He had never been in love before. Perhaps he wasn’t in love now? With nothing to compare it to, it was awfully hard to tell.
All he knew was that when Tatiana left today, curling her lip at his father as if Brett were nothing, a mere irritant, a fly in her consommé, he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and never, ever let her go.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Angela Cranley sat bolt upright, gasping for breath.
‘Ange?’ Concerned, Brett shook her by the shoulders. ‘Ange, what’s the matter? Are you all right?’
She looked at his face, then around the room. One by one, familiar objects reasserted themselves. The thick red damask curtains she’d bought at auction in London. The antique French dressing table they’d had shipped over from Sydney. The horrible oil painting of the Sydney opera house that Brett adored and insisted on hanging directly opposite the marital bed, wherever they lived. Her panic attack subsided.
‘I’m fine.’
I’m home.
At Furlings.
The summer’s over.
It had all gone by so quickly, it was easy to imagine it had been a dream. Or should that be a nightmare? Finding Brett in bed with Tricia, meeting Didier, attempting to piece back together the shattered fragments of trust for the hundredth time. Now that she was back in Sussex, back in her role of wife and mother and mistress of the house, none of it seemed quite real.
But it was real. Brett had betrayed her again. And for all his apologies and promises, all his apparently sincere remorse, the wound felt deeper this time. About a week ago, Angela had allowed Brett to make love to her again. It was awful. Brett was tender, loving and apologetic, as he always was after he’d been caught out with another woman. Angela went through the motions, allowing her body to accept his apology. But inside she felt cold and dead and numb to a degree that frightened her.
Didier had texted and emailed a couple of times, while she was still out in France. It was obvious he wanted something more to develop between them. Angela didn’t have the stomach for an affair, all the lies and deceit. But it did feel good to have a small, romantic secret of her own for a change. And Didier’s attentions strengthened her in other ways too. She wanted to get her marriage back on track. But she didn’t want to go back to the way things were before. Back to being passive. Back to being the frightened mouse of a woman she had always been with Brett, since the day he first walked into her parents’ bakery. Something had to change. Going back would be death.
But then the holiday ended, they returned from France, and almost immediately the panic attacks began. Furlings, the house Angela had loved so much and felt such an instant connection to back in the spring, suddenly felt like a prison. It didn’t help that Logan was ecstatic to be back.
‘Do you think Gabe will notice my tan?’ she’d asked her parents on the drive back from the airport, craning her neck out of the window as they passed Wraggsbottom Farm. ‘I’ve matured a lot this summer,’ she added, blowing an enormous bubble with her last piece of strawberry Hubba Bubba, then sucking it back into her mouth with a satisfying snap.
‘Have you now?’ laughed Brett. ‘I’m sure Gabe Baxter has better things to do than check out your suntan. I don’t want you hanging around that farmyard all the time, annoying people.’
‘I don’t annoy people,’ said Logan, stung. ‘You annoy people.’ She stuck out her bubble-gum-pink tongue in Brett’s direction.
‘Don’t talk back to your father,’ Angela said automatically. But Brett had just laughed. He was happy to be home too, to be going back to work, back to ‘normal’. Only Angela, it seemed, was struggling to readjust.
Getting out of bed, she walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower in an attempt to avoid further conversation with Brett. She didn’t want to be quizzed about her panic attacks, or the bad dreams that had plagued her ever since they got back. But to her surprise, Brett followed her into the shower. Pressing his naked body against hers, he wrapped his arms around her in an unusual display of tenderness.
‘It’s probably the stress,’ he said, kissing her neck.
‘Stress?’ Angela frowned.