St Piran’s: The Wedding of The Year

She lifted a hand and laid it against his shoulder, and he went still. ‘Thank you, Nick,’ she murmured. ‘For everything.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not. Nick, we need to talk.’

He squeezed more arnica gel onto his fingers and smoothed it gently over the top of her other foot where a small bruise was starting to show.

‘About?’

‘Did you get my letter?’

He said nothing for a moment, just kept rubbing her foot, round and round until the skin was all but dry, then he stood up again and washed his hands in the sink in the corner.

She wriggled her feet back into her shoes, wondering how long the leather would take to dry, how she could have got so wet. Standing in the rain, of course, watching while they’d cut Jem out.

‘Nick?’

He dried his hands, then like a caged lion he started pacing, from one side of the small waiting room to the other, then back again, ramming his hand through his hair and rumpling it further. It suited him, she thought randomly. The steel grey threading through it made him look distinguished, setting off his strong features—the features Jem had inherited from him. He was going to be a good-looking man, her son—their son.

Nick’s son.

Finally he stopped pacing, sucked in a long, slow breath and turned back to her, scanning her face for clues, but there were none. Her warm, golden-brown eyes met his calmly, giving nothing away, as usual. She never gave anything away unless she meant to, and then it was usually disappointment in him. ‘May I ask why you’re going?’ he asked, his voice carefully expressionless.

‘Why? I would have thought it was obvious, Nick. I can’t just be here for ever waiting for you to sort yourself out. Did you think I would? That I’d stay, to let you see your son a few times a year, in carefully arranged, apparently casual circumstances, so you can keep in touch without having to tell him you’re his real father? Or, more to the point, so you didn’t have to rock the boat and tell your other kids that we made love while their mother was still alive?’

‘Once,’ he said flatly. ‘Just once. It’s not as if we had an affair, Kate.’

‘No, you’re right. It was nothing so premeditated, was it?’ she acknowledged gently, as if he needed reminding about anything that had happened that hellish night. ‘We just reached out, to someone we could trust, someone who could trust us. But we were married—well, I suppose technically I was probably widowed at that point, but you weren’t. And we did make love.’

And they’d made a child. Until Ben had told him about the blood group, there had still been an element of doubt in his mind, of disbelief. But not now. Not any more.

He looked away from the shrewd, understanding eyes that saw too much. ‘Neither of us was thinking that night.’

‘And you’ve done your level best to avoid thinking about it ever since,’ she murmured. ‘So I’m going to make it easier for you. Easier for all of us. I’m taking Jem away, and we’re starting a new life.’

‘With Rob?’ he made himself ask, even though he’d heard it was off, but maybe it was back on, maybe that was why. ‘Is he going, too?’

A flicker of distress crossed her face. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘He deserves better than me. I’m like you, Nick. Scarred, broken, emotionally bankrupt. I’m no good to anyone. He’s a good man. He was very kind to me, and to Jem.’

He said nothing. After all, she was right. Rob Werrick was a good man, a decent man, who’d stood by her last year during her treatment for breast cancer, who’d supported her through the most dreadful days of fear and uncertainty, a role Nick had sorely wanted to play, but all he had been able to do was sit, isolated from her, and pray for her. And Rob was the man who’d taken Nick’s son to his heart and made room there for him, when the man who was his father had found he was unable to do so.

‘So was it you or him who called it off?’ he asked in spite of himself.

‘Me. He asked me to marry him, and I said no. I don’t love him—I can’t love him, not in the way he deserves to be loved.’ Her brown eyes were reproachful, her voice tinged with sadness. ‘So I’m going, and we’ll start again, and we’ll be fine.’

His heart felt as if it was being crushed in a giant fist, but if this was what she wanted, to go, to leave, then maybe she was right. Maybe it was for the best. Easier all round. And away from the shadow of this guilt they both carried, perhaps she’d find happiness with another man.

He ignored the little twist in his chest and nodded. ‘You’re right. If that’s what you want, then go, Kate. I won’t stop you—’

‘You can’t stop me, Nick.’

‘True. What about Jem? Will I ever see him?’

She gave a mocking little laugh that gave his heart another little wrench. ‘What about him? He’ll be fine. He doesn’t know you’re his father, it hasn’t done him any harm not to know, so it won’t in the future. I’ll tell him when he’s eighteen. I can’t stay here so you can ignore him at close range. Anyway, you don’t see him now—why would this make any difference?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous—of course I see him,’ he denied. ‘I see him a lot.’

‘Only if you can’t avoid it. Seeing him reminds you of your human frailty, and you don’t like that.’

He didn’t. He hated the constant reminder of what they’d done that night, of how he’d betrayed Annabel, tarnished the memory of James. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to watch the child grow up, make sure he was all right—

‘How the hell am I going to explain it to my children? They won’t understand.’

‘You could tell them you’re human?’ she suggested softly, her eyes so wise, so—so damn knowing.

He gave a quiet snort. ‘Oh, they know that.’

‘And this is about what they think of you?’ she said, her voice heavy with reproach. ‘What about what Jem will think of you when he finds out that he doesn’t matter as much as your other children—your proper children, all respectably born in wedlock? They’re no different, Nick’ she reminded him, her words still soft and yet flaying his skin off with their accuracy. ‘Conceived in haste, every single one of them. Story of your life. Well, I don’t want to be a part of it any more, of the carefully constructed illusion of reality you fool yourself with every day,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ll work my notice, once Jem’s better, but then I’m off, Nick, and you won’t hear from me again. It’s better that way.’

Was it? He wasn’t sure. He was suddenly filled with a cold, nameless fear for the future—a future without Kate, and without the boy, this last, unacknowledged and yet still infinitely precious child who, it seemed, he’d managed to love in spite of everything.

He sat beside her, the chairs so close he could feel the warmth radiating from her body, feel the air move with every shallow breath as her chest rose and fell.

‘I thought you wanted me to be in his life?’

‘I do—but not like this, giving him fragments of yourself from time to time. He deserves more from you.’ Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘I can’t do this any more, Nick. I’m leaving, and that’s an end to it. Please. Just let me go.’

Let me go…

He held her eyes, watched the threatening tears well, watched in despair as one slipped down her cheek and fell to the floor. She never cried. Before today, the last time he’d seen her cry had been the night he’d taken her into his arms and held her. The night Jeremiah had been conceived.

Swallowing the bitter taste of regret, he stood up and turned away.

How could he let her go?

He couldn’t—but how could he make her stay?

Chapter Three

HE SAT down again a while later, but not for long, pacing restlessly, ramming his hand through his hair again and again until she thought he’d tear it out.

And then the doors swung open and Lucy and Jack came down the short corridor towards them.

‘How is he?’ Lucy asked, looking at Kate, avoiding Nick’s eyes as if she wasn’t sure how to do this.

None of them, in truth, knew how to do this. They’d just have to feel their way through.

‘Still in there. They stopped the bleeding, they’re just plating his pelvis. He’s been lucky, apparently—’