Fiona Lowe – The Reunion Of A Lifetime: The Reunion of a Lifetime / A Bride to Redeem Him (страница 11)

The only way to protect herself was to restore the distance she’d so carefully placed between them when they’d met at Bide-a-While—the distance drugs had just jettisoned. ‘Ignore me,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m not making any sense. I need to sleep.’

His gaze was too perceptive, roving over her face, seeking clues. ‘I think it’s more likely you’re making absolute sense for once. You’ve been prickly ever since we met at Gran’s. This promise is connected to that, isn’t it?’

She’d forgotten how observant he was and how quick his brain. Perhaps, if she closed her eyes, he might take the hint and leave. Her lids lowered and she shut him out, trying to let sleep claim her.

‘Lauren?’

Damn it. He wasn’t going away. In fact, she’d bet her bottom dollar he would sit there until she told him. She didn’t know which was the worse humiliation; that she’d flirted and snuggled into him or that she’d raised the hurt she’d long associated with him. The answer was simple: it was the latter and now she couldn’t back away from it. A long, bone-weary sigh rumbled out of her. ‘You told me you were coming back.’

‘Coming back?’ Bewilderment skittered across his face. ‘Where? When?’

The fact he had no clue what she was talking about hurt more than her bruised ribs. ‘Do you remember our last night together?’

He was quiet for a moment. ‘I have a strong suspicion I don’t remember it as well as you do. But before I’m accused of something, I want to say with absolute honesty that our summer together was one of the happiest of my life.’

She flinched as his words poured salt on a wound she knew should have healed a very long time ago. She hated that it hadn’t. Hated herself more. ‘Your happiest?’ she scoffed. ‘That’s probably because nothing about that summer was real. We immersed ourselves in each other and hid from the world.’

This time he flinched, as if she’d shot an arrow at him and made a direct hit. ‘Was that so bad? We had a lot of fun.’

‘We did.’ She couldn’t argue that. ‘Then it ended.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Just as we both always knew it would. We were young. We’d agreed...’

The arrow returned, piercing her this time, and she couldn’t hide the hurt. ‘Then why did you move the goalposts at the last minute and tell me that you were only going to London for a year?’ Her voice rose despite her desperate attempts to sound detached. ‘I stupidly waited for you to come back.’

A thousand emotions rose and fell in his eyes until all that was left was guilt and pity. ‘The intern position I had in London was only for one year,’ he said quietly, tugging at his ear. ‘Did I actually say to you, “I’ll be back?”’

She opened her mouth to say a decisive yes but something on his face and in his voice—not regret but perhaps concern—made her hesitate. She rolled her mind back to a time when she’d sat on the enormous picnic rug at the mouth of the cave. She smelt the hot, sweet fat and the tang of salt from their paper-wrapped fish and chips. She heard the raucous squawks of predatory seagulls brawling for prime position, ever hopeful of scoring food. She tasted the syrupy sweetness of passionfruit soda laced with vodka—her favourite beverage that summer—one she’d not tasted since. It had been their last of many picnics together on the beach.

Two weeks previously, they’d spent a day and a night in Melbourne. They’d had dinner in Lygon Street and he’d told her how, when she was studying at uni, this Italian district would be her local shopping strip. He’d shown her all his favourite haunts in and around the uni, making her bubbly with excitement and keen for the next six weeks to pass quickly so she could start her degree. Then he’d taken her shopping and bought her the red stethoscope.

One small purchase—a gift—had changed everything. The moment he’d swung it around her neck and pulled her into him, she’d fallen in love. What had started out as a summer of fun had morphed into friendship and love. Ignoring all the apocryphal stories about doomed holiday romances, Lauren had foolishly allowed herself to weave a fantasy of the two them continuing to be together long after the summer ended. After all, she’d justified, they’d be living in the same city. The university was across the road from the hospital where Charlie had accepted an intern position. Geography wasn’t an issue so why couldn’t they build on what they’d started?

‘Something exciting happened today,’ Charlie said, as she lay with her head in his lap.

She gazed up at him and laughed. ‘The fact you actually beat me into shore?’

He grinned. ‘That was pretty cool, but it’s even better than that.’

Excitement bounced off him, pushing into her and catching her in its web. Had he got the flat he’d applied for? Did it mean he was going to ask her to move in with him? She sat up and caught his hands. ‘Tell me!’

‘I got an offer from London Central. I’m going to do my residency there.’

Her smile froze. All her daydreams shattered, crashing down around her feet in sharp and jagged shards, digging into her skin. ‘London as in London, England?’

‘The very same.’ He laughed, high on the news.

‘Wow.’ The one-syllable word was a struggle to form. ‘That’s...that’s so exciting.’

‘I know, right?’ He pulled her into his lap and kissed her. ‘I can hardly believe it.’

She studied his face. It shone with jubilation and anticipation. The fact this news thrilled him to his marrow eviscerated her. She wasn’t part of this dream of his. ‘I didn’t even know you’d applied,’ she said, forcing herself to sound upbeat.

‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

‘Not even your parents?’ She couldn’t imagine keeping anything that huge from her mum and dad. So how come you’re keeping Charlie a secret?

‘I didn’t want to jinx it,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘I still can’t believe I got accepted. I’m going to have a year in England.’

She wanted to be happy for him, she truly did, but all she could think was that he was travelling seventeen thousand kilometres away from her and she wouldn’t see him for twelve long months. Her world, which had been so vibrant and colourful only a few minutes before, was suddenly charcoal grey. ‘And after London, then what? You’ll come back?’

He smiled and ran his hands through her hair before cupping her cheeks, tilting back her head and kissing her until sensation vanquished all conscious thought.

The memory slapped Lauren and her breath stalled.

No, that wasn’t right.

Charlie had smiled at her and then said, ‘Yes, I’ll be back.’ She conjured up the memory a second time. She saw the smile but the words didn’t come.

Oh, God.

Had she interpreted his smile as agreement? Had she been so desperate to hear the words that she’d imagined he’d spoken them?

No!

She tried again but she still couldn’t hear them. The idea that she’d replayed this memory over and over in her head until her version of the conversation had become her reality horrified her. Worse still was the thought that her desperation a couple of months later, when darkness had descended over her, had cemented the erroneous belief firmly in place. She knew the only thing that had got her through the heartache and misery after her miscarriage had been her belief that he’d return to her. It had sustained her right up until betrayal had sneaked in and taken its place.

‘Lauren.’ Charlie’s voice was careful and controlled. ‘Please understand this has nothing to do with our amazing summer together. The thing is, I would never have promised you that I’d come back.’

For so long she’d been so certain, so convinced and yet now... ‘How can you be so sure you didn’t say it?’

He sighed and the weariness he wore like a coat settled over him. ‘Because London was my ticket out of Australia. I never had any intention of returning here to live. I still don’t.’

Despite his resigned tone, a hint of harshness lingered in the words. She trawled her dusty and obviously faulty recollections, looking for anything he’d said or done during their summer that had hinted he’d wanted to run from his country of origin. She had plenty of moments to draw on of a laughing and smiling Charlie. Of him daring her to race him both on land and sea, and a thousand clips of his eyes darkening to indigo before he kissed her and tumbled her into bed. Happy, joyous, playful memories with no connection to anything outside their precious bubble. Not one clue that anything was amiss.

The reality was they’d mostly avoided talking about the future because it had meant the end of their time together. ‘You did mention a vague plan of working with your father.’

‘Was I drunk at the time?’ But his lip curled, stealing the joke from the words. He scrubbed his face with his hands before looking back at her. ‘Hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do. I had no idea you thought I was coming back. You never said a thing, never dropped any clues, and if you had, I would have said something. I mean, hell, did we even trade more than one or two emails after I left?’