Читать книгу Ballroom to Bride and Groom - Kate Hardy - Страница 10

EVERYTHING was fine until Saturday.

Saturday.

The day Polly had been trying not to think about.

Liam was busy during the day, so they weren’t doing their training session until the evening. And she’d already refused offers to spend time with her friends—even her best friend—because she really didn’t want to spend the day brightly talking about anything else except the elephant in the room. Thankfully they’d accepted her excuse that she couldn’t make it because she was training. It was true; she’d simply been a little creative with the timing of her session.

She spent the day scrubbing her flat, to keep herself busy. With long rubber gloves that hid her wrists. She wasn’t going back there. Ever again. She was older and wiser, and she’d learned to focus on the positive side; even if there was one dusty droplet of water in her glass, as far as she was concerned it was still partly full instead of mostly empty. And she had a lot to be thankful for. She had a roof over her head, even if her flat was tiny; she had a job, even if it was a bit precarious; and she had friends who loved her as much as she loved them.

Three more hours until training. Liam had said they were going to start their foxtrot routine today and spend the rest of the week polishing it. Learning the routine would definitely take her mind off today. Even though he could lead her through it, she’d still have to remember all the sequences and count her way through until she was confident.

Somehow she managed to fill the time until she could head for Liam’s studio. He made no comment when she walked in, so either he didn’t know what today was or he’d decided to be kind and not mention it. And she managed to smile until he switched on the music and the first notes filled the air.

She recognised it instantly.

Oh, no. Of all the songs he could’ve picked, why did it have to be this one?

She steeled herself as the vocals began. It didn’t matter. She could do this. Think positive, she told herself; at least she knew the song, so that was one less unfamiliar thing to deal with. And she forced herself to listen to Liam, let him talk her through the routine before they started dancing together.

Liam looked at Polly through narrowed eyes. She was crying. Silently, but she was still crying, the tears brimming over her lashes and rolling unchecked down her face.

What was going on? He wasn’t asking her to do anything more difficult than she’d done in the last week.

‘OK. Four basics, then two promenades,’ he said. Once she’d started the routine, she’d realise it wasn’t going to be problematic and everything would be fine. She’d stop crying.

He hoped.

To his relief, she didn’t miss a single step.

‘Corner,’ he said, glancing swiftly at her. Then he realised that her tears hadn’t stopped. At all. She was still silently weeping, the tears running unchecked down her cheeks.

This time, she stumbled. ‘Sorry.’ Her voice was quavery.

And then she pulled her hands away from the ballroom hold so she could cover her face with them. Her shoulders were shaking, and Liam could hear that she was trying to gulp back the sobs.

He couldn’t ignore this any more and try to make her dance on, regardless. Even though he wanted to back away, because seeing such raw, painful emotion bursting through someone’s defences made him feel incredibly uncomfortable.

The Polly he’d come to know wasn’t a crier. Whatever had upset her had to be something major. She needed a shoulder to cry on—and right now he was the only person who could fill that role, whether he liked it or not. He had to make the effort.

‘Polly,’ he said softly.

She gulped. ‘Sorry, I forgot where I was. What’s the next step?’

‘Polly, you can’t cry and dance.’

‘I’m not crying. I’m fine.’

He reached out and brushed a tear away with the pad of his thumb. ‘No, you’re not. And I’m being a selfish jerk, trying to pretend this’ll all go away if I ignore it.’ He bit back a sigh. ‘What’s wrong?’

How could she tell him? Once Liam knew about Harry, she knew he’d treat her differently and she couldn’t bear that. She didn’t want his pity.

She shook her head, unable to put it into words.

‘We need a break. Go and put the kettle on,’ he said.

She knew Liam was giving her some space, and she was glad of the chance to scrub her face with a tissue and breathe hard enough to stop the tears.

When the kettle was just about to boil, he walked into the kitchen and handed her a bar of chocolate.

‘Where did you get this?’ she asked.

‘Amanda’s secret stash. I’ll replace it before she gets in on Monday, but right now I think your need is greater.’

His kindness made her want to cry all over again. She knew her tears had made him uncomfortable. The awkwardness had been written all over this face. She’d expected him to be caustic about her inability to concentrate—and now he’d done this. Camera Liam. Or was this Real Liam?

‘Thank you.’ She bit into the confectionery. The rush from the sugar and the cocoa felt good.

He took over making the coffee. ‘Better?’ he asked, handing her a mug of coffee.

‘Yes,’ she lied.

‘So are you going to tell me?’

She dragged into a breath. ‘I know you’ve been working really hard on the choreography, and I’m being ungrateful, but I …’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t dance to that song.’

‘It brings back bad memories for you?’ he guessed.

‘Not bad memories, exactly.’ She grimaced. ‘It’s something that never happened.’

He frowned. ‘I’m not with you.’

She lifted her chin. ‘If I tell you, I don’t want you to treat me any differently. No pity, no condescension, no cotton wool. OK?’

Liam knew exactly where she was coming from. After the accident, pity was all he’d faced. He’d been at screaming point. And then, when Bianca left him, there had been more and more of the same. People seemed to stop seeing him for himself; it was as if he’d had the word ‘victim’ tattooed across his forehead.

‘OK. It’s a deal,’ he promised, knowing already what she was going to tell him. That she’d been dumped. And somehow he’d have to find some words to bolster her.

‘Today’s my wedding day.’

Her wedding day? Now that he hadn’t expected. The gossip rag hadn’t said that her engagement had ended only a few days before she was supposed to get married—just that Harry had broken up with her and gone off with someone else.

Liam stared at her in shock. He’d had no idea that she’d been coping with this much of a mess.

‘Well, it was going to be my wedding day,’ she amended, ‘until last week.’

Liam still didn’t have a clue what to say. And that only added to the guilt he felt about not comforting her earlier.

‘And this—’ she lifted her chin and treated him to her brightest smile, which he knew now was a sure sign that her heart was breaking ‘—this was going to be the song for the first dance.’

‘I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would’ve picked something different.’

‘I should’ve said something. Except it wasn’t on the list of songs you sent me, so I assumed it wasn’t one you were thinking about using.’ She lifted one shoulder. ‘I didn’t want to tell you before because—well, I didn’t want you to start pitying me. I don’t want to be this pathetic, needy creature.’

‘I know where you’re coming from. And you’re not pathetic.’ Needy, yes. But who was he to judge? ‘I saw the stuff in the paper. But I had no idea he’d called it off this close to the wedding. That’s rough on you.’

‘It could have been worse. He could have just not turned up at the church today. At least he told me himself and he didn’t leave it up to his best man or what have you to do the deed.’

Though Harry hadn’t spared her those terrible photographs in the gossip rags, Liam thought. The photographs of Polly with empty eyes, looking as if her world had ended.

‘Or, worse still, he could have married me today and then realised it was a mistake, so we would’ve had a legal mess to sort out as well as an emotional one.’

Yeah. Liam knew all about that one. Been there, done that, got the rights to the merchandising.

And she must really, really love the guy if she could come up with all these excuses for his behaviour when he’d clearly hurt her so badly.

‘There’s an awful lot to sort out if you cancel something at the last minute,’ Liam said. ‘I hope he was the one who had to ring up and cancel everything.’

She shook her head. ‘No, that was my job.’

Liam whistled. The guy had called it off, but he’d still made Polly pick up all the pieces? ‘What a selfish …’ The curse slipped out before he could stop it.

‘It’s not like that. Harry’s a creative.’

‘He’s a what?’ This was like no excuse Liam had ever heard before.

‘He produces TV programmes. He’s great at putting things together and seeing where the real story is behind things, but he’s really not very good at organising things outside a TV studio. So if I sort it out, at least I know it’s done and nothing’s been forgotten.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I was the one who organised the wedding, so I had all the contacts. It was much easier for me to be the one to cancel things.’

She was underplaying it, Liam knew. Because Harry had left her to make all the explanations as well as cancel all the arrangements.

‘It’s still unfair that he left it to you to sort everything out. And to tell everyone.’

‘If I’d left it to him, Liam, he wouldn’t have done it. Someone else would’ve had to do it,’ she said quietly.

The penny dropped: Harry would’ve talked his new girl into sorting things out for him. Cancelling the wedding to her predecessor. Liam winced. ‘Oh, Pol.’

‘No pity. You promised,’ she reminded him.

‘No. But I don’t get why he’d do that to you.’

She sighed. ‘He couldn’t help falling in love with someone else. He hated himself for breaking up with me. But he couldn’t live a lie. We would both have ended up being miserable.’

‘Are you telling me you’re still friends?’ Liam couldn’t keep the note of disbelief from his voice.

‘Not right now, no. But one day, we will be. We were friends before we got engaged. Good friends. We liked each other.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I thought that would make the difference and would mean that our marriage would last, because we had more than just some kind of fleeting passion. Except …’ She shrugged. ‘That wasn’t what he wanted in the end. He wanted the kaboom.’

He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. ‘What’s the kaboom?’

‘Harry says it’s like fireworks going off in your head when you meet the right one.’

‘Hmm.’ Liam couldn’t remember now if he’d had fireworks in his head with Bianca. Everything that came afterwards had kind of wiped that out. ‘So is that why you’re not working on Monday Mash-up any more?’

She nodded. ‘I resigned. I couldn’t face it.’

‘Seeing him every day, you mean?’

‘No.’ She coughed. ‘Seeing the producer’s new assistant.’