Chapter SIXTEEN
MACKENZIE WASN’T SURE what woke her. A sound out in the street, maybe Mr. Smith moving around out in the hallway. She sat up in bed, blinking in the darkness. Only then did she register the dark outline of a figure in her bedroom doorway.
“It’s just me,” Patrick said. “It’s bloody cold out on the couch.”
“Then grab another blanket from the hall cupboard. You know where they are.”
“I was thinking I could maybe get in with you. Share some body heat.”
She didn’t need to see his face to know that he was wearing his winsome, cheeky little-boy-lost expression. She wasn’t exactly surprised by his approach. She’d been expecting it from the moment he’d pointed out that he’d drunk too much wine with dinner to be safe driving home.
“As if, Patrick.” She didn’t bother hiding her exasperation.
“We’ll just spoon, I swear. I know you’ve got something going on with what’s-his-name next door.”
“Go spoon with Smitty on the couch. He’s good at the kind of spooning you’re talking about, by all accounts.”
She waited for him to go, but instead he entered the room. The bed sank as he sat on the corner.
She sighed heavily and reached out to flick on the bedside light.
He was wearing nothing but his jeans, the fly wide-open, his hair mussed and endearingly ruffled. His body was camera ready, with clearly defined abdominal muscles and hairless pectoral muscles.
She guessed she was supposed to be overcome by desire at the sight of his gym-honed physique. Or something like that.
She pulled the covers higher so that her shoulders were warm. “I’m not going to sleep with you, Patrick.”
“Okay. I respect that.” He studied her, his expression pensive. “I miss you, Mac. That’s really why I came down today. I wanted your advice, but I miss you.”
Not so long ago, she might have been moved by his confession, even though she understood that it came from a place of self-interest and was bound to end in nothing but unhappiness for both of them. Tonight, she felt nothing beyond a tinge of sadness that Patrick still clung to something that had never worked.
“Did you miss me when I was in hospital? When I was in rehab for all those months?” she asked.
“I know I was a shit, not coming to see you. But you have to understand, seeing you like that...it was bloody hard, Mac. I didn’t feel as though I had anything to offer you. So I stayed away, because I figured you didn’t need to take on my grief and whatever as well as your own.”
“Big of you.”
His gaze dropped to the floor. “You’re angry with me.”
She thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I am. But mostly disappointed. At the very least, I thought we cared about each other as friends.”
“We do. Jesus, there’s no one else in my life like you, Mac. You’re up there on a pedestal, all on your own.”
“And yet you couldn’t put aside your own stuff to be there for me when I needed you.”
It wasn’t a question.
He flicked a look at her and she saw that his gaze was anguished.
“I’m sorry, Mac. I know you think I’m a selfish, pointless bastard, but I do love you. More than anyone or anything.”
She believed him, but his love was not the same as her love. Her love was all-encompassing and forgiving and resilient. Her love would have demanded that she sleep night and day by her lover’s side if he’d been in a life-threatening accident. If Oliver had been torn apart and crushed by flying metal, she would have moved heaven and earth to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that he was loved, that they would get through whatever lay ahead together. Then she would have followed through on her promises, because his happiness meant more to her than her own.
She stilled as she registered the thought, a little stunned by the insight she’d suddenly gained into her own feelings.
She was in love with Oliver. Profoundly so.
“What?” Patrick asked.
She shook her head. She wasn’t about to tell him she was in love with Oliver—Oliver should be the first person to hear those words, not her ex-husband. It was nothing to do with Patrick. At all. He was the past, and Oliver was the future.
An almost unbearable happiness swept through her as she absorbed the truth of the realization. It didn’t matter that Oliver lived in a different city in a different state. She could move, or he could. It was irrelevant. The important thing was that they’d found each other in this tiny sea-swept town on the edge of nowhere. Amazingly. Impossibly.
She glanced at the clock, wondering if it was too early to go next door and slip into Oliver’s bed.
“Another private joke, I take it?” Patrick said.
“Just private.”
Patrick’s gaze was searching. “You’re serious about this Oliver guy, then?”
“Yes.”
Patrick dropped his gaze to the floor. “I always knew it would happen sometime. That you’d meet someone else.”
He looked lonely and sad, sitting there in his seducer’s clothes. A beautiful, confused man who didn’t know what he wanted.
“It’ll happen for you, too, Patrick. If you want it to.”
His head came up. “You think I didn’t want it with you?”
She chose her words carefully. This wasn’t about them, after all. They’d been finished for a long time. “I think that we never really understood each other.”
His mouth thinned, his expression becoming bitter. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“You don’t?”
“I think that if you’d put half the energy into our relationship that you put into your career, we’d still be married.”
She managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Barely. Patrick had always considered her career the enemy, but it was an old battle and a pointless one and she wasn’t prepared to go there yet again.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” he said. “You can’t see it.”
“Patrick, I don’t want to get into this stuff. It’s late, I’m tired...”
Patrick stood.
“You’re a great producer, Mac. You know why? Because you’re fearless. You know what you want and you don’t stop until you get it. You don’t let anyone or anything get in your way. But you never believed in us like that. You always held back. Always.”
He left the room. Mackenzie stared at the empty doorway, feeling more than a little sideswiped. She’d put off Oliver tonight to help Patrick out—and this was her thanks? An unsolicited, sulky critique of her commitment as a wife.
She turned out the light and turned onto her side and told herself not to let him get to her. He’d wanted something from her and he hadn’t got it and he’d simply been striking out. She was not going to lie here and stew over what he’d said. She refused to play into his hands so readily.
Except...
On a very basic level, he was right. She had always held back with him. Even at the very height of their relationship, in the heady days when they’d decided to get married and were making plans for the future, she’d always made sure there were options available if she needed them. She’d loved Patrick, but she’d never felt safe with him. She’d never felt as though he would be there, no matter what. And so she’d always kept a small part of herself in reserve. And when push had come to shove, when she’d finally acknowledged to herself that they were fundamentally incompatible, she hadn’t gone to the mat to save her marriage.
Patrick was definitely right about that.
She stared at the wall and wondered what would have happened if she had fought for her marriage the way Patrick said he wished she had. If she’d insisted on them having counseling, if she’d pushed him to talk to her more, to share with her more, and to be prepared to listen to her and really engage. Would they have survived? Would they still be together now?
Her gut said no. Mackenzie didn’t believe that people were doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over, that personalities were intractable and behaviors immovable. But she did believe that the fundamentals of most people remained the same throughout their lifetimes. People who were generous usually remained generous, unless life taught them not to be. And people who saw the world through the prism of their own needs first and foremost would always be that way.
Patrick was one of those people. It was simply the way he’d been conditioned. And maybe that would shift for him if he met someone who took him outside of himself...or maybe not. But certainly that person had not been her, and she had not been prepared to fight for both of them. Because that was what it had come down to. Patrick said he’d wanted her to fight for them, but he hadn’t been in the trenches, either.
She closed her eyes. This was all ancient history, and while she was mildly pissy with Patrick for dumping on her like that, she wasn’t going to lose sleep over it. It simply wasn’t worth it.
* * *
WHEN MACKENZIE WOKE again it was daylight and she could hear someone moving around the house. For a moment she let herself hope that it was Oliver, that he’d let himself in and was doing something sweet and lovely like making her breakfast.
She knew better, though. She pulled on her robe and walked out to find Patrick making himself breakfast in her kitchen. She eyed the crumb-covered counter and the many coffee cups and reminded herself he’d be gone soon.
“Good morning,” he said. He shot her an assessing look.
“If you’re wondering whether or not I’m going to rip your head off, relax. Game, set and match to you.”
“Ah. You don’t even want to play anymore.”
“No, I don’t.”
She wanted to play with Oliver. And she wanted to play for keeps.
She walked to the French doors, pushing the curtains wide so she could see Oliver’s place. There was no movement next door, however. She wondered if he was still in bed.
She glanced at the time and saw it was nearly eight. A perfectly civilized time to call.
She grabbed her phone and discovered the battery was dead. Typical. She padded into the study and plugged it in, waiting for it to come to life. After a minute or so it did and she saw she’d missed a call from Oliver last night.
He was such a sweetie. He’d probably been calling to say good-night. She smiled to herself as she hit the button to return his call. She hoped he was still in bed. She would make him toast and come join him, Patrick be damned.
The phone switched to voice mail almost straightaway. She pulled a face, disappointed, and waited for the beep so she could leave a message.
“Hi, it’s me. I was kind of hoping I could come over and make you breakfast. Call me, okay?” She ended the call to find Patrick watching her.
“Sorry if I’m in the way,” he said.
She shrugged her good shoulder. “It’s fine.”
“Sorry if I was out of line last night, too.”
“Yeah, well. Did you decide what you’re going to do about the movie?”
“I’m going to take it. If I can buy the time from my contract.”
“Tell them you’ll walk when it’s time to renew if they don’t come to the party. That’ll make them sweat.”
“Would it make you sweat?”
She gave him her shark’s smile. “That would be telling.”
He swallowed the last of his toast and brushed his hands together. “On that note...”
She watched as he made a halfhearted effort to tidy up before grabbing his jacket and paperwork. Mr. Smith followed them both as she walked him to the door.
“Drive safely,” she said as Patrick stepped onto the porch.
He looked at her for a beat, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Look after yourself, Mac.”
She watched him walk down the driveway, then glanced next door. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping for—Oliver standing on the porch with a big red bow around his neck?—but she frowned when she realized his wagon was missing.
Huh. He must have been up super early this morning.
She went inside and finished cleaning up after her ex-husband. Once she’d put the blankets in the hall cupboard, she had a shower and made her own breakfast and went to check to see if Oliver’s car was in the driveway.
It wasn’t. She tried his phone again, and again got shunted to voice mail.
“This is getting ridiculous, Smitty. Where is he?”
By midday she was starting to feel a little twitchy. She didn’t understand where he could have gone that would take so long, or why he wasn’t returning her calls. She was considering calling the local hospital to double-check there hadn’t been any accidents when her phone rang.
“Oliver,” she said as she took the call. “Hello. I’ve been wondering where you’d got to.”
“Sorry. I was driving and my phone was in the back.”
“That’s all right. I was just wondering what you were up to today and what time you want me to make our booking for dinner tonight.”
She could hear traffic in the background, lots of it.
“I was actually calling to let you know I’m on my way to Sydney.”
“What? Has something happened?” The worst possible scenarios started playing in her head—deceased relatives, house fires and other catastrophes.
“No. I mean, not in the way you mean. No one’s dead or anything.”
“Well, that’s a good start, I always think,” she joked, even though her heart was racing. There was something about the way he sounded, so flat and emotionless....
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“This isn’t going to work, Mackenzie. I thought it would, but I’m not up for it. I’m sorry.”
It took her a moment to understand he was talking about them. About their relationship. She reached out a hand to steady herself on the kitchen counter.
“Okay. Um...sorry. You’ve caught me on the hop here a little,” she said. “Can I ask what’s changed? Because yesterday I thought things were going pretty well.”
He’d been lovely, making her breakfast and holding her hand on the beach and making her laugh. She’d felt precious and cherished and, yes, loved, and she’d finally acknowledged to herself that she was in love with him.
And now he was on the way to Sydney.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.
“It’s hard to explain. Last night...wasn’t good. I wasn’t good. I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready for you.”
She attempted to push aside the fear crowding her thoughts and listen to him, to understand. “Because of Edie? Because of the divorce?”
“Because of everything. I’m not ready to take anything on faith right now, you know? Last night made that pretty clear. You have no idea how close I came to jungle crawling beneath your window so I could find out what was going on between you and your ex.”
There was bitter humor lacing his words.
“You thought something was going on with me and Patrick? Because nothing happened. There was nothing going on.”
He’d seemed so cool when he’d bowed out and left them to talk. Utterly at peace with the fact that her ex-husband had shown up out of the blue.
That was before Patrick had inveigled his way into staying first for dinner and then the night, of course. She closed her eyes as it occurred to her how it must have looked when Patrick’s Ferrari remained parked in front of her house all night.
“I wasn’t exactly rational,” Oliver said. “Which is pretty much my point. You don’t need me in your life right now, Mackenzie. And I can’t handle you.”
She was holding the phone so tightly her fingers ached.
“Nothing happened with Patrick, Oliver.” It was worth repeating. In fact, she’d repeat it ad nauseam until Oliver finally heard what she said. “He had too much wine with dinner and I put him to bed on the couch. End of story.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Mackenzie.”
“Of course I do. I care about you. You care about me. You absolutely have a right to know that even though my ex-husband stayed the night, he didn’t do it in my bed.”
“Okay.”
He sounded so...distant. A million miles away. How could they have gone from him holding her against his heart while he slept to being a universe apart in twenty-four hours? How could she have been planning her life around him at four in the morning and now he was on the road to Sydney? It didn’t feel possible.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Mackenzie.”
Tears burned her throat. She tried to find something to say that wasn’t a plea.
“Can we at least talk about this?”
“I’m still on the road. But I’ll call you when I get home.”
“Okay.”
“Stay well, Mackenzie.”
She couldn’t get anything past the lump in her throat. The next thing she knew, she was listening to the dial tone.
She stood frozen for a long moment, utterly stunned by how quickly things had turned. Then reality caught up with her as key parts of their conversation hit home.
I’m not ready for you... I can’t handle you, Mackenzie...I’m not ready to take anything on faith right now.
Oliver was walking away. He’d stormed into her life like a freight train, riding to her rescue, enduring her antisocial rudeness, reminding her that there was more to life than rehab and producing a TV show. He’d made her feel sexy and desirable and alive again. He’d reignited her long-buried passion and dreams. He’d made her feel full of possibilities.
And now he was pulling the pin. Because he wasn’t ready for her and because he thought she didn’t need him in her life.
“Bullshit,” she said, the word rising from her belly on a wave of disbelief. She slapped her hand on the counter.
Bullshit he wasn’t ready for her. And bullshit she didn’t need him. She needed him like she needed air. She needed him like she needed heat and light and laughter. She needed him so much it hurt.
When he called again, she would tell him. She would apologize for what had happened with Patrick, and she would let Oliver know in no uncertain terms how she felt about him.
Until then, she was—somehow—going to have to hang on to her patience and her sanity and not panic. Because this was not over. Not by a long shot.
Because she needed something to do to keep the anxiety at bay, she pulled everything out of the hall cupboard. She worked methodically, refolding linen, pairing pillowcases with sheet sets, culling ragged towels and putting them aside for the ragbag. She couldn’t stop thinking about last night as she worked, about what it must have been like for Oliver. She’d been so stupid, so unthinking. If she’d only stopped to consider the situation for a moment, she would have understood that Patrick barging in and attempting to take over would have sent up all sorts of flares for Oliver.
After all, not six months ago, he’d discovered his wife had been having an affair for almost as long as they’d been married. With a man she’d been involved with beforehand.
Mackenzie couldn’t even begin to comprehend what the discovery of his wife’s betrayal had done to Oliver’s sense of trust. Edie’s breach of faith had been so profound, so all-encompassing....
And last night, Mackenzie had blown off her plans with Oliver because Patrick had conned his way into her house. Worse, she’d foolishly, blindly, agreed to let Patrick sleep on the couch, and she’d missed Oliver’s phone call....
God.
She felt sick, thinking about what must have been going through Oliver’s mind as he sat next door while she pandered to Patrick’s ego. What he must have been imagining, or trying not to imagine.
Somehow she managed to make it through the afternoon. As the light started to fade from the sky, she began pacing by her phone, willing it to ring. She should have asked where Oliver was so she’d have some idea when he might arrive in Sydney. As it was, the best she could do was pace and fret and chew her nails to the quick.
When he hadn’t called by seven she called him and got voice mail. She left a message for him, but when he hadn’t called back by nine o’clock, she knew he wasn’t going to.
So, what, that’s it? He drives off into the sunset and you’re supposed to nod and chalk up the best few weeks of your life to experience and move on?
It was much easier to be angry than to give in to the horrible despair lapping at her ankles.
He’d made promises to her. Not verbal ones, perhaps, but his body had made promises to her every time they slept with each other. He’d made love to her with a single-minded intensity and cradled her afterward as though she was important to him. He’d told her she drove him crazy and that this wasn’t only sex and that he wanted them to keep seeing each other when he went home.
He’d made her believe that they’d found something special together despite the geographical challenges and the flux in both their lives.
And now he was retreating at a million miles an hour and not returning her phone calls.
If only Patrick hadn’t turned up on her doorstep yesterday. If only she’d told him to leave the script and she’d call him when she’d read it. If only she’d insisted that Oliver come over for dinner, or that she’d gone to him when she’d finished with Patrick.
If only.
Sick at heart, angry, confused and hurt, she went to bed. She lay awake for a long time, having imaginary conversations with Oliver where she said all the right things and he responded in all the right ways and the horrible, hollow feeling in her stomach went away.
I don’t want this to be the end. How can this be the end?
It was her last thought before she fell asleep. The first thing she did on waking was check her phone to see if there was anything from Oliver. There wasn’t. Short of bombarding him with phone calls until he picked up or getting on a plane and confronting him in person, she was out of options.
She was on the verge of giving in and making another call when she heard the sound of the mailman’s motorcycle out in the street. Mail was a rarity for her, since she handled most of her bills online, but sure enough, the mailman stopped at her letter box.
The back of her neck prickled with prescience and she shoved her feet into the nearest pair of shoes and made her way up the driveway in her pajamas. There was a lone envelope in the box and she knew before she picked it up that it was from Oliver.
He was too good a man, too nice a man to simply cut her off at the knees. So he’d written her a letter and caught last night’s mail and now she was supposed to read it and accept his decision and move on.
She stared at his sloping, elegant handwriting for a long moment, then she walked slowly to the house. She set the letter on the counter and crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the envelope some more.
She felt as though she was standing at a crossroads, two unknown paths stretching before her. The path where she curled up in the corner and accepted that what had happened between her and Oliver had been nothing but a beautiful bubble that had been destroyed by the intrusion of reality on one side. And the path where she clung to the reality of her feelings for Oliver and his for her and chose to believe that even though there were so many odds working against them, they were meant to be together.
For some reason, Patrick’s words from yesterday echoed in her mind.
You never believed in us like that. You always held back. Always.
It hit her then that she’d never held back with Oliver. Right from the start she’d given him nothing but honesty. She’d been brave with him and she’d been bold and she’d chosen to believe in them.
She still chose to believe in them.
Which meant that, really, there was only one path before her. She would have be brave and bold again to take it. She would have to pursue love with the same kind of fearless zeal she employed in her working life. She would have to put herself out there in every possible way.
She took a moment to appreciate the depth and breadth of her decision. Then she picked up the envelope, opened it and read Oliver’s letter, because she wanted to know what ground she’d be fighting on when she went to find him.
His letter made her cry, because, as always, he’d been honest to a fault. He apologized for his hasty departure and explained that at the time, it had felt as though he didn’t have a choice. He told her in painful, exposing detail how paranoid and anxious he’d been, sitting on his side of the fence knowing that she was alone with her very charming, very handsome ex-husband.
He told her that in the short, in the perfect weeks he’d known her she’d made him feel as though the sun had come out from behind the clouds in his life. He told her that she was beautiful and sexy and clever and courageous and that he wanted her to be happy and to find the next thing in her life that would make her smile. And he told her that that thing could not be him right now because he was too messed up, too angry, too scared to be any good to anyone.
Finally, he told her that he did not expect her to wait for him, because he knew that he had hurt her by leaving the way he had and that he understood that a man only had one chance in life to get it right with a woman like her.
“Oliver...you foolish, beautiful man,” she whispered when she’d finished.
Then she wiped the tears from her face and went to pack.