‘Yes. Fourteenth floor.’
The doors closed on the three of them and the elevator swooped upwards with stomach-splitting speed. It was a large lift, but Tatiana’s mountain of luggage meant that she and Brett were squashed at the back like two sardines, while the bus boy was practically flattened against the doors. Tati could feel Brett’s body next to hers, bristling with tension and resentment, like a coiled cobra ready to pounce. She hadn’t seen him in the flesh in a long, long time. Years. But he hadn’t changed. Nor had the unsettling effect he always had on her.
‘Does Jason know you’re here?’ he asked gruffly.
‘Of course. I don’t have secrets from my husband,’ Tati said virtuously.
Brett guffawed. ‘Of course not. Only from your board members. Right?’
Tati’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. What did Brett Cranley know about her relationship with her board?
‘You’re here to look at sites for a new school, I assume?’ he elaborated. ‘They won’t like that.’
‘If I were you, I’d make it a belated New Year’s resolution to give up assuming,’ Tati said waspishly. ‘You’re not very good at it. You assumed Jason would spend the rest of his life as your punch-bag. That didn’t work out too well, did it?’
The bus boy shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. This was starting to get ugly.
‘He escaped, he’s with me, and he’s very happy,’ Tatiana went on. ‘So’s Logan by the way. In case you were wondering. All she needed was someone to listen to her for a change. But listening isn’t your strong suit either, is it Brett?’
Brett tried hard not to show how hurt he was. He missed his daughter, and his son for that matter. Underneath the bravado he was all too well aware of his failings as a father. But he couldn’t let Tatiana see that. ‘Save the Mother Theresa spiel for someone who doesn’t already know you,’ he said gruffly. ‘You used my son for his money. Jason may not know it, but I do, and so does the rest of the world. He’ll see through you eventually. Logan too.’
‘There you go again. Assuming. You assumed it meant something to me when we slept together, didn’t you?’ Tati goaded him, laughing cruelly. ‘You couldn’t believe that the great Brett Cranley was just another insignificant one-night stand. But that’s all you ever were. Unlike Jason.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Brett flung out his arms in frustration. Mistaking the gesture, thinking that he might be about to hit her, Tati’s hand shot out, grabbing him by the wrist.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she hissed.
‘Dare what?’ said Brett. ‘You think I’d hit a woman?’
‘I don’t know what you’re capable of,’ said Tati. ‘Just remember, I’m not a passive little woman like your wife. I’m your fucking equal, Brett.’
‘Fourteenth floor!’ the bus boy’s voice rang out loudly, a note of panic clearly audible. ‘This is your stop, sir.’
Shaking his arm free, easily breaking Tatiana’s grip, Brett straightened his jacket and walked out. He had to fight the urge to run. Ridiculously, he felt tears stinging his eyes. Being around Tatiana felt like sticking his hand into a naked flame.
Did he really mean nothing to her?
No. He didn’t believe that. Couldn’t believe it. Although the mere idea that it might be true, that Jason might be the one she really wanted, burned like acid on his skin. Even now, after all these years, Tatiana had the power to get to him the way no other woman ever had.
But she wasn’t his. She would never be his.
Tati was Jason’s wife now. Whatever her true feelings, Tatiana belonged to his son.
In the past, Angela had always been able to heal the wounds Brett suffered from other women, or from knockbacks in business. If Tatiana was fire, Angie was water, the cooling comfort of lapping waves, washing away Brett’s pain. Brett could bring Angela his failures, his rejections, like a cat dropping a mouse at his mistress’s feet; and she would make them insignificant with her love. With her patience and forgiveness. With her kindness that seemed to have no bottom, no limits.
But perhaps that was part of the problem, Brett realized now. He needed limits.
What had Tatiana said to him just now? I’m not your wife. I’m your equal.
The words played over and over in his head as he made the lonely walk back to his room.
CHAPTER TWENTY
On her hands and knees in Furlings’ garden, weeding one of the kitchen garden beds, Angela Cranley watched a bumblebee going about its business. There was something intrinsically comic, but at the same time sad, about the way that this fat, round, awkward ball of a creature flew from flower to flower. As if it were drunk, or blind, or both. Everything it did seemed haphazard and clumsy, as if its very design were one of nature’s private jokes: the gluing of gossamer-thin, fairy wings onto a graceless, sumo wrestler’s body.