me this morning. They want a decision by close of business today and a start date of Monday if I accept. I’d have to leave Dolphin Bay tomorrow.’
The blood drained from her face. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Wh-what will you do?’
‘I’m going to take it.’
‘Wh-what about your shoulder?’
‘It’s healed enough for desk duties.’
He hadn’t meant to be so harsh about it. Hadn’t wanted to wound her. But hell, she had dealt him a body blow. Just like Camilla had.
‘You’ll be gone tomorrow?’ Her voice was so faint he had to strain to hear it.
He nodded, unable to find the words that would take that stricken look off her face. Yet she still wouldn’t admit she was going back to her husband. Or give him an explanation of why she’d lied. Why she had no explanation for those words he’d overheard.
He wanted to tell her he loved her. That he wanted to make decisions based on their future, not just his.
But she wasn’t giving anything away. Not a word about her plans for going back to France to take up a new life with her old husband. Or why she was going to Lyon if it wasn’t for that.
‘So,’ she said, with that familiar tilting of her chin. ‘You’ll be leaving Dolphin Bay?’
‘Looks like it,’ he said.
‘Wh-what does that mean for us?’ She turned her face away.
‘You still don’t have anything you want to tell me?’ Anger and frustration and disbelief that he’d been caught again raged through him.
‘It’s not anything you’d want to hear,’ she said in a very small voice.
That sealed it.
Then she met his gaze straight on. ‘You’d better go make that phone call.’
She turned and he let her go.
LIZZIE WALKED AWAY from Jesse, expecting him to come after her. To tell her it was all a mistake. Reeling in shocked disbelief, she got halfway back to her apartment before she realised it wasn’t going to happen. Jesse had dumped her. After all the emotional ups and downs she’d been through today, she was finding it impossible to stay steady on her feet. She had to stop and lean against one of the famous dolphin rubbish bins. Its smiling mouth seemed to mock her.
In a daze, she dragged her feet one step after another until she reached the door to her apartment and then hauled herself up the stairs.
The empty rooms derided her. Jesse was everywhere. His handprint all over the place—the tiles he’d laid, the walls he’d painted, the room he’d prepared for Amy. He was on the sofa where the aroma of peppermint still lingered. Most of all, he was in her bedroom. How could he have made love to her with such tenderness and passion, only to dump her when her daughter came home?
Her heart contracted with the agony of the realisation of what it felt to be one of Jesse’s disposable girls.
She’d cleared the bedroom of every trace of him so Amy wouldn’t be aware Uncle Jesse had been sleeping over in Mummy’s bed. She and Jesse had agreed it was too soon for her to know. She laid her head on the pillow where only this morning his beautiful dark head had rested. Where they had slept entwined in each other’s arms. She lay where he had lain, breathed in deeply, hoping for a lingering trace of his scent but she’d stripped the bed and washed all the linen. There wasn’t a trace of him left.
What had gone wrong?
He’d given her no clue. His change of heart had come completely out of the blue. Was it something to do with her meeting with Philippe? The meeting that had released her from the chains of resentment that had held her back from fully trusting Jesse.
The first thing Philippe had done was to apologise for the way he’d behaved during their marriage. Then he’d told her he was getting married again. To a French-Canadian girl named Thérèse who was also a chef.
Lizzie’s first thought had been for Amy. But Philippe had reiterated his love for his daughter and said Thérèse wanted to be a good stepmother. In fact she wanted to meet Lizzie so she could discuss Amy’s shared care when her little girl spent time in France. There was no longer any question that Philippe would seek sole custody.
For Amy’s sake she had accepted the hand of reconciliation that Philippe had extended. ‘We learn from our mistakes, yes?’ Philippe had said.
She had agreed and, in doing so, had realised how unfair it had been of her to judge Jesse on the mistakes she had made with her ex-husband. The men were nothing alike.
Her relationship with Philippe had been founded on youthful passion fired by rebellion. She and her ex-husband had never been friends like Jesse and she had become. Jesse was both friend and lover—it was a formidable combination. She doubted her ex had understood her after several years together the way Jesse already understood her.
As she’d spoken with Philippe, something in her heart that had been frozen with bitterness and resentment had thawed. She’d felt freed from heavy chains she hadn’t realised had been tethering her so tightly.
The revelation had had nothing to do with Philippe and everything to do with Jesse. Her feelings for him had changed everything. Had made her ready to forgive and move on with no lingering fears from the past to poison the present with jealousy and suspicion.
Jesse was the real deal. The happily ever after. The till death us do part.
Then she’d sought out Jesse, anxious to tell him what had happened—and to explain how the burden of Philippe’s past behaviour had lifted so she was free to love again without the hindrance of bad old energy from the marriage gone wrong.
But Jesse had blocked her every way. Grim Jesse with the charming good looks gone dark and glowering. Black Irish. Jesse with the harsh voice, the eyes with the shutters suddenly down against her.
Jesse who, to all intents, had done exactly what she’d feared he’d do. Made a conquest of her and then dumped her. And boy had she been an easy conquest. She’d barely put up a struggle before she’d fallen so joyously into bed.
Just another of Jesse’s girls after all. She’d believed she’d been so much more. How could she have been so naïve, so stubborn, not to listen to her own sister’s advice? She’d listened to her heart instead and it had led her wrong.
And yet.
She’d grown to believe in Jesse so strongly it was hard to let that trust go. She had truly thought he wouldn’t do this to her. But there was no escaping that he had.
If she looked at it brutally, dispassionately, the timing was right for him to get rid of her. Amy had come home. With a five-year-old in residence, they would have to snatch time together, might go days without intimacy. He needed to free himself for new conquests. Those Texan girls didn’t know what they were in for. Jesse the Player. Jesse the Heartbreaker.
She thought back, puzzling, seeking clues. Philippe. It all came back to his visit. Maybe Jesse was concerned about the ongoing contact with her ex-husband. There wasn’t anything she could do about that. Amy deserved to have a loving relationship with her father and she was determined to facilitate that in any way she could.
What had Jesse meant? He’d asked her if she had something to tell him three times.
Did he want to know he had a place in her and Amy’s life when there was a father still so actively involved with his daughter—even though said father lived on the other side of the world?
Maybe Jesse wanted assurance.
Maybe