The Darkest of Shadows (45 page)

“I’d like that.” Nicholas nodded.

So Scotland was pretty much exhausted now. I shot a glance at Lawrence and begged with my eyes for him to help, but he merely grinned in response and sipped his wine casually. He was so going to pay later.

He did redeem himself a moment later, however, when he engaged Nicholas in one of their usual casual conversations, which left me free to try and talk to Isobel without both their attention.

“Have you known Nicholas long?” I asked, hoping that she would lighten up a bit.

“Only about a week.”
Geez, Nicholas, you sure are bringing them to dinner quickly.

“And you live in London now?”

“Yes.”

“Is your family here?”

“Yes.”

Do you know any other words?
But I didn’t say that. “I’m from Australia.” Jesus, she was hard work.

“I know.”

I nearly laughed. “Nicholas is lovely. He’s a good friend.”

“I’m sorry.”

What did she have to be sorry about, other than appalling conversational skills—but I didn’t get a chance to ask, because just then my phone buzzed in my bag. Reed? I let the call go to voicemail; I couldn’t answer it here, not with Isobel sitting next to me.

I leaned over toward Lawrence and rested my hand on his arm, interrupting his conversation with Nicholas. “I’ve got to ring Reed back. I’ll just be a sec” I told him and rose from the table with an apologetic smile.

“Is everything OK?” he asked, rising to stand with me.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I assured him. “She probably just wants to vent about something. I’ll be back in a moment.” I watched as Lawrence flicked a nod at Charlie, who was waiting by one of the doors. Not surprisingly, he followed after me as I crossed to the tall doors on the side of the restaurant. I had eaten here many times with Nicholas and Lawrence, and I knew that outside the doors there was a small patio surrounded by groupings of potted plants. It was where people came to smoke, so they didn’t pollute the air in the hotel. As I expected at this time of night, the place was devoid of humanity.

Charlie gave the area a cursory glance and then waited by the doors so that I could have some privacy for the phone call. We were on ground level in the restaurant, so the small garden patio was situated between the hotel and an adjoining building, with the front of it blocked from view of the street by only a small row of potted bushes. But it would do for the purposes of this call. I moved toward the front, closer to the street, and dialed the number.

“Reed.” I greeted my sister with enthusiasm. At least with her, I didn’t have to try so hard to have a normal conversation.

“Hi, Lilly.” She sounded grim, and I was instantly on alert, a coldness settling in my stomach.

“What’s wrong?”

“Where are you?” she asked first.

“Answer me, Reed.”
God, let everyone be all right
. My mind flashed through images of my beautiful little nephews. All four of them and their cherubic faces. Faces that I couldn’t fathom losing.

“Is Lawrence with you?”

“Reed, you’re scaring me. What’s happened?” My heart was racing in my chest.

“It’s Dad, Lilly.”

Oh, dear God
. I grasped the wall beside me for support. I hadn’t expected that, I honestly hadn’t expected that. “What’s wrong?” I barely managed to get the words out.

“He’s taken a turn for the worst,” she admitted in a sad voice. “I didn’t want to have to tell you; I hoped he would get better, but he’s developed pneumonia, and they’re talking days now.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Lilly?” Her voice sounded from a long way away. “Lilly, are you there?”

“Yes.” The words croaked out. “Is he dying, Reed?”
Please let her say no
.

“It’s time, Lilly.”

I stared at the wall in front of me for a long moment. A long, long moment. “I’m on my way.” I disconnected the call.
I’m not sure I can cope with this. I’m not sure that the full reality of it has hit me. I don’t want the reality of it to catch me
.

Death was inevitable and unavoidable. I knew this moment was coming, but I just wished it wasn’t quite so soon. I think the fact that he wasn’t actually dead, the fact that as I stood there, feeling the cold and the desolation of my loss, he was still living and breathing on the other side of the world, gave me the strength to push away from the wall and face what I had to do.

I turned around, prepared to walk back into the restaurant and tell Lawrence that we had to go to Australia, that it was time for him to meet my dad, while there was still time. I needed him beside me for this. But when I turned, instead of space, I came face to face with Isobel.

“Sorry,” she stammered, shock showing on her face when she saw the horror in my eyes. “Sorry,” she repeated. “I didn’t mean to disturb you; I was just coming to see if you were OK.”

Quite obviously I wasn’t, but I answered the only way I could. “I’m fine,” I told her in a flat unemotional voice.

“Oh, OK.” She stepped back a pace. “You just look a little startled, is all.”

“Just a difficult phone call.” I held up the phone to emphasize the point.

“I’m sorry I was a bitch to you when we first met,” she said out of the blue.

“Don’t worry about it.” I really didn’t care.

“No.” She shook her head. “It was rude of me, and I apologize.”

“Fine. I accept.” I went to step around her, but she held out a hand to stop me.

“Please. I just wanted to explain,” she said. “You see, you have everything that I want, and I don’t understand how it comes so easily to you and how it escapes me.”

I sighed. I really didn’t have time for this. “I’m sorry, Isobel, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her.

“Lawrence. Nicholas.” She shrugged. “All of it. You have them all. You even know William Bates. I would give so much to be familiar with half the people you call friends. What’s so different about us that I can’t be part of your world?” She sounded desperate; she honestly wanted to know.

“What makes us different, Isobel,” I told her, “is that I don’t want any of it. I don’t try to be friends with these people, I didn’t go looking for Lawrence, I didn’t seek out Nicholas, and I still haven’t got a clue exactly who William Bates is, and I don’t care.”

“How could you not care?” She sounded shocked. “They have so much. So much money and power. Who doesn’t want to be around that?”

“I don’t.” I shrugged. “I don’t care what Lawrence does, I don’t care how many hotels Nicholas owns. I would still be their friend if they were nothing, because I like them as people. What makes us so different, Isobel, what you don’t understand about these men, is that there are a hundred women like you who throw themselves at Lawrence and Nicholas every day. There will always be another pretty woman who comes along. You will never gain and hold their attention if you don’t have a brain in your head. Go get a job. Get a career, and you might have a chance of catching hold of Nicholas. But if he can’t respect you, then he will never love you.”

Isobel was stuck silent. She stared at me, and I watched the understanding as it spread over her face. “Lawrence loves you,” she said.

I nodded. “Lawrence is an amazing, remarkable man, and I am honored to be part of his life. But it’s the man himself I love, not his name or what he does.”

I stood there in dawning horror as I realized what I had just admitted. The full consciousness of my words hit me in the chest and speared a hole right though my body.

“Oh, dear God,” I groaned, and made a mad dash for the garden and proceeded to throw up my dinner. “Oh, God. Oh, God.” I wasn’t sure if I was saying it aloud, or just in my head. I felt Charlie beside me, heard his concern, and then I felt him move away. I knew where he was going; I knew that I had moments, seconds before Lawrence would be there, his strong arms comforting me, holding me.

I could have that.

But I couldn’t do that.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t love him. I, I…I ran.

One moment I was clutching my stomach; the next I slipped past a stunned Isobel and squeezed between the plants and the wall of the hotel. I was across the road and slipping into a taxi seconds later.

.

Eighteen

I made the taxi drive around for a little while before I finally collected my thoughts enough to make a decision about where to go. I needed to be somewhere. I needed to see my dad before it was too late. Before anything else. If I could just focus on one moment at a time, then I might be able to manage this.

I had nothing except the clothes on my back and, thank God, my purse with my passport. It rarely left my side; our travel was often so unexpected that I carried it out of habit. My dress was plain black, not too short, and had little cap sleeves. It wasn’t too formal, but hardly what I would have chosen to travel in.

I paid the driver when he dropped me at Heathrow and walked into the terminal. First I needed to get a ticket, which would probably cost me a fortune—and that was if I could even manage to get a flight out at this time of night. It took me three airlines before I found one that was leaving soon, and by that point I would have paid anything they asked. The only reason I was allowed to travel so close to the departure time was because I wasn’t checking in any luggage, something the airline crew found to be an astonishing fact.

I got a ticket in business class, scooted through security, and found my way to the allocated gate.

I wasn’t sure if Lawrence would be able to find me. I was sure he would be worried, and considering my phone was nearly continuously buzzing with missed calls and voicemail messages I figured that was probably a given. But I refused to answer. I refused to even see who was calling, mainly because I didn’t want to see that it might be Reed. The only reason she would be ringing would be to tell me that it was too late, not to bother, because Dad was already dead. As long as I ignored that call, I could manage to hold myself together with the knowledge that my dad was still alive.

And as long as I had that to worry about, I wouldn’t have to think about Lawrence and what I felt for him. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, when it had gone from him being a friend to my being in love with him, and I was even more astonished that my messed-up mind could even acknowledge it. But what I couldn’t do was live with it. The only way to deal with it, the only way that I could breathe each breath, was to forget about him. Totally. I couldn’t take back the fact that I loved him, but I could separate myself from him. It was the only way.

The flight left as planned, and with my phone off, I felt like I was safe. Nothing could touch me in the air. Not Lawrence, not Reed, not my dad. For the next twenty-four hours, I was safe in the untouchable world of airline travel.

“What the hell happened?” Lawrence was furious. Furious at Charlie for not staying with Lilly, furious with Isobel for upsetting her, furious with Nicholas for inviting Isobel. Furious with Lilly for running away.

“I didn’t do anything!” Isobel looked frightened but still tried to stand up to Lawrence.

Charlie came busting back through the hedges from the street. He shook his head. “She’s gone,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Explain to me, please,” Lawrence ground out, “exactly what happened.” He tried to stay calm, but that was becoming more and more difficult.

Nicholas placed a hand on Lawrence’s arm. “We’ll find her,” he promised. “Let me handle this.” When Lawrence finally nodded, Nicholas turned back to Charlie and Isobel.

He directed his first question to Charlie. “Lilly came out here to ring Reed. Did she make the call?” he asked.

Charlie nodded. “As far as I know,” he said. “She made a phone call, which I assumed was to her sister. She seemed OK. They talked for a few minutes—it was quick—then she hung up.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then Isobel came out and they talked,” Charlie added.

Isobel shook her head, spilling the tears that hung heavily in her eyes. “She wasn’t OK.” Isobel confirmed. “Something was wrong. She was upset when I got out here, like she was about to cry.”

“What did she say?” Lawrence pushed forward abruptly.

“Lawrence.” Nicholas warned and placed a restraining hand on his arm.

“It’s not going to help if you start scaring people.”

“She said that she was fine,” Isobel continued when Lawrence nodded more calmly. “I asked, but she just said that it was a bad phone call.”

“What else did she say?” Nicholas asked. “What made her sick?”

“I don’t know,” Isobel answered. “I swear I don’t. We were talking.” But then she hesitated, like she didn’t want to admit more.

“What exactly were you talking about?” Nicholas queried.

“You.” Isobel shrugged, and another tear escaped. “Both of you. I wanted to know what was so different about us. How you could both adore her so much and think nothing of me.” Isobel seemed to grow talker as she spoke, like she pulled courage from her words. “She told me that we were different because she didn’t want any of it. She didn’t care who you were, how much money you had, how much power you had. She loved you because she knew who you really were.”

“She said she loved me?” Lawrence stepped forward so abruptly that Isobel backed up a step in surprise. “She used those exact words?”

She nodded. “She said that you are an amazing, remarkable man, and that she loved that man, not the one everyone else knew.”

Lawrence surprised everyone by bursting into laughter. He slapped Nicholas on the arm, and they both grinned wildly at each other.

“Well, it’s about time,” Nicholas said. Isobel looked astonished. Charlie and Frost were silent.

“Now all I’ve got to do is find her and convince her it’s OK,” Lawrence said.

“Where would she have gone?”

“Not sure,” Lawrence admitted. “But I know someone who does.” He picked his phone out of his pocket and dialed the number. It took a few moments to connect.

“Oh, thank God, Lawrence.” Reed’s voice echoed strangely down the line. “Is she all right?”

“Reed.” Lawrence tried to calm her. “Reed, what happened?”

“It’s Dad; he’s not good, and the doctors have told us he might only have days left. So I had to tell her.” Reed sobbed into the phone. “I had to, or she would never forgive me. Is she all right?”