Читать книгу Romantic Getaways Collection - Liz Fielding, Christy McKellen - Страница 19
ОглавлениеTHE BOUTIQUE CLOTHES shops that Caleb had recommended were exactly what Elena was looking for and she spent a happy couple of hours browsing through rails of perfectly tailored dresses in a range of delicate, lush materials, heartened by the knowledge that he was so tuned in to her taste. There was something rather wonderful about being so well understood.
It had been a long time since she’d felt this excited about picking out new clothes for a date; in fact, it had been a long time since she’d even gone shopping like this, preferring to buy her clothes over the Internet for speed and efficiency.
Her friend Hannah had often tried to get her to join her at the weekends to browse through the stores and go for long, lazy lunches, but Elena had always been up to her eyeballs in work and had felt that going shopping would be a waste of her time.
How could she have allowed herself to become so practical? So insular. So narrow-minded? It was such a waste of her younger years, spending all her time focused on work instead of enjoying the friendships and opportunities for fun that she had at her fingertips. This time she’d spent with Caleb had really brought that to the fore for her and she challenged herself to make more of her time outside of work from now on.
Hopefully with Caleb there to enjoy it alongside her.
She didn’t like to think about how they were going to make a long distance relationship work when they were both so busy with their businesses, but she guessed if they were both fully invested in it they’d make it happen somehow. In fact she rather liked the idea of moving to Barcelona to be near him. Once the Zipabout car had its battery and had been released onto the market she’d be looking for a new project to start on anyway. The rest of her team could handle the day-to-day running of the sales and marketing side so she could work on new ideas remotely, at least to begin with.
But she was getting ahead of herself here. Caleb hadn’t talked about continuing their relationship past the end of this week and she’d be a fool to start planning her whole future around him.
Even if she wanted to. Very, very much.
She’d never felt more alive and excited about life than when she was with him. He had a way of bringing out the very best in her.
After choosing some new outfits and underwear to last her for the rest of the week she popped into a perfumery, which she’d spotted on one of the small side streets on her way there, sniffing at each of the bottles with delight and trying to identify the main ingredients in them.
Something shifted strangely inside her as she picked up a small, dark bottle in the shape of a swan. There was something incredibly familiar about it. Lifting it to her nose, she realised with a shock that she recognised the fragrance. It was one that Caleb had bought for her for a Christmas present, before they’d fallen out with each other. It had been the most exquisite thing she’d ever smelt and the revealing gesture of him taking the time to pick out and give her such a personal and intimate present had been the thing that had pushed her to finally admit how she really felt about him. She’d worn it on her skin for the whole week leading up to the last day of term, after they’d had their heart-to-heart about how they were perfect for each other and she’d promised him she’d finish her relationship with Jimmy as soon as she got home.
After she’d failed to come through on that promise and Caleb had made it clear he wanted nothing more to do with her she’d felt sick with shame and sadness every time she smelled that scent and had thrown it away.
She’d regretted that rashness for a long time afterwards though. In the end it was the only thing she’d had left to remind her of him. Despite repeated attempts to contact him and apologise, once he’d gone back to Spain she’d never heard from him again. It had been as if he’d never existed.
Smelling the scent again now brought back her intensely confused feelings of desperation to be with him, despite her fears that they just weren’t practically suited. A memory of him drawing her close, leaning in on the pretext of smelling the perfume on her neck and instead brushing his lips against her skin, flashed across her mind. It had been one of the happiest, most intimate, most electrifying moments of her life.
She’d often wished she could have bottled that feeling to remind her of happier times.
And now she had it, right here in her hand.
Striding over to the counter, she handed the perfume to the sales assistant and drew her purse out of her bag.
‘I’ve been searching for this for years,’ she said, giving the woman a delighted grin. ‘I’m so happy I’ve finally found it again.’
* * *
Caleb spent the day at work after calling his colleagues into a meeting to discuss how they’d move forward with both the partnership with the Americans and also with Elena’s company.
He’d set the tone at the very beginning by being more friendly and relaxed than usual and had smiled to himself as he’d caught the looks of bemusement and surprise that had passed between his colleagues.
There had been a real buzz of excitement in the room as he laid out what had happened in the last few days. He’d made a point of taking a step back so that the project managers had a chance to take the lead, even though he itched to stay fully in control, and it had yielded great results. They were all smiling and buoyed up by the time the meeting concluded, which, he realised with a shock of sudden insight, was an unusual occurrence. Before he would have left the roomful of people a little subdued after he’d demanded their best from them. Today he’d let them decide to do the best job they could, and it seemed to have paid off.
He’d learnt an important lesson recently about taking a less aggressive attitude towards business and he knew he had Elena to thank for that.
She was good for him—helped balance him somehow.
He showered and changed at work, putting on his best casual suit for dinner, aware of a low level of excitement about seeing Elena again this evening that had buzzed through his veins all day.
The traffic was bad and he tapped his fingers impatiently against the armrest of the car as his driver wound slowly through the early evening traffic.
‘It looks like everyone’s out for Valentine’s night, clogging up the roads,’ the driver muttered.
Caleb smiled at his grumpiness, thinking how great it was to be one of the people looking forward to an evening of romance for once.
Striding through the entrance of the restaurant, he bumped into a couple of people he knew socially who were also there for a romantic meal and they exchanged pleasantries, Caleb’s pulse jumping with impatience to see Elena again after spending the day away from her.
He appeared to have turned into a teenager again. Not that he could remember those years clearly. Bits and pieces had come back to him over the last couple of days, mostly feelings of not having fitted in to a small, close-knit community in the small town where he’d been raised, a few miles west of Barcelona.
It was strange, but he was aware that this bothered him much less now—now he knew he’d made something of himself and proved all those naysayers wrong about him. Now that he had Elena.
Finally finding an out in the conversation so he could say a polite farewell to his acquaintances, he made his way towards the maître d’s desk, where he was greeted with a smile of reverence and a warm welcome before being shown towards his table where, he was told, Elena was already waiting for him.
He’d chosen this restaurant because he liked its clean lines and no fuss décor, with its wall of glass which looked out onto a courtyard of flowers and olive trees, which were lit up tonight like some magical grotto. The simple wooden spoke-back chairs juxtaposed sharply with the pristine white tablecloths and blank walls, giving it all an understated but refined air. It was classy without being showy and he knew from experience that the food here was out of this world.
The perfect place to celebrate with Elena.
The table where she’d been seated was right next to the glass wall and the candle that flickered in front of her threw shadows onto the reflective surface, making it look as though she was sitting next to her ghostly double.
When she spotted him she stood up and smiled and his pulse skittered then began to jump in his throat. Gazing at her now brought home to him just how truly beautiful she was. Tonight she was wearing a fitted cocktail dress in a deep turquoise colour that made her iridescent eyes glow with warmth. Her pale golden hair flowed around her shoulders in waves, looking so lustrous in the soft light he ached to run his fingers through it.
In fact his overriding instinct right that second was to drag her into his arms and never let her go.
As he reached the table she stepped to the side and opened her arms for him to walk into her embrace, a wide smile playing about her lips and pleasure flashing in her eyes.
He dragged her roughly to him, burying his face in her hair and whispering, ‘I missed you today.’
‘I missed you too,’ she murmured back.
He dragged in a deep breath, desperate to fill his senses with her soft, familiar scent—
And suddenly everything felt wrong.
His vision swam in front of him and a slow sinking sensation began to pull him down towards the floor.
That scent.
He knew it.
He knew it, but he didn’t know why.
There was something completely wrong about it, but also completely right.
Elena and that scent went together.
But not in a good way.
Images began to cloud his mind’s eye: of the two of them at university, studying in each other’s rooms, laughing together. He felt flashes of happiness, then insecurity, then a cold hard rage that swelled up from somewhere deep inside him, dragging the breath from his lungs.
‘Caleb? What’s wrong?’
He heard Elena’s voice as if it was coming to him from a distance. Nausea welled in his gut and he pushed her away from him, needing to be free of her hold, to get away from the smell that was causing his mind to rebel against him. His head pounded as if his brain had suddenly swollen and was pressing against the walls of his skull, the pain so intense he stumbled forwards, grabbing a chair to steady himself.
He felt her hand on his shoulder but he shrugged her off, not wanting her to touch him.
Then, like a floodgate opening, it all came rushing back: the soul-crushing disappointment and the hurt and humiliation he’d endured after he’d opened himself up to loving her back then. The way he’d trusted her implicitly with his heart and she’d taken it, played with it for a while then smashed it to pieces at his feet.
He’d made a total fool of himself for her.
After leading him to believe she cared about him as much as he did her and promising to come back after the Christmas holidays free to be with him, he’d gone home to Spain for the holidays, actually feeling happy for once to be going back there so he could tell his mother about the woman he’d fallen in love with.
She’d been so pleased for him; in fact it had been the first time they’d connected on any kind of emotional level since he’d been a young boy, perhaps because he finally understood how she could love someone so much she would do whatever it took to have them—that loving someone would be worth being estranged from others for.
After what had seemed like an interminable amount of time at home he’d gone back to Cambridge, desperate to see Elena after having promised not to call her whilst she was at home, to give her the time and space to deal with breaking up with Jimmy in a gentle and kind manner, only to find she was avoiding him.
He’d thought he was being paranoid at first, that it was bad timing when he kept missing her at her college. Until he’d finally tracked her down, panic surging through his veins, and she’d been visibly reluctant to see or speak to him. The cold distant look in her eyes had sent shivers of horror through him, which only increased when she’d told him in a toneless voice how she’d decided to stay with Jimmy after all, how she felt that he, Caleb, was too wild for her, too dangerous a proposition, too unpredictable. She needed to be with someone like Jimmy because she needed stability and calm in her life.
He’d felt belittled, rejected, foolish, but most of all heartsick at losing the woman he’d felt so sure felt the same way he did.
Taking a deep, much-needed breath, he finally straightened and turned to look into Elena’s beautiful, deceitful face, feeling a deep, hot rage overtake him.
It hadn’t been an undeniable romantic attraction that had connected them with such intensity over these last few days: it had been hatred.
‘I remember, Elena,’ he said, his voice raspy and strained as he forced the words past his throat. ‘I remember why we stopped being friends.’ He spat the last word out, feeling disgusted with himself for allowing her to take him in like this.
She’d used his memory loss against him to wheedle out what she wanted from him. And he, like a fool, had fallen for it. Fallen for her. Again.
‘What are you talking about? Caleb, I don’t understand. What just happened here?’ She looked panicked by his pronouncement, as well she should.
He crossed his arms. ‘I know exactly what’s been happening over the last few days. You’ve been using the fallout from the accident to get close to me.’
She stared at him, her cheeks flushed with colour and her brow pinched so tightly white lines formed on her skin.
‘Did you invite me here tonight to humiliate me in public? To pay me back for what happened fifteen years ago?’ she whispered, blinking as if trying to hold back tears.
He pushed away a sting of misplaced concern, forcing himself to remember that she was the one in the wrong here. ‘No, of course not! I only remembered it all just now. The perfume you’re wearing... It triggered something.’ His head gave another throb of pain and he squeezed his eyes shut until it receded.
‘Caleb? Are you okay?’ The worry in her voice hit him straight in the chest, winding him.
‘I’m fine,’ he growled, not wanting to feel the way she was making him feel with her concerned, soothing act. The only person she’d ever cared about was herself and he needed to remember that.
‘I see you for what you really are now, Elena,’ he bit out angrily.
She swallowed hard, her face blanching, and glanced around her anxiously.
He suddenly realised that the room had become awfully quiet. When he looked round he saw that all the diners near them were staring their way in morbid fascination.
‘Look, shall we sit down and talk about this rationally?’ Elena said with a quaver in her voice, pulling out her chair with a shaking hand and sitting on it.
After a moment of indecision he pulled out his own chair and sat down opposite her, folding his arms. He was interested to hear how she was going to try and explain her self-serving actions away.
‘What do you mean, you’ve only just remembered what happened?’ she hissed, leaning forwards and putting her hands onto the table between them. ‘You said your memory had fully come back!’
He shrugged dismissively. ‘No. I lied about that. I didn’t want you to think I was weak.’ He leant back in his chair and narrowed his eyes at her. ‘I pieced a story together from what you’d said about us and...’ he paused, struggling to unclench his jaw to force out the name ‘...Jimmy. But I remember now. I remember the way you led me on then pushed me away when you changed your mind about who would serve your needs best.’
She held up both hands towards him in a halting gesture. ‘I thought you understood how sorry I was about that. How I knew it had been the worst mistake of my life. I’ve been trying to make amends for the way I behaved then.’
‘So you could manipulate me into getting what you wanted.’
Her hands bunched into fists now. ‘No, Caleb, it wasn’t like that.’
‘So why did you stay after I’d told you I didn’t want anything more to do with you and your business? Why were you so keen to look after me at the hospital?’
‘Because I care about you, Caleb!’ she shot back passionately. ‘And there was a misunderstanding between the hospital staff about who I was to you that I got caught up in. But I was there because I felt awful about you getting hurt.’
‘Because you were responsible for it.’ It all made sense now. Cold, cruel sense.
‘No! At least not directly. You were crossing the road to talk to me and you didn’t look properly.’
‘And why was that?’
She didn’t seem to be able to meet his eye. ‘I guess you were distracted.’
‘You mean I was angry with you for not taking no for an answer?’
She visibly swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘And then you stuck around when you thought I couldn’t remember what had happened.’
‘I was trying to make things right between us.’
‘You mean when you realised I’d forgotten all about it you thought you’d be able to get what you wanted by pretending to care about me. By charming your way into my bed!’
Her eyes widened in dismay. ‘What? No—!’
‘I know exactly what you’ve been doing, Elena—you’ve been playing me this whole time, hoping to seduce me into giving you what you needed when I’d already told you no,’ he bit out, anger and humiliation and heartache making his voice shake.
She gaped at him in stunned surprise, her face now bleached of colour. ‘No, Caleb.’ Her voice came out as a ragged whisper. ‘That’s not what happened!’
* * *
Elena felt sick.
How could he suddenly be acting so coldly towards her after the closeness they’d shared?
Who was she kidding? She knew how, because she’d done exactly the same thing to him fifteen years ago.
She swallowed hard, her mind whirring, trying to think of some way to convince him that she’d meant well by staying here to look after him and that she genuinely cared about him, but before she could say anything else he frowned, then shook his head as if another revelation had just struck him.
‘You only went to that dinner meeting with Carter with me so I’d feel compelled to say yes to your own partnership.’
Gritting her teeth, she let out a moan of frustration. ‘You asked me to go with you and I wanted to help you! Not for my own benefit, but for yours!’
He was nodding now though, as if he wasn’t listening to her and things were suddenly making sense in his head. ‘You guided me towards asking you to help me, planting the idea about me needing someone who understood the business. You manipulated me.’
‘I did not,’ she said as calmly as she could manage, trying like mad to control the shake of anger and hurt in her voice. ‘It was your idea and there was no way I could refuse to help and leave you alone with your head injury. And I wanted to help, Caleb. Genuinely.’
He let out a low, disdainful laugh. ‘Being genuine is not one of your strong points, Elena.’
‘Maybe not fifteen years ago but, I promise you, it is now.’
‘They why didn’t you tell me everything when we had all our heart-to-hearts? There were plenty of opportunities.’
‘Because I was afraid you’d kick me to the kerb. I was worried about you—about the fact you didn’t seem to have anyone else to look after you. From what I’ve seen, you still seem intent on pushing away anyone who gets even vaguely close to you. I don’t want you to end up old and alone. You deserve more than that. You deserve to be loved. And to be happy. You’re a good man; you just need to believe it.’
He snorted. ‘I know my own worth, Elena.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. I would never have slept with someone who couldn’t remember the callous way I’d treated them in the past.’
She shoved her fingers into her hair in frustration. ‘You told me you’d remembered.’
‘Did you really believe I’d forgive you for the way you treated me back then, just like that?’ He snapped his fingers, shooting her a look of disgust.
Dropping her head into her hands now, she let out a long, low sigh. ‘I guess I knew deep down that something wasn’t quite right, but I really wanted to believe things were okay with us again so I pushed any misgivings I had to one side.’
When she looked up again he was staring at her as if he didn’t believe a word of it, his expression dark and unyielding.
‘Yes, okay, I was being naïve,’ she said, frustration making her belligerent now. ‘It was wrong of me to let it happen.’
‘So why did you?’
His question brought her up short. ‘I—’
‘You could have stopped me.’
‘I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.’
‘Why not, Elena?’
‘Because I wanted you, all right!’ she blurted, furious with herself for losing her cool.
‘You wanted my battery, you mean,’ he bit out, leaning towards her.
‘No!’ She took a breath, trying to calm her raging emotions. ‘Well, yes. Okay.’ She leant forwards too, fixing him with what she hoped was an honest and open expression. ‘I need your battery because I have a lot of good people relying on me to find a way to save their jobs, but sleeping with you was a totally separate thing. I wanted to do it for me. For us.’
‘For us?’
‘Yes! I’ve missed you over the years and I didn’t realise how much until I saw you again. How unhappy I was without you.’
There was a heavy beat of silence where they stared at each other, their breathing rapid and the body language tense.
She thought she saw a flash of vulnerability in his eyes, but the next second it was gone, replaced with cool indifference. ‘If you’re saying that because you’re worried I’m going to back out of the partnership then don’t bother. I’m not that much of a monster,’ he growled, reaching into his jacket and withdrawing a sheaf of papers, which he tossed onto the table in front of her. ‘It’s a contract I had drawn up earlier today which agrees to a partnership with your company.’
She stared at it in shock for a moment before dragging her gaze back to his.
‘Caleb, thank you—’
But, before she could finish her sentence, he cut her off. ‘My colleagues will be handling it from here so we won’t need to have any more contact. I hope that makes you happy.’
She glared at him, her heart thumping against her chest and her jaw tight with frustration. ‘Don’t be ridiculous—of course it doesn’t make me happy to not have any more contact with you!’
He huffed out a disdainful laugh, the expression in his eyes hauntingly distant, then without another word he went to stand up.
‘Please, Caleb, stay,’ she said desperately, reaching out a hand in an attempt to stall him. ‘We need to talk more about this.’
‘There’s nothing left to say,’ he stated coldly, brushing away her attempt to touch him and standing up, and before she could utter another word he turned and walked swiftly away from the table without looking back.
Elena sat there, numb with shock, battling down a painful ache deep inside her, afraid that once she let it rise to the surface she wouldn’t be able to stop the tears that would inevitably come with it.
Everything might have just gone to hell but there was no way she was going to blub in the middle of a restaurant.
Gesturing to a passing waiter, she asked him to bring the bill for the champagne that she’d ordered and that neither of them had touched. She paid with her credit card, her movements jerky with anguish, then got up shakily and brushed herself down, setting back her shoulders before walking out of there, hyper-aware of the fascinated looks she was getting from the other diners.
Dumped on Valentine’s night. It didn’t get much more humiliating than that.
Once outside, she walked quickly down a side alley, away from prying eyes, and leant against the wall, burying her face in her hands.
But she refused to let herself cry.
She’d known, of course, on some subconscious level that Caleb had been lying about getting his memory back—that he’d been swept up in the excitement of closing the deal with the Americans and had wanted to celebrate with her the best way he knew how. And, to her shame, she’d let him, pretending to herself she believed that he remembered her even though he’d not remotely reacted in the way she’d been expecting.
Because she’d wanted him so badly she’d ached with longing.
The truth was, she’d been utterly selfish. She had taken advantage of his memory loss after the accident, not admitting it to herself at the time, but hoping—praying—it would never come back.
She’d brought all this on herself.
Just like she’d done fifteen years ago.
Caleb had trusted her implicitly then too, so much so he’d opened himself up to her—the first person he’d ever done that with after enduring such a punishing and isolated childhood—and she’d thrown his love and trust back in his face, deeming it worthless.
Then she’d hidden, like a coward, avoiding him at every turn until he’d been forced to come to her dorm room and practically break down the door to speak to her. She’d been afraid to face his disappointment in her so had put up a wall of ice to protect herself, telling him she’d made a mistake, he was too wild, too unpredictable for her, they could never be happy, not in the long run. She needed someone more stable, like Jimmy. He’d looked at her as if his world had just crashed in around him, before turning and walking away.
And that had been the last time he’d ever spoken to her. From that point on he’d acted as if she didn’t exist. He’d looked through her as if she was nothing—a waste of space.
And she’d known deep down that she’d deserved it.
He’d practically gone to ground after that, skipping the lectures where she’d normally see him and never seeming to be at his dorm room when she dropped in, hoping to catch him and apologise and explain her horrible behaviour. And then he’d gone back to Spain as soon as the last lecture had finished, pushing past her when she’d tried to talk to him as if she meant nothing to him any more.
It had left an aching hole in her that had never closed over, even fifteen years later.
Because he’d been the love of her life.
It had tormented her more than she’d wanted to admit to herself over the years, chipping away at her self-respect, causing her to find fault in every man she’d dated, leaving her to wonder whether she’d ever be happy in a relationship again.
Until now.
But just when she’d thought she’d paid her dues and things were finally good between them again she’d lost him all over again.
