“You know I can’t drink caffeine at this time of night, Caroline.”
“A glass of wine, then?”
“I don’t need to drink every day – not like you.”
I blinked. This was a new and interesting development. Now I was an alcoholic? I almost laughed. And then I had an epiphany: I wasn’t scared of him anymore.
“Well, I’m glad to see the flight didn’t affect your good mood, David. I’m going to have a glass of wine. Let me know if I can get you anything.”
I left him gaping in our hallway.
Eventually I heard him stomp up the stairs with his bags. My adrenaline rush over, I felt a little shaky. I hadn’t eaten much at the picnic but now I was ravenous.
Scrabbling through the fridge, I found a jar of peanut butter. I’d bought it for David, not really being a fan, but right now it was just what I needed. I found a dessert spoon and dug in.
I remembered that only this morning Sebastian had told me that he liked peanut butter. Was that really just this morning? It seemed a lifetime ago. In some ways it was.
I started to feel bad for the way I’d spoken to him. I’d thought he was behaving recklessly to insist on coming to my house and taking such a huge risk. Yes, that was foolish, but, truthfully, I was the one who’d behaved badly. He’d looked so hurt as he’d left. No, damn it! I was right to be angry.
My emotions whirled around, reeling from sadness to anger and back again. It was sometime later when I realized that David was being unusually quiet.
I walked upstairs and found him already under the sheets, his dirty clothes scattered on my side of the bed.
When it came down to it, I had to admit that David had Sebastian beaten in the behaving-childishly stakes.
I headed for the spare room. It was cool and calm and untainted by any association with David or any memory of Sebastian. Before I set my phone alarm to wake me in the morning, I wondered briefly about texting Sebastian, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say.
I fell asleep with the pain on his face burned into my eyes.
Chapter 13
David was sulky at breakfast. What a shocker.
Without comment, I served him bacon, pancakes and eggs, pointed out his dry-cleaned uniform and calmly sat down with a slice of toast at my laptop.
I could feel his eyes on me, a silent castigation. Well, as long as it remained silent, that was just fine by me.
True to form, he flounced out of the house without speaking to me. I noticed he took his dress uniform so, with a bit of luck, I wouldn’t see him until tomorrow. A twenty-four hour reprieve I could definitely use.
Before I faced David, it was time to man up and face Sebastian. I sure as hell wasn’t going to apologize for what I’d said last night but we needed to talk. At least, I thought we did. Whatever had happened between him and Brenda, or not happened as he’d insisted… whatever the rights and wrongs of him risking our exposure by coming here last night, I was supposed to be the adult in this relationship. I decided I was going to let him go with a few shreds of my dignity intact.
I pulled out my phone to text him.
Texts were such a useful medium: they could say so much or so little – and yet they side-stepped all the screwed up emotions of a face-to-face encounter. I could see why dumping someone by text was so popular: it was the coward’s correspondence method of choice. Well… perfect for me, then.
I was about to type a message when I heard a soft tap at the back door. It seemed Sebastian had beaten me to the punch. At least he wasn’t going to dump me by text. I supposed that was a good thing.
God, he was so beautiful. I couldn’t help taking one long, last, devouring look.
Even if this was goodbye, I felt lucky to have had him in my life. Knowingly or not, he’d been the catalyst for changing my life. I’d always be grateful.
“Hi. You want to come in?”
He nodded silently and I pushed the door open wide to let him through.
“I’m just having a coffee: do you want one?”