted against her skin and she shivered, partly from nervousness and partly from desire. Out on the balcony, wrapped in the darkness and his arms, she felt safe. Inside, where the lamps threw puddles of honeyed light, was just a few steps away – but in another sense it was miles. Her glance fell onto the bed, an island of white goose-down duvet floating amid a Berber-rug sea, and her mouth dried. Everything was going to change.

Following her glance, Jonty said quickly, “I promise I’ll be every bit as gentlemanly as Travis Chumley! I’ll sleep on the couch tonight; you needn’t worry.”

At the thought of this, all of her apprehension vanished in an instant. Jonty would sleep on the couch? That seemed like a dreadful waste! She wanted him to pull her close, bury his mouth in hers and love her until the sun rose above the trees and the sleepy stars slipped away, not sleep on the couch!

For a moment they stared at one another; then Andi reached up on tiptoes to kiss him and everything else fell away. She didn’t think she’d ever wanted anything so much in her life as to sink into him and then to drift off to sleep with his face in her mind and his skin pressed against hers. The time for hesitation was over.

“I’d rather you lay down too and held me,” she whispered. “I don’t want to let you go.”

Jonty’s face broke into a smile of such joy that Andi’s heart crumbled like one of Gemma’s vanilla sponges. Hand in hand they left the balcony.

Once they were indoors and wrapped up in each other, with the lamps off and only the moon’s pale smile lighting the room, Andi watched the drapes dancing in the breeze and then closed her eyes. Jonty’s arms tightened around her.

“What’s been going on?” he asked gently, his lips brushing the nape of her neck.

She took a deep breath. This was it. Just as the last days of summer always bore the hint of crispness, so her time with Jonty was sharpened by the fear of the truth coming out. She had to tell him everything or this would all be over even before it had begun.

It was easier somehow to speak in the dark. In the circle of Jonty’s arms Andi found that the words began to flow; at first a trickle, then a steady stream before a torrent. The riverbanks of silence were well and truly breached and her story tumbled out. The sacking, Alan’s taking the credit for her work with Safe T Net, Tom’s betrayal, the debts and the emptied account: all these things that had made macramé of her emotions for months were finally out there. The more she told him the more Andi found she wanted to tell him.

Blimey. Catholics were really onto something with confession!

All the way through her rambling tale, half sobbed and half laughed, Jonty said nothing, but the gentleness of his touch and the tension she felt shudder through him when she told him how Tom had threatened her that morning spoke volumes.

“So that’s why I’ve had to leave,” she finished quietly. “And do you know what the worst of it is? It’s my own fault. I should have levelled with you all from the start. If I’d told Si the truth about losing my job then at least he would have had an option whether or not to take a chance on me. That would be one less thing Tom could threaten me with.”

Jonty’s arms tightened around her. A human safety belt, she found herself thinking. “That wasn’t your fault, Andi. This guy at work, Alan, was totally plausible. It seemed to make sense that he was in charge. He covered his tracks and made sure that he sung his own praises to all the right people. It didn’t help that you shared the same initials. He certainly capitalised on that coincidence.”

“How on earth do you know that?” Andi was amazed. “Are you psychic or something? That’s
exactly
how Alan operates!”

“Hardly! If I were a psychic I’d have made a move long ago. No, Andi, I just know how hard you work and how much you must have deserved that promotion. You held that project together.”

She blushed. It was sweet of Jonty to be so vehement.

“I still should have told you and Simon the truth about how it all ended,” she admitted ruefully. “That was the right thing to do. I should have been honest.”

Jonty thought about this for a moment.

“Andi, you didn’t know either of us from Adam. How were you to know we could be trusted to listen and to understand? For all you knew Si might have kicked you out instantly. After all you’d been through with Tom—” He practically spat the name and although it was dark Andi knew that his face was tight with fury. “After that, how were you to know who to trust?”

He understood. He really understood. She felt every muscle in her body loosen with relief. Keeping her sacking a secret hadn’t been a deliberate deception, more an act of self-preservation. And it had been worth it, too, because hadn’t she worked hard and done Si proud?

“And now he’s threatening to circulate emails with personal pictures of you unless you pay up?” Jonty whistled. “Jesus. What a piece of work.”

Andi couldn’t agree more.

“I feel such an idiot,” she said sadly. “I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to trust him. I’ll never be that naïve again.”

Jonty pulled her around to face him. They were standing so close together that their eyelashes almost brushed. Andi stared into his eyes, no longer turquoise but as dark and full of shadows as the wooded valley beyond.

“Trust is a wonderful quality,” he said firmly. “You are a decent and kind and trusting human being. Don’t beat yourself up on account of what Tom did. Anything that you did between the two of you was part of your relationship and as such was private and personal. A decent man would treasure that and leave it there, not be looking for an opportunity to exploit it.” His jaw tightened and Andi had the strong impression that if Tom ever bumped into Jonty he’d be very sorry indeed.

“But if I hadn’t—”

“There’s absolutely no point in blaming yourself. Christ! What kind of man would betray someone he once loved, like this? For God’s sake, this isn’t your fault! The guy’s a shit, Andi.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Andi agreed. “Not a day goes by when I don’t want to kick myself for ever being involved with a creep like him. But unfortunately he’s a creep who holds all the cards. If I don’t pay up then those images will be everywhere and he’ll put posts about my being sacked all over the Internet.” Her eyes filled with tears of frustration. “Now do you see why I had to go? My professional reputation’s going to be ruined and my personal one won’t be far behind it. “

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Jonty said darkly. “I promise you, that is not going to happen.”

Andi was touched. But unless Jonty was able to either magic Tom off the surface of the planet (unlikely) or have a chat with Bill Gates (even more unlikely) then she didn’t hold out too much hope.

“So what should I do?” she wondered aloud.

“Come back to Rock in the first instance,” Jonty said firmly. “You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”

Andi thought of the pictures and her stomach turned a horrible slow loop-the-loop.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Jonty held her tightly against his chest. “We’ll sort this out, I promise. It will be fine.”

“How will it?” Andi couldn’t see a way.

He dropped a kiss onto her temple. “I’ll figure that bit out. There’s talking to Si for starters, and I promise you that he’ll understand. The rest will follow. Trust me.”

The weird thing was that she did trust him. After everything Tom had thrown at her, Andi thought this was little short of a miracle. Sinking onto the bed, Jonty held her in the circle of his arms and rested his chin on her head.

“It really will,” he promised. “Trust me on this one. Everything really will be all right.”

“Maybe,” she said, thinking out loud. “I’m so sick of lies, Jonty. It’s exhausting. I’m tired of people hiding the truth. Why can’t people just be straight?”

Jonty was so quiet for a while that Andi wondered whether he’d fallen asleep. The lapping of the river against the banks and the calls of owls were enough to lull anyone into a slumber, and she felt her own eyelids grow heavy. The window drapes fluttered in the breeze and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to slip under the fat goose-down duvet and drift…

“Sometimes people don’t mean to lie.” Jonty’s voice dragged Andi back from the brink of nodding off. He’d not been asleep but rather deep in thought, she now realised.

“Sometimes they want to tell the truth but they’re afraid, or they can’t find the words,” he continued. “Then, as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to backtrack. Like you not telling Simon about what really happened at Hart Frozer.”

Andi didn’t recall mentioning Hart Frozer. She’d still been holding back from revealing the full details, but she must have said more than she realised. What was in that garage latte? The truth drug?

“I kept quiet about being fired because I was ashamed,” she said. “I had no way to prove I was innocent, not without having access to my work computer. Why would anyone believe me?”

He reached out and took her hand, lacing their fingers together.

“I know, and I understand all that. And I’m telling you now that you don’t need to be ashamed. You’ve done nothing wrong. You did everything for the right reasons.”

“But what I don’t understand is how people can lie to people they’re close to,” Andi said in total bewilderment. “Si was a stranger when I arrived in Rock, I didn’t know you either and I wasn’t intending to deceive anyone. But Tom and I… we were… we…” She paused, searching for the right words to try to explain. Jonty raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them, and for a blissful moment she totally lost her thread. Moments later he was kissing her again and all other thoughts vanished.

“Sorry,” Jonty said eventually, once they broke apart. “I totally interrupted you.”

Andi laughed. “I can live with that. You can interrupt again if you like.”

His lips skimmed the skin of her throat. “Believe me, I fully intend to do a whole lot of interrupting later on! But go on, what were you saying about Tom?”

Andi lassoed her stampeding thoughts. “It wasn’t going so well; I know we should have called time on it months before, but even so I’ll never understand how Tom could keep so much from me. I thought I knew him but all along he was living a double life. I knew he was imaginative – all part of being an actor, was how I tried to explain it away to myself – and I thought it was harmless. But I was wrong. The small lies he used to tell about the rent money getting mysteriously lost or not having had a drink weren’t harmless at all: they were part of a much bigger picture.” She shook her head. “Well, I’ve learned the hard way now. If somebody lies to you once then they’ll do it again.”

“Once a liar, always a liar?” Jonty asked.

Andi shrugged. “All I’m saying is that once there’s doubt how can you ever trust somebody again?”

“Maybe they would have to prove themselves?” he suggested. “Show beyond all doubt that they were genuine?”

This was all getting a bit too metaphysical for Andi. Besides, all she could think about was the fact that she was lying next to Jonty, skin against skin, and with his lips just a kiss away from her own. It was dark and her senses were heightened; she didn’t think she’d ever been so aware of another person’s presence in her entire life. Her every cell felt as though it had been plugged into the mains.

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But they’d have to really prove it. Anyway, enough of me going on. You said earlier that there were things you wanted to talk about too.”

Now it was his turn to shrug. “Did I?”