The Vine (29 page)

I wake up feeling a bit jaded. Okay, that’s an understatement; I feel terrible. I hit the off button on the alarm. For the first time, I actually wish I didn’t have to work today. I love Isabella, and I love the café, and if the person with the pneumatic drill would just step out of my head for a minute, I would happily skip off to work to open up. I groan as the words hit me; I’ve got to open up the café, which means an even earlier start than normal.

I swing my legs to the edge of the bed and go to sit up. It’s a lot harder than normal, especially when it seems my head has been replaced with an anvil. I grab the warm glass of water from beside my bed, and take the aspirin I had sensibly left there hours ago. I shuffle off to the bathroom to have a shower before slowly getting ready for my day. As I step out of the lift, Giovanni at reception calls me over. I walk over to him plastering a fake smile on my face, thinking,
Of all the mornings Giovanni wants a natter, why today?

“Sorry to bother you, Miss Castel,” Giovanni apologises in his thick Italian accent, “but I was left a note asking not to disturb you, and just to ask when you came down if you could pop into the conference room for a few minutes.”

This is new.
“Who left the note?” I ask.

He shrugs apologetically. “I’m sorry; I don’t know.”

“Could it be Mr. Goretti?” I ask, fishing for details.

He shrugs again. “Could be.”

On any other day I may have fished for more clues to the mystery letter-leaver, but my head’s pounding and I’m starting to feel sick. Plus, poor Giovanni looks so worried about bothering me, so I need to put him at ease and just get this over with as quickly as possible. I try to give him a smile as I turn away, but I’m sure he only ends up with a grimace. As I head for the conference room, I think to myself,
this definitely seems like the work of my clearly-obsessed friend Luca.

I smile as I wonder what he’s up to now. We had gotten along really well last night; I think we were both relaxed with the alcohol coursing through our veins. Our recent conversation was swept aside and we got on like good friends, just as I hoped we would. He couldn’t help throwing in the odd innuendo, but that’s just in his nature, so it could easily be forgiven. I’m still smiling as I walk through the conference room door, and as it closes behind me, I look around the darkened room. I can see no one, but I see the projector is on, and images are flashing slowly on the screen. I move in closer to see the images, wondering what the hell is going on.

My smile fades as I realise what is being played out in front of me.
Is someone playing a kind of cruel practical joke or something?
There are images of Luke in the hospital—my Luke, my beautiful man—and at that thought alone, my heart splinters. At first, he is all I see; after all, if he’s in a room, he is all I ever see, but then I notice a woman with him—lying with him, crying next to him, comforting him, cuddling him, kissing him and loving him. In some of the pictures, he still looks gravely ill, but in the kissing ones, he is propped up, and I’m sure he’s awake.

Oh, God, please don’t let him have woken up briefly and I wasn’t there!
My stomach is recoiling, and it has nothing to do with my hangover now. Who is this woman with him in all these pictures? Luke has a lot of admirers, and a lot of exes; one of them, maybe? At this moment in time, I don’t actually care. The thought that he woke up and I wasn’t there is like a vice grip around my neck,
choking me. Then, suddenly, it bothers me again.
Of course it matters! Luke woke up, and not only was I not there to comfort him, but another woman was, and I still don’t bloody well know who she is!

My mind flits between the devastating realisation that I wasn’t there for Luke when he needed me, and sheer anger towards the woman who had the audacity to be there in his hour of need when it should have been me. I know I don’t fully realise at this point what exactly the enormity of these pictures mean, and that’s when I see more.

I cup my hand over my mouth as it hits me. I’m not just seeing Luke wake up, but I’m seeing Luke alive, and by the looks of it, he’s alive and well. I cross my arms in front of me and try to comfort myself, and then what I see makes me shudder from head to foot.

Luke with Katy.

If it’s even possible Luke has miraculously recovered from that horrendous accident, I would expect Katy to care for him, but not like this. They are kissing and hugging, and it’s making me feel sick to my stomach. Who is putting me through this nightmare? I am still trying to get my head around the fact Luke could actually be alive, yet the images still keep coming.

The last picture is of the woman from the hospital, wearing a rock of an engagement ring. At this, I can take no more. I run out with my hand still over my mouth, trying to suppress sob after sob. I run through reception, not even noticing if Giovanni is still there. I run through the glass doors and out into the dark pouring rain of the street. I am slowly choking on my own sobs. This is how I’m going to die—choking because of my shattered heart.

As the tears stream down my face, I just keep running, not knowing anything about where I’m going until I reach the café. I stand at the door, drenched by the rogue summer shower, and with shaking hands; I put the key in the lock and let myself in. I lock the door behind me and put my back against it.

My chest is heaving with the wracking sobs taking over my body as my back slides down the length of the door. I physically do not
have the strength to hold myself up anymore. As my bottom hits the floor, I pull my knees in close and hug them to me, clutching them tightly with my arms. I’m shivering I’m so cold, I’m shaking with shock and I’m rocking slowly forward and backward in the foetal position that, over the years, I have learned comforts me when things get too much. This—all this—is too much. Far too much. And that’s when my mind starts racing.

He survived?

He’s alive?

He woke up, and I wasn’t there?

He’s alive?

Some other woman took care of him?

He’s alive?

He leaned on Katy because I wasn’t there?

He’s alive?

He and Katy have been intimate?

He’s alive?

He’s met another woman—a woman who was there for him when I wasn’t?

He’s alive?

They are engaged?

Oh, my God, Luke is alive! He woke up, and the bottom line is—I wasn’t there. Why didn’t he come to find me? Of course he didn’t come to find me; I walked out on him when he needed me most.

So he’s moved on with someone who
did
take care of him at that terrible time. As I cry my heart out, I feel like I’m being watched. I turn my head to look behind me, to check outside the door of the café, and as I stare through the raindrops running down the glass, I come face-to-face with familiar eyes—eyes belonging to a woman I would have once trusted with my life.

Shock rams back into me. It’s Katy—normally my saviour and my friend, only today, she’s the enemy.

I’m on my way back to the penthouse after following Lizzy back to her hotel from the club. At least we now know where she is staying. I still cannot believe we’ve found her. This has been one crazy night. It certainly must have gotten to Lucas in the end, as he just walked out on me at the club and disappeared without a word. It takes a lot to ruffle his feathers, but that was before Lizzy entered his world. It must be hard after thirty-eight years; his whole life’s dynamic changing the way Lizzy had changed Lucas’s.

I’ve decided I’m going to get a few hours of sleep, and then I’ll go back to Lizzy’s hotel to keep an eye out for when she leaves.
I can’t believe we’ve found her!
I mean, I always hoped we would, but I couldn’t get my hopes up, just in case we didn’t. And now, maybe even as soon as tomorrow, I will see her, talk to her and hug the goddamn life out of her. I smile at the thought of it.

I know how hard this is on Lucas, but as soon as I’ve spoken to Lizzy and prepared her, he can swoop in and sweep her off of her feet. Although, I’ve got a feeling after all this, he’s never going to let her out of his sight again. I mean, jeez, he’s always been protective of her, but now he’ll probably want them to move into a fort and never go out, not even to work. I will have to have a little talk with him about not smothering her; he does seem to listen to me…sometimes.

I think back to last night and the fact I got to see Jett, and although brief, it had been wonderful. I had managed to scramble through to the front of the crowd, and I had jumped around to tune after tune, and then I waved my arms in the air along to all the slow ones. That man’s voice is truly mesmerising. Jett was mid-song when his eyes caught mine. I saw them widen quickly in surprise before he composed himself for his crowd.
He is so professional
, I think as I let out a sigh.

After the first part of his set, he had asked one of his security guys to bring me backstage. I went willingly, of course, much to the annoyance of all the girls and groupies around shooting me daggers. I just smiled sweetly, enjoying all the attention I was getting. As soon as I saw Jett, I had ran to him and thrown my arms around him, and I hung onto him for dear life. I put on a brave face, but all the emotion of the last few weeks was clearly starting to get to me—which was obviously the cause of my meltdown earlier—but I wasn’t about to go there again.

I heard Jett chuckle at the force of my body being thrown into his arms, but he held me there though, recognising I needed this from him for whatever reason. When my arms loosened on him slightly, he pulled me away from him a little, and there was his trademark smile.

He held my arms and looked me over, and after a moment, he said huskily, “Katy, you look fantastic…as always.”

“Of course,” I replied, smiling.

Jett laughed. “You still have no problem accepting a compliment, do you, girl?”

“Nope, and especially not from aging rock stars,” I answered cheekily.

Jett’s mouth gaped at my nerve, so I squeezed him affectionately. Normally, I don’t care who I offend, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Jett.

He smiled again, and I knew I was forgiven. It was chaos around us, but it felt like it was just him and me standing there looking at each other—well, it was like that for me; maybe not so much for him. I didn’t like that thought at all.

Eventually, Jett broke the silence. “Have you heard anything from Lizzy?” he asked, concerned. I shake my head at him sadly before saying, “We know she’s been here in Verona, which is why I’m here, but other than that, nothing. Can you think of anything else from the night she called you? Anything she said or that you heard that might give us any more clues?”

“No, sorry, it was her mobile she called me from because her name came up, but that’s all,” he said sadly. I look away from him wistfully before I heard him say, “Look, Katy, it’s been lovely to see you, and we really must catch up soon, but I’ve got to go.” He nodded to the stage where I could hear the chanting.

I laughed. “Oh, of course.”

“Call me soon, yeah?” Jett shouted. Then he ran off and jumped onto the stage to a rapturous applause and the highest decibel of screaming I think I’ve ever heard. These guys were huge. As I walked off from the backstage area, I was still thinking of Jett, and how I would’ve loved to be able to speak to him properly, and how maybe one day I would give him a call.

I had then thought of Lucas. I needed to get back to see how he was; knowing gorgeous Lucas, he’d probably gotten his own crowd of groupies surrounding him by now, and I smiled at the thought.

My smile dropped as soon as I had spotted him—something was up. I touched his arm and he flinched, but when I saw him nod in the direction of the overhanging balcony, I looked around searching, trying to find what had freaked him out so badly.

And then I balked as I saw her. It was her—it was our Lizzy! I blinked, not quite believing what I was seeing. As I looked back, there was no mistaking it was definitely her, albeit an even more beautiful version. I mean, not that she could ever see it, but she’d always been beautiful, but now, with that hair—wow! I could see she was laughing, but I looked at her eyes, which have always given away what she was really feeling, and that’s when I saw the truth—pain, deep rooted pain.
Oh, Lizzy
, I thought, feeling nothing but love and sympathy for her and for what she’s been through.

Snap out of it, Katy
, I berated myself. I needed to get Lucas away from her quickly, because I knew what he would want to do, and I’ve got to talk him out of it.

And so I had talked, and then he had walked.

After being so deep in thought, I am now at the penthouse. It’s the early hours of the morning, and Lucas should be asleep, and although it’s dark as I enter, I sense something is wrong. I put the light on in the lounge, and I gasp as I throw my hand against my mouth.

The room is trashed—chairs have been thrown, tables are turned over and there is smashed and broken china and glass everywhere. My first thought is that we’ve been robbed, and my second thought is Lucas—
Please don’t let him have been here when intruders smashed this place up!

Are they still here? I panic.
No, they can’t be; it’s too quiet.
And that thought fills me with a second wave of panic—the quietness. Maybe Lucas was here, tried to stop them and is now hurt. I run to his room calling for him, and as I barge into his room I am prepared for the worst, but he is not there.
Where the hell is he?
I check his bathroom, and then I walk over to my room, but he’s not there either.

As I stand in the lounge completely confused, I spot him outside on the balcony. I run out to him relieved. “Lucas,” I call as I step out with him, and as I do, I look him over. He is still in the same clothes he went out in, his face is tight and he looks exhausted—handsome, but exhausted. Then I notice his hands. There are huge cuts on his knuckles, with dried and congealed blood all over them.