One Night with Her Ex

SIX


This wasn’t a date. This wasn’t a date. This wasn’t a date.

As she followed Kit to the table that sat at the water’s edge and was set for two Lily tried to concentrate on the mantra rolling around her head and not on the electricity that emanated from the connection of her hand with his and was zapping through her, but it was proving no more helpful now than it had when she’d been getting ready.

After going back to her room earlier this afternoon and taking a cold shower, which hadn’t done much to obliterate the hundred or so grasshoppers that had seemed to have taken up residence in her stomach at the thought of the date—no, dinner—with Kit, she’d decided that while donning armour was a must, mainlining tequila probably wasn’t the way to handle the evening. She was in a jittery enough state as it was and with alcohol loosening her already iffy inhibitions who knew what might happen?

Once she’d made that pleasingly mature decision, she’d called her sister and after that, well, she hadn’t known what to think about anything.

As she’d dialled the number she’d been planning to tear a strip off Zoe for revealing her whereabouts to Kit of all people. She’d been going to say she understood that her sister was at a heightened level of happiness at the moment, but that she had to realise that not everyone was in search of the same, and that she certainly wasn’t looking for it with Kit. She’d even been prepared to counter-argue the excuse of Kit’s powers of persuasion she was sure Zoe was going to give.

What she hadn’t been prepared for, however, was her sister’s declaration that she thought Kit still had feelings for her, that he’d said he might still love her and that that was why she’d told him where she was. To give them the opportunity to see whether they had a second chance. Or something.


In something of a daze Lily had hung up, and it was then that she’d descended into the kind of emotional turmoil she’d spent so long avoiding, her head teeming with questions such as ‘Could he?’ ‘Did he?’ and her heart beginning to swell with what she had the awful suspicion might be hope.

Which made such a mockery of everything she’d spent the last five years trying to convince herself of that it was no wonder she’d worked herself up into such a state. For the best part of the next couple of hours she’d paced up and down her room wondering whether her sister had got it right and then trying to figure out that if she had, what she—Lily—wanted, if anything, and what, if anything, she felt.

Before she knew it it was half past seven and she still hadn’t dried her hair. Bafflingly none the wiser about how she felt about any of it, she’d put it to the back of her mind while she got ready, and there it had stayed until she’d seen him standing at the bar, nursing his beer and looking so familiar and so gorgeous that her heart had turned over and her brain had turned to jelly and she couldn’t think about anything at all.

So she’d schooled her features into a neutral arrangement that she hoped masked the craziness that was going on inside her head, had taken a deep, steadying breath and told herself to remember what dinner was about.

But, heavens, it was difficult to focus when her head was filled with the look on Kit’s face when he’d turned and seen her. She didn’t think she was wearing anything particularly astonishing but from the heat in his eyes she felt as if she were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Perhaps on the planet.

It was even harder to concentrate on the reason they were here when everything about the place, from the lighting to the music and even the positioning of the tables, screamed intimacy, privacy and romance.

They reached their table at the same time as a waiter, who pulled out Lily’s chair, waited for her to sit down and then did the same for Kit opposite. He handed them each a menu, took their order for aperitifs and then melted away.

Glancing down at the list of dishes, each of which sounded more mouth-watering than the previous, Lily swiftly made her choice. As did Kit, judging by the way he put the menu down with a brief nod and sat back.

Her eyes met his, their gazes locked and as the seconds ticked by she became achingly aware of the beating of her heart, the sound of her breathing, of every inch of her body come to think of it. The connection between them was as strong as ever, the attraction undeniable, and the tension, the heat and the anticipation still simmered.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Kit eventually, the faint surprise in his voice as much as his words snapping her out of her reverie.

Lily swallowed hard and gave herself a quick mental shake. She had to get a grip. She really did if she was going to make it through dinner. ‘What, here on the island?’ she asked, which she didn’t think made much sense. ‘Or here at this table?’ Which did.

‘Here with me. Now.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘It had crossed my mind that you might have used the afternoon to run away.’

Ah, he knew her so well. ‘It crossed mine too,’ she said with a small smile, ‘but then I figured what would that have achieved? Avoidance isn’t the way to deal with any of this.’

Kit leaned back and looked at her, a thoughtful expression flickering across his face in the twilight. ‘What is?’

She gave a little shrug. ‘I’m not sure. Honesty maybe?’

‘Honesty works for me.’

He glanced up and smiled his thanks at the waiter who’d set a glass of champagne in front of her and was now doing the same with his beer for him and her breath caught. Goodness, his smile really was something else. She’d been on the receiving end of it so many times but it had never failed to affect her. Still didn’t, it seemed, because the waiter was looking down at her expectantly as apparently it was time to order and she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she’d chosen.

Indicating that Kit should go first with a wave of her hand, Lily picked up the menu and while he ordered lobster followed by tilapia she found with relief her starter of prawns and main of curried sea bass.

‘I’m sorry about New Year’s Eve,’ said Kit once the waiter had disappeared with their order and they were once again alone.

‘New Year’s Eve?’ echoed Lily, her eyebrows lifting a little. ‘Why? What is there to be sorry about?’

‘What isn’t there to be sorry about?’ he muttered, shifting in his chair as if suddenly finding it uncomfortable. ‘I turned up out of the blue, virtually forced you to let me in and then behaved like a crazed hormonal out-of-control teenager.’

‘Oh, right,’ she said, feeling herself flush at the memory of how out of control they’d both been. How reckless and deluded she’d been. ‘Well, consider your apology accepted.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

See, they could be perfectly civilised about this, she thought, taking a sip of champagne, which was cold and dry and utterly delicious. Even if she was a total mess inside.

‘I wasn’t surprised you threw me out what with the...ah...way things went,’ he said and went a little red.

She stared at him for a second and then put her glass down. ‘You think I threw you out because I was cross I hadn’t, well, you know...?’ Neither of them was usually such a prude about these things, but then normally they didn’t discuss them in public. At least she didn’t.

Now it was he who raised his eyebrows. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘When you told me that you hadn’t had sex for five years it occurred to me that the last woman you’d slept with was, well, you know...’ She braced herself, then in the spirit of the honesty she’d just claimed she believed was the way forwards, said, ‘Her.’

Kit frowned. ‘I see.’

‘It freaked me out. Brought back a time I’ve spent five years trying to forget.’

He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

‘I realise now that I might have overreacted a bit, but in my defence it had been quite an emotionally stressful night, even before you turned up.’ She shrugged and shot him a faint smile. ‘Anyway, it’s not your fault.’

‘Isn’t it?’ he asked, his face dark and his eyes glittering in the twilight. ‘Isn’t everything?’

And there it was. The moment she could either agree that it was and they’d stay where they were, with Kit in all likelihood heading home and out of her life first thing in the morning, or she could tell him what she’d come to realise and they could both move on, although God knew where to.

Knowing what she had to do for her own peace of mind as much as Kit’s, Lily took a deep breath. ‘Not really,’ she said and felt the release of a kind of pressure she hadn’t realised had been building up inside her.

Kit sat up, alert and to all appearances in something of a state of shock. ‘What?’

‘There’s no need to look quite so surprised,’ she said, although she couldn’t really blame him given how, at the time, she’d totally laid the responsibility for what he’d done at his door. ‘I’ve had plenty of time over the years to think and I’ve come to realise that what happened between us wasn’t your fault. Or at least not entirely.’

‘Really?’

She nodded and broke off a piece of bread. ‘Oh, I know what I said then, and I know I laid the blame for it all going wrong wholly at your feet, but that wasn’t very fair of me.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ he said, his astonishment fading and leaving the expression on his face totally unreadable.

‘You know it wasn’t. And you told me so, many times. Not that I was willing to listen. At the time all I could focus on was what you’d done and I didn’t think about what might have led to it.’ She popped the bread into her mouth, chewed for a moment and then swallowed. ‘I mean, you’re not the cheating sort, Kit, but I was so blinded by hurt, so wrecked by the feeling of betrayal, I didn’t see that. I didn’t ask myself why you’d done it and I didn’t think about my role in everything. As far as I could see I didn’t have a role other than as the only victim. I’d been going through hell and you didn’t seem to understand.’

‘I tried.’

‘I know you did.’

‘But maybe not enough.’

‘Maybe I didn’t let you.’

He rubbed a hand along his jaw. ‘With hindsight I should have been firmer and I should have made us face things together.’ He let out a humourless laugh. ‘But believe it or not I wasn’t having all that much fun either.’

‘I realise that now.’ She sighed. ‘But the whole IVF thing was so grim and painful and devastating and by its very definition so physically mainly about me that I failed to see it involved both of us. Plus I knew how much you wanted children being an only child and things, and the knowledge that I couldn’t have them just about broke me apart. I didn’t cope with things very well and I shut you out.’


‘I allowed you to.’ Kit shoved his hands through his hair and frowned. ‘I told myself that I was giving you space but in reality I think what I was doing was avoiding something I didn’t have a clue how to handle.’

It was the first time he’d acknowledged his contribution to the collapse of their marriage and it warmed a part of her deep inside that had always been so cold.

‘Really we were both victims, weren’t we?’ she mused, feeling an odd sense of calm spread through her. ‘Of something we didn’t have the strength or maturity or understanding to deal with.’ She paused. ‘Of course you topping things off by going and sleeping with someone else didn’t exactly help.’

As her words hung between them Kit paled beneath his tan. ‘I’ll never forgive myself for that,’ he said, his voice cracking a little. ‘There’s this nugget of guilt that’s always there and I’m so sorry, Lily. For everything. But particularly for betraying your trust like that.’

‘You’re forgiven.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course.’ She took a quick sip of champagne. ‘Five years is too long to be angry and resentful and I think I forgave you ages ago. I get now that you must have been feeling lonely and isolated and all those other things you said at the time,’ she said, remembering the endless evenings she’d spent going over it all. ‘That doesn’t mean what you did didn’t devastate me, because it did. But I can sort of see how it happened. I mean, we hadn’t had sex for months, had we? And we were barely speaking. We were virtual strangers. Something had to give at some point.’

His jaw tightened and shadows flickered across his face. ‘Nevertheless I made that choice to cheat,’ he said gruffly. ‘I was the one that trampled all over our marriage vows.’

‘True.’

‘I’ve regretted it ever since.’

‘Did you ever consider not telling me?’

‘For about a nanosecond.’

She tilted her head and looked at him. ‘Was it really just sex and a one-off?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then maybe it would have been better if you hadn’t.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Although our marriage was dead in the water long before that, wasn’t it? So the end result would probably have been the same.’

‘If I’d thought there was any hope of salvaging it I’d never have done what I did,’ said Kit.

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘No. Not that it’s any excuse. Nothing excuses it. Certainly none of the justifications I came up with.’

Lily winced as everything he had accused her of—self-absorption, surliness, lack of understanding among others—all came back. ‘I guess we both said things we probably shouldn’t have.’

‘Probably,’ he said with a nod. ‘But I’ve had time to think too and I was too quick to absolve myself of any of the blame. Whatever was happening to us, I should have made us deal with it together. I regret the fact that I didn’t.’

For a moment they lapsed into silence, the space between them no longer filled with regret but a sort of tentative understanding.

‘Listen to us,’ she said softly, ‘each trying to take the blame for the way things turned out.’

‘Unlike when it actually happened when all we could do was blame each other.’

‘Exactly.’

Kit smiled, his eyes glittering in the candlelight. ‘Who’d have thought we’d get so wise?’

‘Well, I’ve had a lot of time to think and I ended up figuring that for me it was like someone—you—had died or something because the man I knew would never have done something like what you did. So I kind of went through the whole grief thing, starting with shock and rage. It took me a while and a lot of wine to get round to the acceptance and forgiveness stage but I got there. And here we are, I guess.’

Kit didn’t say anything to that, but just looked at her for several long, heavy moments, his eyes darkening and the expression on his face changing into something that made her heart thud and her throat tighten.

‘What?’ she asked, her voice husky.

‘You’re incredible.’

‘No, I’m not,’ she said, trying to tamp down the surge of heat rising up inside her and the thudding of her heart. ‘Just a bit older maybe and appreciating the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight. Anyway, it isn’t all one-sided. Didn’t you say you’d been thinking too?’

‘I’ve had my moments.’

She shot him a rueful smile. ‘And it’s not like I didn’t do things I regret.’ Her smile faded and she bit her lip as a familiar wave of shame rolled through her. ‘I’m sorry about cutting up your clothes and keying the Porsche, Kit.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘And the email was truly unforgivable. I should never ever have done that.’

Kit shrugged. ‘Water under the bridge.’

Not for her. Once the initial surge of triumphant satisfaction had faded she’d felt sick and hollow and riddled with guilt. Still did a bit. ‘Did it make things very difficult?’

‘Pretty tough.’

She inwardly cringed. ‘What did you do?’

‘Having been informed of my questionable integrity none of the British banks would lend me anything and the venture capitalists wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole so I went to the States.’

‘I read that your first hotel was in New York. I wondered about that. Will you tell me how you did it?’

* * *

And so, over the course of dinner, Kit did. He told her how after New York he’d moved to Paris and set up a hotel there. And then, most recently, London.

He told her of the satisfaction he felt of realising the dream he’d had ever since his jet-set parents had taken an apartment in Claridges, the dream that had sustained him through his degree in hotel management and his swift climb up the ladder. He shared the obstacles he’d faced and the successes he’d had.

And in return Lily told him how she’d come to start her business, how shortly after their divorce she’d resigned from her much-loved marketing job. How, needing the distraction of a new challenge, she’d hit upon the idea of offering a range of products to help businesses improve their customer experience. She’d put it to Zoe, who’d been keen, and that was that.

She asked after his parents, and he learned that Zoe was engaged. They discussed a few previously mutual friends with whom only one of them had stayed in touch, the places they’d lived, and caught up on as much as they could while skirting round the subject of lovers in her case and lack of them in his.

Dinner was delicious. At least Lily had told him it was. Personally Kit couldn’t taste a thing. He was too busy reeling from everything she’d admitted between their aperitifs and the arrival of the food. Too busy recovering from the mind-blowing discovery that she’d forgiven him and that the second chance he’d so badly wanted might be closer than he’d dared hope. Too busy revelling in the sound of her voice and her laugh, watching her expressive face and losing himself in the depths of her mesmerising eyes. And too busy realising that there was no longer any doubt about whether or not he loved her.

He was absolutely nuts about her. She was the strongest, toughest, most beautiful woman he’d ever met and he was a fool to have ever let her go. He’d never fallen out of love with her and he was going to do everything in his power to win her back.

But he couldn’t barge in and tell her what he wanted, he thought suddenly, watching Lily drain the last of her coffee and stifle a yawn. He couldn’t carry on with the strategy he’d employed up until now. He was going to have to tread carefully. Their relationship was so fragile, their truce so new, and he could so easily screw things up with his impatience, his need to be in control and his continual drive to move things forwards.

It might be the challenge of the century but with Lily he had to switch mindsets. He had to take a back seat and wait. He had to let her come to him, and then they could begin to build their relationship from there.

So there’d be no more chasing. No more persuading her to do things she didn’t really want to do. No more doing anything that might scare her off.

Whatever happened next had to be her decision. All he could do was ensure that he did his best to help her make the one he wanted.

* * *

Despite her initial misgivings the evening really couldn’t have gone any better, thought Lily, walking beside Kit as he escorted her back to her villa, the inky darkness of the night wrapping round them like a warm, cosy blanket.

Once they’d moved on from the difficult topic of their mess of a marriage, accompanied by course after course of heavenly food and delicious wine, the banter had batted back and forth with barely a break for breath. They’d had so much to talk about, so much to find out. It had been just like old times, but somehow better.

As they’d begun to get to know the people they’d become, Lily had found herself liking Kit more and more, and beneath one lethal smile after another she’d felt herself fall deeper and deeper under his spell.


She’d known it was happening, known that she was being foolhardy and reckless in not bothering to resist, but it had been such a long time since she’d felt like this, all relaxed and languid yet buzzing at the same time, that she hadn’t been able to stop herself.

And hadn’t really wanted to because over the course of the evening the answers to the questions she’d spent this afternoon trying to figure out had become increasingly clear, and now it seemed that the night held myriad possibilities.

Possibilities that had her body thrumming with anticipation and her heart thumping crazily because dinner had cleared the air. Cleaned the slate. Had maybe, even, reset their relationship, put them back at the start and cleared the way for a stab at a second chance together, free from and prepared for all the trouble that had come their way the first time round.

The idea was kind of thrilling, she thought, going all shivery and hot inside. Exciting. And what she wanted.

What Kit wanted, however, was completely up in the air. He’d been silent and thoughtful ever since he’d offered to walk her back, and infuriatingly wasn’t giving anything away.

But if he was as achingly aware of her as she was of him then there was only one logical conclusion to tonight, and even though on some dim and distant level she knew the idea of falling into bed with him again needed way more consideration, the desire simmering inside her was too insistent to ignore.

‘You know, if I’d known how cathartic getting all that stuff off my chest was going to be, I’d have been in touch with you years ago,’ said Lily a little huskily as they strolled up the path to her villa.

‘Would you?’ he murmured.

‘Absolutely. I feel as if I’ve spent the last five years carrying this enormous kind of weight that’s suddenly gone. I feel lighter somehow. Calmer.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘I’m glad we talked. And had the chance to catch up,’ she added with a smile.

‘So am I.’

At her door she turned to him and lifted her face, her pulse hammering so hard he must surely be able to see it. Would surely act on it.

‘So what happens now?’ she said, the anticipation and excitement zipping through her making her all trembly inside.

‘Now?’ he said, reaching out a hand and softly running his forefinger down her cheek.

She nodded and held her breath as every one of her senses focused on him and this moment.

He tilted his head, his eyes dark and unfathomable. ‘Well, sweet pea, that rather depends on you.’

‘Me?’ she echoed softly, the endearment and his touch stealing her ability to think straight.

He nodded and gave her a faint smile. ‘That’s right. So have a think about it and let me know.’

And just as she was about to ask what he meant Kit bent his head, dropped a light kiss on her cheek and then, to her utter bewilderment, turned and walked off into the night.