ART WAS OUT of the car before the passenger door of the taxi had opened. He’d been hanging around for over an hour. He’d stretched his legs a couple of times but he still felt cramped and restless.
Watching through narrowed eyes as she emerged, he felt at peace for the first time since he had left London.
No...since she had re-entered his life, if not before.
His thoughts were so clear he felt washed clean.
He could see the wariness in her eyes and he strode towards her before that wariness could persuade her to get back into the taxi and disappear, leaving him stranded on her doorstep.
‘What are you doing here?’ Rose’s voice was curt as she paid the taxi driver, who was watching proceedings with keen interest. ‘Thanks, Stephen—’ she said to the driver through the window of the car, eyebrows raised ‘—I won’t keep you. I expect Jenny and the kids would like to have you home.’
‘That the big-shot she’s been banging on about for weeks?’
‘No idea, Steve. I don’t know how many big-shots Jenny’s met recently...’ She slammed shut the door and leaned towards him. ‘Give her my love and the thumbs-up that everything’s in place for the changes to the library. She can start picking out colours for the new kids’ space.’
Rose was playing for time but, with no distraction left, she remained where she was as Steve headed away. Her case was on the ground at her feet.
‘I’ve been waiting here for over an hour.’ For the first time in living memory, Art was nervous. He almost failed to recognise the sensation. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He wanted to climb into her head and read what she was thinking but her expression was cool and remote and he wondered...where did he go from here?
Scowling and ill at ease, he walked towards her and was pleased to note that, almost indiscernibly, she flinched. He was having some kind of effect on her and that was good because, going by her expression, he could have been a wind-up toy.
‘So sorry to have kept you waiting,’ Rose said coolly, tilting her head at a mutinous angle and refusing to back away. ‘And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.’
‘I...’ He shook his head, looked away, raked his fingers through his hair and then returned his dark gaze to her pale, cool face. ‘I...shouldn’t have...let you leave...with the wrong idea...’ was pretty much all he could find to say.
‘Not interested,’ Rose muttered, looking away. ‘You’re a free agent and you can do what you want. You’re right. You don’t owe me any explanations.’
‘Are we going to carry on this conversation out here?’
‘I didn’t think we were having a conversation. You came here to explain whatever it is you feel you should explain and I’m liberating you from that responsibility. So there’s no conversation to be had.’
‘It was about the land.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I was on the phone to someone about the land. The land you were protecting from greedy developers like me. I wanted to tell you...’ Art looked away but only momentarily.
‘The land?’ Rose looked at him in confusion because this was the last thing she’d been expecting to hear. ‘You weren’t on the phone to a woman?’
‘I’m monogamous.’ His lips quirked in a dry smile but he had no idea how this was going to play out and the smile only lasted a second. His usual panache and easy self-assurance were nowhere in evidence. ‘And when would I have had time to think about frolicking with another woman? You’ve kept me pretty busy...’
‘What about the land?’
Lengthening silence greeted this and eventually Rose spun around and began walking towards the house.
‘Tell me you haven’t been keeping more from me about the land,’ she said quietly as soon as the front door was shut behind them. She clearly hadn’t wanted to invite him into the house but he’d left her with no choice.
‘You don’t have the complete picture,’ Art said flatly. Cold dread was gripping him and he knew now that full disclosure should have been his approach. But events had moved swiftly and now...
He was going to lose her and if that happened he had no idea what he was going to do because he couldn’t contemplate a life without her in it. He’d screwed up.
* * *
‘Start small, end up big. Is that the complete picture?’ They were in the kitchen. Rose felt as if she could do with a stiff drink but instead she began the business of making herself a cup of coffee—anything to still her nerves, which were running amok as she gradually worked out that he had deceived her once again.
Had he slept with her the second time round so that he could build up to yet more revelations about what he intended to do with the acres of land he had bought?
Had he sweet-talked her into phase one with the intention of sweet-talking her into phase two, except she’d scuppered his plans by overhearing that conversation, jumping to the wrong conclusion and then walking out on him before he could complete what he had set out to do?
She felt sick.
‘You didn’t want a handful of tasteful mansions with lots of spare land, did you? That wouldn’t have made financial sense. What you wanted was to start with a handful of tasteful mansions and then what, Art? A housing estate? Mass housing that would mean more profits for you? As if you aren’t rich enough already.’
She managed to make it to the kitchen table, now free from placards and posters and cardboard with rousing slogans, and she sank into one of the chairs.
‘Way too rich.’ Art drew a chair up close to hers, as if to stop her from somehow fleeing the room. She didn’t like his positioning and automatically drew back into herself, freezing him out as her defences came down. When he leaned forward, elbows resting loosely on his thighs, he was practically touching her.
‘Too rich to think about whether putting up a hundred houses is going to net me more money than putting up ten.’ He sighed heavily, caught her eye and held her gaze. ‘But you’re right. I haven’t been entirely honest with you.’
‘I don’t want to hear.’
‘And normally that would work for me,’ Art returned. ‘Normally justifying myself in any way, shape or form isn’t something I would see the need to do, but in this instance...’
‘Am I supposed to think that you have a conscience?’ Rose questioned painfully.
‘I don’t suppose I’ve given you a lot of reason to trust anything I have to say.’
‘Spot on.’
‘But...’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll try to start at the beginning. I... You’ll have to bear with me. I don’t...know how this is done.’
‘How what is done?’
‘This talking business.’
‘This talking business? What does that even mean?’ But there was an air of vulnerability about him that she’d never seen before and it did something to her even though she fought hard to resist the pull and tried to remember that this wasn’t going to end up in a good place.
‘I... I’ve never had much time for talking, Rose. Not when it came to women. When it came to women, things were very clear-cut. It was all about mutual pleasure. Nothing lasted and nothing was meant to. It was the way I liked it. When I met you, I had an agenda, but in no way was sleeping with you part of that agenda, and of course that should have set the alarm bells ringing. The fact that sleeping with you made no sense and yet I had to do it, had to get you into bed. It was as though something bigger and stronger than me had taken charge and was dictating how I behaved when it came to you.’
Rose looked at him with a jaundiced expression and wondered whether she was supposed to melt at that admission. She wished he’d back away a bit. His proximity was suffocating her.
‘You need to just tell me what else you’ve been hiding from me,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want to hear about...how much you wanted me...’
Art sat back and half closed his eyes, then he looked at her for a while in silence.
‘There was always an agenda for that land. I had to have it. Had to make sure that everything went through and I had to get the residents of the village onside. Yes, for the expensive houses that were going to be built but also, in due course, for more building work that I had planned.’
‘I thought as much.’ Rose looked away, heart pounding, bile in her mouth.
‘You really don’t.’ He turned her face to his, finger lightly under her chin, compelling them to lock eyes, and Rose gazed helplessly at him.
‘I can’t bear the thought of being used, Art. All my life, the one thing I’ve taken away from what happened to my mum is that I would never allow myself to be used by any man. She abandoned me for a man she met and knew for five seconds! Yes, she came back but I’d lost a lot in that time that she’d been away and I’d grown up and learned lessons. Lesson one was that when it came to my heart, common sense was always going to be more valuable than stupid, crazy lust.’
‘We’re singing from the same song sheet,’ Art murmured. ‘We both had lessons ingrained into us thanks to our backgrounds. Rich or poor, our experiences made us the cautious people we ended up being. I was happy to be ruled by lust. I just resisted anything more than that. Until you. Until you came along.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rose found that she was holding her breath and she exhaled slowly, hoping that her calm, detached exterior was still in place, making no assumptions even though her heart was beating fast now but with forbidden excitement.
‘I told myself that it was a mistake to sleep with you. I didn’t want the waters to be muddied. I had come for a specific reason and I naturally assumed that a minor temptation wasn’t going to confuse the issue. How wrong I was. I decided where was the harm? There wouldn’t be any fallout because I was always, had always been and always would be, in control of my choices. We were both consenting adults and, if anything, getting you into bed would give me an added advantage in persuading you to listen to reason when it came to the protest.’ She looked away sharply and Art tilted her stubborn face back to his.
‘The truth of the matter was that I couldn’t resist you. You did something to me and you carried on doing it even when I left and returned to London. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I kept drifting off into inappropriate fantasies at inappropriate times. In the middle of conversations, in the thick of an important meeting, just as I was about to sink my teeth into the finest food money could buy. And yet I still didn’t wake up to what should have been blindingly obvious.’
‘Which is what?’
‘Somewhere along the line I fell in love with you. Please don’t say anything because I need to tell you about the land. After you’ve heard what I have to say I’ll leave, but I felt you needed to know...how I felt.’
‘Art...’
He’d fallen in love with her? Did he really mean that?
Her heart had migrated to her mouth so when she spoke her voice was muffled and she had to clear her throat. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘I wasn’t looking for love. I’ve never been looking for love. My father had so many ex-wives that so-called love was always in plentiful supply and always, without fail, ended up in the divorce courts, where each and every one would wrangle until they went blue in the face for a slice of his money. I was jaded beyond belief by the time I left my teens behind. Love was for idiots and I was never going to be an idiot. The truth is that I just never fell in love and I never realised that love makes idiots of us all.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Rose whispered.
‘How could I,’ Art asked wryly, ‘when I didn’t recognise the symptoms?’
Symptoms? Never had that single word held such thrilling promise.
‘Please tell me about the land.’ Everything should have been perfect. The man of her dreams had just declared his love for her and yet the rest of his story cast a long shadow, even though she couldn’t see what could possibly spoil the moment. She just knew that a fly in the ointment could turn out to be a lot more toxic than it might first appear. If she was going to get toxic, then she wanted to get it straight away.
‘I targeted that land because I want to build an equestrian centre there,’ Art said heavily. ‘And not just an equestrian centre, but something of a farming complex. You won’t be getting the neat arrangement of polite, high-spec houses you signed up for and there’s no other way of putting it but to tell it like it is.’ His mouth twisted crookedly. ‘In hindsight, if I could have predicted how circumstances would unravel, I would have taken the plunge from the very start but hindsight, as I’ve discovered to my cost, is a wonderful thing. And, like I’ve said—’ he smiled with self-mockery ‘—hindsight isn’t something I’ve ever had time for. My predictive talents had never been challenged and when you know what’s coming you’re not glancing over your shoulder and shaking your head because you took the wrong turning.’
‘Sorry? You want to build a farm?’ Rose was finding it hard to get past that stark announcement.
‘Long story, but... I have a stepbrother, José. He’s severely autistic and currently in a home in the New Forest. He’s not yet twenty-two but the home, good as it is, really can’t deal with the needs of a young adult.’
‘You have a brother...’
‘Stepbrother. And the only step-sibling I’ve ever had time for. Ironic, given his mother had very little time for him. In fact, my father had no idea he existed at all until after the marriage had ended. Eliza kept her son’s existence under wraps, just in case it jeopardised the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. At the time, José had been shoved in a mixed bag home and practically forgotten. I met him and felt sorry for him. No, more than that. I wanted to protect him and then I grew to love him. He was honest and trusting and incredibly talented in certain areas but he’d been hung out to dry by his scheming mother, who had no time for him. To her credit, she did pop her head into the home now and again but where she left off, I found that I was taking over. Years after she disappeared from my father’s life, she was killed in a road accident, at which point I took José under my wing. I was climbing the ladder of success. It became my mission to ensure that he got the best that money could buy. I saved José but, in a strange way, I think José also saved me.’
‘Art, my head is spinning.’
‘There’s no concise way to explain all of this. I just need you to understand that my dilemma was finding a place where I could develop a centre for José and for other kids like him. A handful. He is soothed by horses and enjoys being outdoors. He has a way with them. The farm would be something of a therapeutic centre. Some arts and crafts could be incorporated. You’d be surprised at how talented some of these kids are.’
‘But why on earth didn’t you say anything about this?’
‘To the council?’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘People can be strange when it comes to having anyone different as their neighbours. It took a long time to find a suitable location, somewhere commutable for me, a convenient middle ground for other occupants. I wasn’t going to risk jeopardising the project by introducing it from the beginning. I thought that by the time the community got accustomed to the notion of the land being developed they would be more open to my future plans for the place.’
‘I love you,’ Rose said simply, because all of this showed her a side to him that she’d known was there, a caring, thoughtful side lurking underneath the ruthless billionaire exterior.
It was the side that had sucked her in and, even when he’d confessed to his deception, had kept her sucked in because deep down she had known him for the good guy he was. She’d seen the moral integrity underneath the tough love is for the birds exterior.
‘You’re not upset that I lied to you yet again?’ Art looked as though his heart was soaring.
‘I’d like to meet your stepbrother one day.’
Art reached out but he didn’t tug her towards him. Instead, he held her hands in his. It was a chaste gesture that made her smile.
‘You will,’ he said gruffly. ‘But first you have to promise me one thing.’
‘What?’ She nudged closer to him and played with his fingers. She couldn’t help herself. She reached out and stroked the side of his face with the back of her hand, then she traced the contours of his mouth.
She leaned into him and kissed him, a slow, tender, melting kiss and it felt good to have her love out in the open, to be as vulnerable as he was.
‘Promise me that you’ll marry me,’ Art said in a muffled voice. ‘Because I can’t imagine a life without you in it. I want to go to sleep with you and wake up to you. I don’t want to ever let you go.’
‘Yes.’ Rose smiled. ‘A thousand times yes.’
* * *
They were married just as the finishing touches were being put to the local library.
It had been planned as a quiet wedding but it turned out to be rather larger than either of them had expected. Once one person had been invited others had to be included, and Rose discovered that she had done a lot more for the residents of her quiet community than she had ever dreamed.
Everyone wanted to come.
Everyone knew her story and the wedding was almost as much of a fairy tale for them as for her.
She wore a simple cream dress and little silk buds were woven into her long hair, and the look on Art’s face when he turned to look at her as she walked up the aisle of the little country church was something she would take with her for as long as she lived.
* * *
And now...
Six months later, life couldn’t be better and so much had changed. For starters, the house had no more leaks in need of fixing. It had been renovated to its original splendour but, with all the right planning permission in place, was now a fully functioning office catering for several start-up companies as well as the legal practice which Phil, Rose’s partner, had taken over in its entirety.
Rose no longer lived there but whenever she returned she marvelled at its wonderful transformation.
‘I don’t think,’ she confided to Art a few weeks after she had moved out and shortly before their wedding, ‘that I ever really saw it as my house. Even though, technically, it was. And even though I always, always knew it to be a real blessing. I guess I always somehow associated it with a time in my life that brought back bad memories so, whilst I’m happy it’s renovated, I’m pleased I no longer live in it.’
Where she lived now could not have been more wonderful. Not the sprawling modernist vision in London which Art had occupied but, he also admitted, never actually viewed as anything other than a handy space in a useful location, but a country cottage that was the perfect blend of ancient and modern.
It was just outside London, convenient for commuting both back to London by train and to the centre in the Cotswolds where José would be eventually located.
Rose had fallen in love with the cottage at first sight.
With the husband of her dreams and the house to match, she hadn’t thought that life could get any better but it had.
She started as she heard the front door open and her heart quickened, as it always did at the arrival of her husband.
She rose to greet him and smiled at the naked love and desire etched on his lean face.
He was so beautiful and he was hers. She smiled at the thrill of possession that swelled inside her.
Art smiled back, moving smoothly towards her while undoing the top couple of buttons of his shirt.
‘You don’t get to look like that without accepting that there’ll be consequences.’ He pulled her towards him, cupped her rounded bottom and crushed her against him so that she could feel the tell-tale stirring of his desire.
‘Look like what?’ Rose burst out laughing, drawing back and capturing his face between her hands.
‘Oh, you know...pair of jeans, tee shirt, flip-flops...’
‘Oh, you mean my fancy outfit.’
‘You’ve gone all out on the dinner, I see.’ Art peered around her to see the kitchen table, which was candlelit and set in some style. ‘What have I forgotten? It’s not a birthday and it’s definitely not our anniversary, unless it’s the anniversary of the first time you decided that I was the best thing that ever happened to you, which would have been, hmm, about five minutes after we met?’
‘Time’s done nothing to dim that ego of yours, Arturo da Costa, has it?’
Art burst out laughing. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense. With any other woman, I’d be inclined to think that you’re bracing me for some wildly extravagant purchase, but then, my darling, you’re not any other woman and I thank my lucky stars for that every day.’
Rose tugged him into the huge open-plan kitchen with its granite countertops and its wonderful state-of-the-art built-in appliances.
‘Champagne,’ Art murmured, glancing at the counter. ‘Now I’m really beginning to get worried.’
‘Then don’t. I actually would have dressed up for the occasion but I opted for comfortable over glamorous.’
‘Don’t distract me.’
‘The champagne is for you. I’ll be sticking to mineral water for the moment and for the next, oh, let’s say...nine months or so...’
‘Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
Art wrapped his arms around her and held her tight to him for several long minutes. ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better end to my day, my darling. I love you so very much.’
‘And I love you too. Now and for ever.’
* * * * *