One Night with Her Ex (15 page)

She’d been such a fool. She’d had no reason not to trust him, a billion reasons why she should and why she could, and instead she’d allowed herself to take the easy way out and run away, while he’d abandoned his pride and almost begged her to reconsider.

‘What if I already have blown it, Zoe?’ she said, shame and regret making her voice hoarse.

In the process of stabbing a piece of her fish with her fork Zoe stilled, glanced up and said, ‘Then I suggest you make your way PDQ to the Fitness Rules gym next to Kit’s hotel, where I happen to know he and Dan are playing squash, and unblow it.’

FIFTEEN

‘Well, that
was quite a game,’ said Dan, rubbing his neck and wincing as he rolled his shoulders. ‘I’m not sure I’m ever going to recover.’

Feeling a stab of guilt, Kit wiped the sweat off his forehead and then threw the towel round his neck. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, gloomily reflecting that if he’d known he was going to take his mood out on his squash partner he’d have cancelled this afternoon’s game. Probably should have cancelled it anyway because maintaining a friendship with a man who was soon to be Lily’s brother-in-law was hardly conducive to his intention to move on, however much he liked him.

‘Not a problem,’ said Dan easily. ‘I can take losing once in a while. You look like hell by the way.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Anything you want to talk about?’

‘Not particularly,’ said Kit, stuffing his racket into its case and then slinging his bag over his shoulder.

‘Right. Good.’ Dan picked up his own bag and together they walked from the court in the direction of the changing rooms. ‘So I heard that you and Lily had split up,’ he said conversationally and the pain that shot through Kit made his breath catch.

‘Yeah,’ he said casually, as if it didn’t rip his heart to shreds just to think about it.

‘Want to know how she is?’

Desperately. ‘I couldn’t care less.’

‘No. Right. Well, I guess that’s understandable seeing as how she dumped you.’

Kit flinched and ruthlessly obliterated the sudden memory of that night in the garden when he hadn’t been able to fix things.

‘But if you did,’ Dan continued, ‘I’d have to tell you that she’s a heartbroken wreck. Zoe’s words, not mine. I’d also have to tell you that she looks like death warmed up. But you don’t care, so I won’t.’

At the knowledge that Lily sounded as miserable as he was, Kit felt something inside him collapse. All that drivel about wiping her from his life and his heart, probably, because who had he been kidding? There was absolutely zero chance of that happening.

Grinding his teeth against his pathetically weak willpower when it came to Lily, Kit gave in to the need to talk to someone and maybe get a different take on the situation because he hadn’t exactly been doing brilliantly on his own. ‘Did you know she doesn’t think she can trust me?’ he said, dumping his things on a bench and sitting down in case his limbs gave out.

‘I had heard.’

‘Any thoughts as to what I can do about that?’

‘No idea. Can she trust you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you tried telling her?’ Dan asked, opening his locker and taking out a towel before stashing his bag and racket.

‘Many times and at length. It didn’t make any difference.’

‘Do you want her?’

‘More than I want my next breath,’ said Kit. ‘But five years ago I did something stupid. Something I’ve regretted ever since.’

‘I heard about that too.’

‘And it’s turned out to be too great an obstacle to overcome.’

‘So we all make mistakes,’ said Dan, now armed with a bottle of shower gel as well as a towel.

‘This was some mistake.’

‘Yeah, but it was a while ago, wasn’t it?’

‘Five years.’

‘And has Lily never made a mistake?’

Kit frowned as all the mistakes she’d made filtered into his head. ‘Plenty.’

‘So stop beating yourself up and do something about it. Marry her or something. Bind her to you so she can’t escape and prove it over and over again until she has no choice but to trust you. Bit drastic, I know, but what else are you going to do?’

As Dan strode off and shut himself in one shower cubicle Kit stashed his things in his locker, grabbed a towel and headed for another, his mind beginning to race.

Was Dan right? he wondered, turning on the tap and feeling hot needles of water pummelling his skin. Was he beating himself up unnecessarily about the mistake he’d made? Had he let Lily dictate the way things had gone out of some kind of sense of inadequacy? Had that been totally the wrong thing to do?

Maybe it had, because Lily wasn’t perfect, was she? For the last few weeks he’d been tearing himself apart with remorse and guilt over what he’d done, but what about Lily? Hadn’t she reverted to type when the going had got tough? She had. And while he’d made huge changes and sacrifices for them she’d hardly done a thing.

So maybe he wasn’t blame free in their break-up this time round, but neither was she. Just like before. They were equals. They always had been. Which meant that he
was
worthy of her, dammit. He
did
deserve her. They deserved each other.

He shouldn’t have let her get away with ending things between them, he thought, turning off the water and grabbing his towel. That had been a mistake. One he wouldn’t be making again because he loved her and she loved him and he was, well, he was wasting time.

* * *

Having abandoned Zoe in the pub after her sister had told her to go and then heading straight to the gym, Lily didn’t have a plan. She hadn’t had the time to formulate one. Nor had she had the mental space because her head was so full to the brim with the realisation of what a foolish idiot she’d been and her heart was pounding with so much love and hope and regret at the way she’d behaved that there wasn’t room for anything else.

So when she pushed through the door of the gym and saw Kit striding purposefully across the lobby for a split second she didn’t know what to do. For a moment she just watched him, her heart swelling because he looked so gorgeous, so familiar, and she loved him so damn much.

He also looked like she felt. Drawn. Haggard. Unkempt. As though basic self-maintenance was simply too great a challenge to face these days. Which was something of a boost to her pretty shaky confidence because if he’d looked clean-shaven and crisp, as if he hadn’t been pining for her the way she had for him and was totally over her, she’d have been straight out of the door.

As it was, when he saw her he stopped dead, stared at her, his face totally unreadable, and she didn’t know whether he was glad to see her or surprised or appalled. All she knew was that her heart was thundering so loudly it was a miracle no one else seemed to be able to hear it and her body was straining to throw itself at him and she wasn’t going anywhere.

Literally. However hard it was she was staying right where she was because there’d be no throwing of anything anywhere until she’d said what she had to say, whatever that was.

‘Hello, Kit,’ she said, aiming for breezy nonchalance but, she suspected, failing.

His brows snapping together in a frown, Kit stalked over to her and stopped about a metre away. ‘You’re here,’ he said.

‘So it would seem,’ she said, a bit breathless as her lungs were having trouble functioning in his presence.

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to talk.’

‘Seems to be the fashion at the moment.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ he muttered.

‘I thought we could go to your hotel. Maybe a meeting room or something.’ Not his apartment though. No. Way too many disturbing and distracting memories there.

‘Good idea,’ he said, taking her arm and wheeling her round. ‘You’d better come with me.’

He marched her out of the gym at such a rate that she had to jog to keep up. He held her tight as he led her into his hotel and across the lobby and she tried not to respond to the feel of him that she’d so badly missed. When he bypassed the ground-floor meeting rooms and took her to the lift she protested but her protest went unnoticed.

By the time they reached his apartment Lily was out of breath and her stomach was fluttering because Kit had a kind of energy about him, a sizzling sort of tension and a sense of purpose that she’d never seen before and it was doing crazy things to her heart.

He dropped his things on a chair, then thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and turned to face her. At the fire in his eyes and the intensity of his expression, Lily’s knees nearly gave way and a flicker of hope at the thought that she might not have screwed things up for good began to burn deep inside her.

Kit raked his gaze over her. ‘Dan was right,’ he said flatly. ‘You do look awful.’

‘So do you.’

‘Yes, well, I feel it.’

‘Me too.’

‘But I’m glad you’re here,’ he said, flashing her a quick, lethal smile.

Oh, thank goodness for that, she thought, letting out a breath of relief because he was acting so oddly she hadn’t been sure. ‘You are?’

Kit nodded. ‘Saves me a journey.’

‘Where were you going?’

‘To come and find you.’

Lily felt her heart turn over and that little flame of hope began to burn a little more fiercely. ‘Oh.’

‘So my carbon footprint thanks you.’

‘It’s welcome. But now can I tell you what I came to say?’ she said, feeling so encouraged by the fact that he hadn’t ignored her or turned her away that she was now practically exploding with the need to fix what she’d done.

‘In a moment,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

‘I don’t want to sit down.’

‘Sit.’

She sat, even more bemused and now quite a bit more turned on by his dark, edgy demeanour. ‘Are you all right, Kit?’ she asked, leaning forwards and looking at him closely. ‘You seem, I don’t know, a bit weird.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Sure,’ she murmured, and then couldn’t quite remember what she’d been thinking because Kit was fixing her with a look that had her heart thumping and her mouth going dry and her head swimming.

‘OK, so here’s the thing, Lily,’ he said, and for some reason she shivered. ‘Despite what happened a fortnight ago, we are not over.’

As his words hit her poor, battered brain her heart tripped and then swelled to bursting. ‘You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that, because—’

But he held up his hand and cut her off. ‘Let me finish. I love you, Lily, but you are as far from perfect as I am.’

‘Oh, you’re so right,’ she said with heartfelt conviction. ‘I’m not perfect at all.’

‘And, yes, I made a mistake but it was years ago and I refuse to carry the guilt around any longer.’

‘Good, well, about that—’

‘You’ve made many more mistakes than I have.’

She nodded. ‘I know. I know.’ She’d made tons.

‘I thought I wasn’t worthy of you. But I am.’

For a moment she reeled. How could he ever have thought that? Had
she
made him think that? ‘You are,’ she said with a stab of shame.

‘We need each other, Lily,’ he said, his eyes dark and intense and focused wholly on her. ‘We love each other and we deserve each other.’

‘We do.’

‘So here’s how this is going to go. We’re going to get married, you and I, after which I plan to devote the rest of my life to proving to you how much you can trust me. We’re going to communicate. Talk. Be a proper partnership. We’re also going to adopt a brood of children and be extremely happy.’ He arched an eyebrow as if challenging her to object. ‘So what do you think about that?’

But why would she object when it was everything she wanted? Filled with so much relief, happiness and love she couldn’t speak, instead Lily just walked over to him, put her arms around his neck, pressed herself against him and kissed him.

And damn it felt good because it had been such a long, miserable time since she’d been in his arms, but now she was because he was hauling his hands out of his pockets and putting them on her back, pulling her tight to him and kissing her back equally fiercely.

Free from all the insecurities that had plagued her these last few weeks, all the doubt and confusion that had so troubled her, and filling with the absolute certainty that she and Kit were going to be all right, she kissed him long and hard and with everything she felt. And when they broke for breath, his breathing was as ragged as hers, his heart was thundering as hard and fast as hers and his eyes were blazing as fiercely as she could imagine hers were.

‘I’m taking it that you’re not averse to the idea,’ he said hoarsely.

‘I couldn’t be more for it,’ she said with a giddy kind of smile. ‘Although that bit about devoting the rest of your life to proving to me how much I can trust you? You don’t need to do that.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t? Why not? I was looking forward to it.’

‘I don’t know how I could ever have thought I couldn’t trust you, Kit. I’d trust you with my life. I’m so sorry for doubting it.’

‘You trust me?’ he said after a moment’s pause. ‘Since when?’

‘Since about an hour ago.’

‘What happened an hour ago?’

‘I came to realise that trust is a choice, and I guess before I chose not to trust you. I don’t exactly know why. Because I was scared maybe? Because it was all going too fast and I panicked? Because I could feel myself retreating and I couldn’t stop it?’

‘And now?’

‘Now I want to trust you and I do. With everything I am and everything I have, because when have you given me reason to doubt it? You haven’t. Not once. And you won’t. I know that.’ She shook her head in despair. ‘I was such a fool. I went back on our deal to communicate and shut you out again. But I promise that that won’t happen again because I’m done with denial. It’s the coward’s way out and I don’t want to be a coward any more. I’m sorry if I made you think you don’t deserve me because if anything I don’t deserve you. And I’m sorry for breaking up with you. It was just about the worst thing I could have done. This last fortnight has been horrible. The worst of my life.’

‘Mine too,’ said Kit, his voice rough. ‘I thought I’d lost you for good.’

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I was the one doing the losing.’

He tilted his head and looked down at her, his eyes filled with warmth and love and the promise of a future. ‘I’m pretty sure it was me, but do you really want to argue about this?’

‘Not really.’

He gave her a soft smile and his eyes took on a gleam. ‘Because you know there are far better things we could be doing,’ he said, his hands slowly sweeping up her back to her shoulders and making her shudder with longing.

‘Like what?’

‘Like you agreeing to marry me. Will you?’

Lily felt the backs of her eyes begin to prickle because how many people got a second chance? How many people were that lucky? ‘Yes,’ she said, blinking a bit. ‘Because I want to, obviously, not because you scared me into it with all that “this is how it’s going to go” thing.’