“Well, I was on time.”
“Your real appointment was for eleven-thirty.”
Anjuli laughed in spite of her annoyance. “I was only a few minutes late. I stopped in town and somehow the time got away from me.”
“I thought it might,” Rob said drily and opened a door on the left.
Rob’s office was decorated like the foyer, with the addition of an architectural drawing table in the far corner. The pièce de resistance was the floor-to-ceiling glass wall fronting onto a view of the river and moors.
“Wow,” Anjuli said, forgetting her nervousness. “This is beautiful.”
Rob went to his desk. “I moved here a few years after...after you left.”
A single heron perched on a rock, searching for food, and Anjuli watched it for a few seconds before she joined him at the desk. No photos of a beautiful woman or romantic reminders of any kind cluttered his work space. A picture of Mac and two little boys sat on a shelf protruding from the wall. Next to that there was a photo of Rob and a group of people somewhere with palm trees. She peered at it.
“Mexico,” Rob said, following her gaze.
Up went her brows. How many times had she tried to convince him to explore the world, maybe live overseas for a few years before having kids? He’d always refused. Unlike Ben and Mac, Rob had ascribed to the local view that a day out of Heaverlock was a day wasted.
“I thought you weren’t interested in travel,” she said, instantly regretting it.
He regarded her, expressionless. “People change.”
Yeah, and sometimes they mutate into something unrecognisable. “God knows I have.”
Rob’s jaw tightened. What had she said wrong this time? She couldn’t gauge his mood swings in the slightest. He was a stranger to her and yet he was also the man she had loved to distraction. Unsettling, to say the least, that she had once known Rob’s dreams and hopes, what made him laugh and what made him angry. She’d been able to glean from a single look what he thought and from a touch what he felt. But now?
Like the heron on the river bank he was still, as if waiting for her to jump so he could take a bite. Nervously, Anjuli traced her collarbone. His face darkened to granite, eyes fixed on her fingers. Oops, wrong thing to do. It was a habit she thought she’d got rid of years ago, a quirk that used to drive him wild. She put her hand back in her lap.
“Were you the other bidder for Castle Manor?” she asked.
“Aye.”
Anjuli sent him an apologetic look. “I didn’t know it was you, Rob, and I regret that you were disappointed because of me.”
“Disappointment is no’ the word that comes to mind when I think of you,” he said flatly.
Anjuli flinched as though he’d slapped her. There it was, the anger she’d been expecting. Underneath the politeness, the small talk and even his sexual propositioning was a man she had wronged. One who hadn’t forgotten or forgiven her. She jumped up from the chair, eyes on the river. She couldn’t sit in front of him, facing his judgemental stare like a criminal on the dock.
“Running away again?” Rob said harshly.
Anjuli stood at the glass wall. She’d come prepared to apologise, but her carefully prepared speech now seemed trite and inadequate. Taking a deep breath she turned and faced him. “I’m sorry I left you at the altar. It was immature and heartless.”
“Aye, it was.”
The sound of the river gurgling underneath filled the silence, ripples upon ripples rushing in her ears just as the past was rushing through her mind. “I never planned to leave you waiting for me at the church. I was going to forget about Juilliard and go through with the wedding,” she said, willing him to believe her. “But then I just...couldn’t.”
“I gathered as much when you didn’t turn up.”
A hint of her old frustration hardened her voice. “I was only twenty, Rob. You were twenty-four. We had plenty of time but establishing your architectural firm and having a family was all you cared about.”
“So you ran off. Typical Anjuli behaviour, avoiding anything unpleasant. Avoiding me. Was I such a monster it was easy for you to throw my love away?”
“You were intransigent and overwhelming. And dictatorial.”
“I guess that answers my question.”
“I did the wrong thing,” she said softly. “I took the coward’s way out hoping you’d finally realise how much singing meant to me. I felt awful, and I wrote to you every day, asking you to forgive me. Asking you to come with me. For two weeks I waited, almost missing my flight to New York, searching every face at the airport in the hope that it would be yours. But you let me go.”