November Harlequin Presents 2(230)

The lift took for ever to come, which out of it all was the hardest part—standing in the foyer, tears choking her, having laid her heart on the line, waiting for the silver doors to take her away from it all.

Knowing had even if he had loved her even a little bit—he’d had plenty of time to follow her.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN




SINCE she’d found her father’s letters, home hadn’t really felt like it, yet strangely that was where Lily found solace.

Cocooned almost in a time when everything was right—when, no matter the problem, no matter how dire the circumstance or how extenuating the circumstances, it could somehow be made right.

And even if this was too big to fix, even if the problems that daunted her couldn’t be soothed with a kiss and a smile, it was nice to retreat awhile, nice to lie on the quilt that had seen her through adolescence, to listen to the coming and goings of the family home and pause to regroup.

To hear the footsteps of her mother on the stairs, the creak of the door and the welcome scent of coffee, toast, and if not understanding, just the sharing of unconditional love as her mum sat on the side of the bed and wrapped Lily in her arms to shield her from the appalling sadness. Because again it was clear there was no news for her mother to tell,

Hunter still hadn’t rung.

‘Couples have rows,’ Catherine offered, for the hundredth time. ‘You know I love you, but you have to talk to him. You can’t just hide here, you have to face your problems as a couple, deal with them.’

‘He doesn’t love me.’ There, she’d said it, admitted as much to her mother as she could without revealing all the sordid details, but Catherine just shook her head.

‘Rubbish! He adores you,’ Catherine admonished, and Lily pulled her hands over her ears, couldn’t take the well-intended comfort. ‘I know he loves you.’

‘Mum—’

‘He does,’ Catherine insisted. ‘He loves you just as your father loved me. Marriages take work, Lily.’

She couldn’t bear it, could hardly bear to lie there and be delivered a lecture from the most unwitting of victims, to be told the rules of love from someone who clearly hadn’t a clue. She pulled the sheet higher, nestled in the pillows and braced herself for a vague response, prepared her mind for a grateful smile to her mother for supposedly making it all better.

‘You think I don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

‘I think things were different between you and Dad,’ Lily answered carefully. ‘The problems Hunter and I face…’

‘Are more complicated,’ her mother offered. ‘More painful, more difficult? Just because you’re younger, it doesn’t mean you feel things more.’

‘I wasn’t saying that,’ Lily attempted, but her words faded as her mother broke in.

‘Your father had an affair…’

It was as if the universe had tipped on its axis, the whole world spinning as Lily digested what her mother had said. Surely the books should be spinning off the shelves, the pictures collapsing under the weight of revelation, but as she peered out from under the sheet the room was exactly as she had left it. The only difference Lily could see, was the very real understanding in her mother’s supposedly oblivious eyes, a different perspective on years of torture.

‘No.’ Though she’d known it for years, Lily still attempted to deny it, to squeeze the cork back into the bottle. But the genie was out, filling the room with an honesty that seeped into Lily’s marrow, that erased so much more than deceit—it showed her the woman her mother had always been.

Revealed the child she still was.

‘I could have killed him when I found out.’ Catherine smiled down at her child, pushed back a strand of hair in a long-forgotten gesture. ‘I was going to leave.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I actually did leave him—remember the time we went to stay at Granny Meldrum’s?’ She gave a wistful smile and suddenly looked a decade younger than her years, and in that moment Lily was assailed with memories. Not the tired woman she saw now. Instead, she remembered her mother in a boxy suit, pursing her lips in the mirror of her grandmother’s home before heading off to work, defiant, sexy and somehow proud.

‘Are you saying that the two of you had broken up?’ Lily shook her head. ‘I don’t remember any rows, I don’t—’

‘We kept it from you.’ Catherine smiled. ‘In fact, for the first couple of days I didn’t even tell my mother why we were there, though she soon worked it out.’

‘She knew?’ Lily blinked. ‘Granny Meldrum knew about Dad’s affair? What on earth did she say?’