He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [56]
‘But you’ll make a start?’
‘I...yes.’ She moved uneasily, because she wasn’t being essentially truthful—the truth being that she would make a start, if only to give herself something to do in case she went round the bend, but she had no idea if she would ever be able to finish it.
‘Can I come round?’ Richard asked as the silence lengthened.
‘No. I—not while he’s not here, Richard.’
‘Have you had a chance to think over what I said?’
She flinched, because she hadn’t but didn’t want to hurt him. ‘I’m very honoured,’ she said quietly. ‘But—’
‘You’re in love with him, aren’t you, Nicola? Whatever has happened in your marriage hasn’t changed that, has it?’
‘No—and yes, I am, Richard. If I ever gave you cause to think otherwise, I’m truly sorry.’
‘You didn’t—except when you asked me whether I had a wife tucked away down south.’
‘That’s what I mean.’ She swallowed.
‘I wondered if you were thinking of using me to make him jealous?’
This is a nightmare, Nicola thought, and could think of not a thing to say.
‘I can wait,’ he said then, somewhat wryly. ‘You never know—and I’d hate to lose my clam fountain in the meantime. When he gets back I’ll be in touch.’ The line went dead.
People seem to be making a habit of hanging up on me, she thought dryly, then frowned as another thought hit her. Surely Marietta could have postponed her departure? She’d been so genuinely anguished not to have been around for Chris, but now this? It didn’t make sense. Unless—had whatever passed between her and Brett been so catastrophic she’d just...run?
In the event of not being able to understand anything , she took Chris down to the shed in the garden with her—Sasha had gone to school reluctantly—and they spent the morning there. Both the children had always been fascinated by her pottery, and she gave Chris some clay to play with. It kept him happy for hours while she got down to work of a more serious nature.
In fact, over the next few days her clam fountain proved to be a godsend. It kept her mind off the worst of her problems and gave the children something to occupy them as they got right into the spirit of it, with drawings, suggestions and their own little clay models.
Brett rang each night, as promised, but she kept their conversations to the basics. Marietta also rang several times, but, whether by design or sheer coincidence, Nicola was either out shopping or in the shower or in the shed for all of these calls.
Then she woke up one morning and realised her twenty-first birthday was only a day away. How bizarre, she thought. He must have forgotten. They’ve all forgotten. No party, no key of the door, no nothing. Why had he been so insistent about it if he could forget it so easily?
That evening, long after the children were asleep and Ellen had gone to bed too, she was reading in the lounge with her feet curled under her. There was a lamp on, on the table beside the settee, but the rest of the lounge-dining area was dim and shadowy.
She’d changed into a loose, silky, full-length robe, navy blue with pink and white birds of paradise on it, and soon she put her book down with a sigh and contemplated the irony that she, who had been rather scathing about twenty-first birthdays, had never felt lonelier and more let down in her life.
She laid her head back and closed her eyes. She knew what would happen, but couldn’t prevent it. The wings of her mind took her to Brett, in a hotel room, in Brisbane, probably seated at a desk or a table littered with papers, with his tie pulled loose and his shirtsleeves pushed up and that razor-sharp mind preparing tomorrow’s agenda for the case.
Tired? Possibly. But he had the ability to push himself to the limit, she well knew. Her father had often commented on it. Lonely? Who knew? But, if so, who he was lonely for was another mystery. Marietta? Tara? Me—no, not me, she corrected herself. And I don’t really believe Tara was a serious thing with him now, so...
Her lashes lifted at a sound, and she sat up suddenly with her heart in her mouth—because there