After Hours...

‘This isn’t going to work, Max. I can’t live in a place where I’m constantly afraid of doing the wrong thing and making you angry. I don’t know what I did that was so bad, or what’s going on with you to make you react like that, but I’m not going to let you destroy what’s left of my confidence. I’m not going to be a victim any more.’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘So I’m leaving now. And that goes for the job, too.’

Her heart gave a lurch at the flash of contrition in his eyes, but she knew she had to be strong and walk away for her own good.

‘Goodbye, Max, and good luck.’

As she turned to go, fighting against the tears that threatened to give her away, she thought she heard the bedsprings creak as if he’d stood up, but didn’t turn round to find out.

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard Max’s voice behind her. ‘Wait, Cara!’

Spinning round, she held up a hand to stop him from coming any closer, intensely aware that, despite her anger with him, there was a small part of her that was desperate to hear him say something nice to her, to persuade her that he wasn’t the monster he seemed to be. ‘I can’t walk on eggshells around you any more, Max; I don’t think my heart will stand it.’

In any way, shape or form.

He slumped down onto the top step and put his elbows on his knees, his whole posture defeated. ‘Don’t go,’ he said quietly.

‘I have to.’

Looking up, he fixed her with a glassy stare. ‘I know I’ve been a nightmare to be around recently—’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘It’s not you, Cara—it’s one hundred per cent me. Please, at least hear me out. I need to tell you what’s going on so you don’t leave thinking any of this is your fault.’ He sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘That’s the last thing I want to happen.’

She paused. Even if she still chose to leave after hearing him out, at least she’d know why it hadn’t worked and be able to make peace with her decision to walk away.

The silence stretched to breaking point between them. ‘Okay,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Thank you.’ Getting up from the step, he gestured down the stairs. ‘Let’s go into the sitting room.’

Once there, she perched on the edge of the sofa and waited for him to take the chair opposite, but he surprised her by sitting next to her instead, sinking back into the cushions with a long guttural sigh which managed to touch every nerve-ending in her body.

‘This is going to make me sound mentally unstable.’

She turned to frown at him. ‘Oka-ay...’ she said, failing to keep her apprehension out of her voice.

‘That bed hasn’t been changed since my wife, Jemima, died a year and a half ago.’

Hot horror slid through her, her skin prickling as if she were being stabbed with a thousand needles. ‘But I thought you said—’ She shook her suddenly fuzzy head. ‘You never said—’ Words, it seemed, had totally failed her. Everything she knew about him slipped sickeningly into place: the ever-fluctuating moods, the reluctance to talk about his personal life, his anger at her meddling with things in his house.

His wife’s house.

Looking away, he stared at the wall opposite, sitting forward with clenched fists as if he was steeling himself to get it all out in the open.

‘I couldn’t bring myself to change it.’ He paused and she saw his shoulders rise then fall as he took a deep breath. ‘The bed, I mean. It still smelled faintly like her. I let her mother take all her clothes and other personal effects—what would I have done with them?—but the bed was mine. The last place we’d been together before I lost her—’ he took another breath, pushing back his hunched shoulders ‘—before she died.’

‘Oh, God, Max... I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea.’

He huffed out a dry laugh. ‘How could you? I did everything I could to avoid talking to you about it.’ He grimaced. ‘Because, to be honest, I’ve done enough talking about it to last me a lifetime. I guess, in my twisted imagination, I thought if you didn’t know, I could pretend it hadn’t happened when you were around. Outside of work, you’re the first normal, unconnected thing I’ve had in my life since I lost her and I guess I was hanging on to that.’

He turned to look at her again. ‘I should have told you, Cara, especially after you moved in, but I couldn’t find a way to bring it up without—’ He paused and swallowed hard, the look in his eyes so wretched that, without thinking, she reached out and laid a hand on his bare forearm.

He frowned down at where their bodies connected and the air seemed to crackle around them.

Disconcerted by the heat of him beneath her fingertips, she withdrew her hand and laid it back on her lap.

‘It’s kind of you to consider me normal,’ she said, flipping him a grin, hoping the levity might go some way to smoothing out the sudden weird tension between them.

He gave a gentle snort, as if to acknowledge her pathetic attempt at humour.

Why had she never recognised his behaviour as grief before? Now she knew to look for it, it was starkly discernible in the deep frown lines in his face and the haunted look in his eyes.

But she’d been so caught up in her own private universe of problems she hadn’t even considered why Max seemed so bitter all the time.

She’d thought he had everything.

How wrong she’d been.

They sat in silence for a while, the only sound in the room the soothing tick-tock of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, like a steady heartbeat in the chaos.

‘How did she die?’ Cara asked eventually. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t be keen to revisit this conversation and she wanted to have all the information from this point onwards so she could avoid any future blunders.

The familiarity of the question seemed to rouse him. ‘She had a subarachnoid haemorrhage—it’s where a blood vessel in the brain bursts—’ he added, when she frowned at him in confusion. ‘On our one-year wedding anniversary. It happened totally out of the blue. I was late for our celebration dinner and I got a phone message saying she’d collapsed in the restaurant. By the time I got to the hospital she had such extensive brain damage she didn’t even recognise me. She died two weeks later. I never got to say goodbye properly.’ He snorted gently. ‘The last thing I said to her before it happened was “Stop being such a nag; I won’t be late,” when I left her in bed that morning and went to work.’

Cara had to swallow past the tightness in her throat before she could speak. ‘That’s why you didn’t want me to leave here with us on bad terms.’ She put a hand back onto his arm and gave it an ineffectual rub, feeling completely out of her depth. ‘Oh, Max, I’m so sorry. What a horrible thing to happen.’

He leant back against the cushions, breaking the contact of her touch, and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I often wonder whether I would have noticed some signs if I’d paid more attention to her. If I hadn’t been so caught up with work—’

She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to make him feel better—though maybe there wasn’t anything she could say. Sometimes you didn’t need answers or solutions; you just needed someone to listen and agree with you about how cruel life could be.

He turned to look at her, his mouth drawn into a tight line.

‘Look, Cara, I can see that you wanting to help comes from a good place. You’re a kind and decent person—much more decent than I am.’ He gave her a pained smile, which she returned. ‘I’ve been on my own here for so long I’ve clearly become very selfish with my personal space.’ He rubbed a hand across his brow. ‘And this was Jemima’s house—she was the one who chose how to decorate it and made it a home for us.’ He turned to make full eye contact with her again, his expression apologetic. ‘It’s taking a bit of adjusting to, having someone else around. Despite evidence to the contrary, I really appreciate the thoughtful gestures you’ve made.’

His reference to her gestures only made the heavy feeling in her stomach worse.

‘I’m really sorry, Max. I can totally understand why you’d find it hard to see me meddling with Jemima’s things. I think I was so excited by the idea of living in such a beautiful house that I got a bit carried away. I forgot I was just a visitor here and that it’s your home. That was selfish of me.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to feel like that. While you’re here it’s your home, too.’

She frowned and turned away to stare down at the floor, distracted for a moment by how scratty and out of place her old slippers looked against the rich cream-coloured wool carpet.

That was exactly the problem. It wasn’t her home and it never would be. She didn’t really fit here.

For some reason that made her feel more depressed than she had since the day she’d left her last job.

‘Have you had any luck with finding a flat to rent?’ he asked, breaking the silence that had fallen like a suffocating layer of dust between them.

‘Not yet, but I have an appointment to view somewhere tomorrow and there are new places coming up all the time. I’ll find something soon, I’m sure of it,’ she said, plastering what must have been the worst fake smile she’d ever mustered onto her face.

He nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything.

Twitching with discomfort now, she stood up. ‘I should go.’

He frowned at her in confusion. ‘What do you mean? Where are you going?’

‘Back to Sarah’s. I think that would be best.’

Standing up, too, he put out a hand as if to touch her, but stopped himself and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans instead.

‘Look, don’t leave. I promise to be less of an ogre. I let my anger get the better of me, which was unfair.’

‘I don’t know, Max—’ She couldn’t stay here now. Could she?

Obviously seeing the hesitation on her face, he leant forward and waited until she made eye contact. ‘I like having you around.’ There was a teasing lightness in his expression that made her feel as if he was finally showing her the real Max. The one who had been hiding inside layers of brusque aloofness and icy calm for the past few weeks.

Warmth pooled, deep in her body. ‘Really? I feel like I’ve made nothing but a nuisance of myself since I got here.’

He gave another snort and the first proper smile she’d seen in a while. It made his whole face light up and the sight of it sent a rush of warm pleasure across her skin. ‘It’s certainly been eventful having you here.’

She couldn’t help but return his grin, despite the feeling that she was somehow losing control of herself.

‘Stay. Please.’

Her heart turned over at the expression on his face. It was something she’d never seen before. Against all the odds, he looked hopeful.

Despite a warning voice in the back of her head, she knew there was no way she could walk out of the door now that he’d laid himself bare. She could see that the extreme mood swings were coming from a place of deep pain and the very last thing he needed was to be left alone with just his tormenting memories for company in this big empty house.

It appeared as though they needed each other.

The levelling of the emotional stakes galvanised her.

‘Okay,’ she said, giving him a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll stay. On one condition.’

‘And that is?’

‘That you talk to me when you feel the gloom descending—like a person, not just an employee. And let me help if I can.’ She crossed her arms and raised a challenging eyebrow.

He huffed out a laugh. ‘And how do you propose to help?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps I can jolly you out of your moods, if you give me the chance.’

‘Jolly. That’s a fitting word for you.’

‘Yeah, well, someone has to raise the positivity levels in this house of doom.’ She stilled, wondering whether she’d gone a step too far, but when she dared to peek at him he was smiling, albeit in a rather bemused way.

A sense of relief washed over her. The last thing she wanted to do was read the situation wrong now they’d had a breakthrough. In fact, she really ought to push for a treaty to make things crystal clear between them.

‘Look, at the risk of micromanaging the situation, can we agree that from this point on you’ll be totally straight with me, and in return I promise to be totally straight with you?’

He gave her a puzzled look. ‘Why? Is there something you need to tell me?’

She considered admitting she’d lied about why she’d left her last job and dismissed it immediately. There was no point going over that right now; it had no relevance to this and it would make her sound totally pathetic compared to what he’d been through.

‘No, no! Nothing! It was just a turn of phrase.’

He snorted gently, rolling his eyes upward, his mouth lifting at the corner. ‘Okay then, Miss Fix-it, total honesty it is. You’ve got yourself a deal.’

CHAPTER FIVE

JUST AS MAX thought he’d had enough drama to last him a lifetime, things took another alarming turn, only this time it was the business that threatened to walk away from him.

Opening his email first thing on Monday morning, he found a missive from his longest standing and most profitable client, letting him know that they were considering taking their business elsewhere.

Cara walked in with their coffee just as he’d finished reading it and the concern on her face made it clear how rattled he must look.

‘Max? What’s wrong?’

‘Our biggest client is threatening to terminate our contract with them.’

Her eyes grew larger. ‘Why?’

‘I’m guessing one of our competitors has been sniffing around, making eyes at them and I’ve been putting off going to the meetings they’ve been trying to arrange for a while now. I haven’t had the time to give them the same level of attention as before, so their head’s been turned.’

‘Is it salvageable?’

‘Yes. If I go up there today and show them exactly why they should stay with me.’

‘Okay.’ She moved swiftly over to her desk and opened up her internet browser, her nails rattling against her keyboard as she typed in an enquiry. ‘There’s a train to Manchester in forty minutes. You go and pack some stuff; I’ll call a cab and book you a seat. You can speak to me from the train about anything that needs handling today.’

He sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair, feeling the tension mounting in his scalp. ‘It’s going to take more than an afternoon to get this sorted. I’ll probably need to be up there for most of the week.’

‘Then stay as long as you need.’

Shaking his head, he batted a hand towards his computer. ‘I have that proposal to finish for the end of Thursday, not to mention the monstrous list of things to tackle for all the other clients this week.’

‘Leave it with me. If you set me up with a folder of your previous proposals and give me the questions you need answering, I’ll put some sections together for you, so you’ll only need to check and edit them as we go. And don’t worry about the other clients; I can handle the majority of enquiries and rearrange anything that isn’t urgent for next week. I’ll only contact you with the really important stuff.’

‘Are you sure you can handle that? It’s a lot to leave you with at such short notice.’

‘I’ll be fine.’ She seemed so eager he didn’t have the heart to argue.

In all honesty, it was going to be tough for him to let go of his tight grip on the business and trust that this would work out, but he knew he didn’t have a choice—there was no way he was letting this contract slip through his fingers. He really couldn’t afford to lose this firm’s loyalty at this point in his business’s infancy; it would make him look weak to competitors as well as potential new clients, and presenting a confident front was everything in this game.

‘Okay.’ He stood up and gathered his laptop and charger together before making for the door. ‘Thanks, Cara. I’ll get my stuff together and call you from the train.’

Turning back, he saw she was standing stiffly with her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed.

Pausing for a moment, he wondered whether he was asking too much of her, but quickly dismissed it. She’d chosen to stay and she knew what she was getting herself into.

They were in it together now.

* * *

To his relief, Cara successfully held the fort back in London whilst he was away, routinely emailing him sections of completed work to be used in the business proposal that he wrote in the evenings in time to make the deadline. She seemed to have a real flair for picking out relevant information and had made an excellent job of copying his language style.

She also saved his hide by sending flowers and a card in his name to his mother for her birthday, which he was ashamed to discover he’d forgotten all about in his panic about losing the client.

Damaging the precarious cordiality that he and his mother had tentatively built up after working through their differences over the past few years would have been just as bad, and he was immensely grateful to Cara for her forethought and care.

She really was excellent at her job.

In fact, after receiving compliments from clients about how responsive and professional she’d been when they’d contacted her with enquiries and complications to be dealt with, he was beginning to realise that he’d actually been very fortunate to secure her services. He felt sure, if she wanted to, she could walk into a job with a much better salary with her eyes shut.

Which made him wonder again why she hadn’t.

Whatever the reason, the idea of losing her excellent skill base now made him uneasy. Even though he’d been certain he’d want to let her go at the end of the trial month, he was now beginning to think that that would be a huge mistake.

He had some serious thinking to do.

If he was honest, he reflected on Thursday evening, sitting alone in the hotel’s busy restaurant, having time and space away from Cara and the house had been a relief. He’d been glad of the opportunity to get his head together after their confrontation. She was the first person, outside his close circle of friends, that he’d talked to in any detail about what had happened to Jemima and it had changed the atmosphere between them. To Cara’s credit, she hadn’t trotted out platitudes to try and make him feel better and he was grateful to her for that, but he felt a little awkward about how much of himself he’d exposed.

Conversely, though, it also felt as though a weight that he’d not noticed carrying had been lifted from his shoulders. Not just because he’d finally told Cara about Jem—which he’d begun to feel weirdly seedy about, as if he was keeping a dirty secret from her—but also because it had got to the point where he’d become irrationally superstitious about clearing out the room, as though all his memories of Jemima would be wiped away if he touched it. Which, of course, they hadn’t been—she was still firmly embedded there in his head and his heart. So, even though he’d been angry and upset with Cara at the time, in retrospect, it had been a healthy thing for that decision to be wrenched out of his hands.

It felt as though he’d taken a step further into the light.

Cara was out when he arrived back at Friday lunchtime, still buzzed with elation from keeping the client, so he went to unpack his bags upstairs, return a few phone calls and take a shower before coming back down.

Walking into the kitchen, he spotted her standing by the sink with her back to him, washing a mug. He stopped to watch her for a moment, smiling as he realised she was singing softly to herself, her slim hips swaying in time to the rhythm of the song. She had a beautiful voice, lyrical and sweet, and a strange, intense warmth wound through him as he stood there listening to her. It had been a long time since anyone had sung in this house and there was something so pure and uplifting about it a shiver ran down his spine, inexplicably chased by a deep pull of longing.

Though not for Cara, surely? But for a time when his life had fewer sharp edges. A simpler time. A happier one.

Shaking himself out of this unsettling observation, he moved quickly into the room so she wouldn’t think he’d been standing there spying on her.

‘Hi, Cara.’

She jumped and gasped, spinning round to face him, her hand pressed to her chest. She looked fresh and well rested, but there was a wary expression in her eyes.

‘Max! I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I was upstairs, taking a shower and returning some urgent calls. I got back about an hour ago.’

She nodded, her professional face quickly restored. ‘How was Manchester?’

‘Good. We got them back on board. How have things been here?’

‘That’s great! Things have been fine here. It’s certainly been very quiet without you.’

By ‘quiet’ he suspected she actually meant less fraught with angry outbursts.

There was an uncomfortable silence while she fussed about with the tea towel, hooking it carefully over the handle of the cooker door and smoothing it until it lay perfectly straight.

Tearing his eyes away from the rather disconcerting sight of her stroking her hands slowly up and down the offending article, he walked over to where the kettle sat on the work surface and flicked it on to boil. He was unsettled to find that things still felt awkward between them when they were face to face—not that he should be surprised that they were. Their last non-work conversation had been a pretty heavy one, after all.

Evidently he needed to make more of an effort to be friendly now if he was going to be in with a chance of persuading her to stay after the month’s trial was up.

The thought of going back to being alone in this house certainly wasn’t a comforting one any more. If he was honest, it had been heartening to know that Cara would be here when he got back. Now that the black hole of Jemima’s room had been destroyed and he’d fully opened the door to Cara, the loneliness he’d previously managed to keep at bay had walked right in.

Turning to face her again, he leant back against the counter and crossed his arms.

‘I wanted to talk to you about the quality of the work you’ve been producing.’

Her face seemed to pale and he realised he could have phrased that better. He’d never been good at letting his colleagues know when he was pleased with their work—or Jemima when he was proud of something she’d achieved, he realised with a stab of pain—but after Cara had given it to him straight about how it affected her, he was determined to get better at it.

‘What I mean is—I’m really impressed with the way you’ve handled the work here this week while I’ve been away,’ he amended.

‘Oh! Good. Thank you.’ The pride in her wobbly smile made his breath catch.

He nodded and gave a little cough to release the peculiar tension in his throat, turning back to the counter to grab a mug for his drink and give them both a moment to regroup. There was a brightly coloured card propped up next to the mug tree and he picked it up as a distraction while he waited for the kettle to finish boiling and glanced at what was written inside.

‘You didn’t tell me it was your birthday,’ he said, turning to face her again, feeling an unsettling mixture of surprise and dismay at her not mentioning something as important as that to him.

Colour rushed to her cheeks. ‘Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to leave that lying around.’ She walked over and took the card from his hand, leaning against the worktop next to him and enveloping him in her familiar floral scent. She tapped the corner of the card gently against her palm and he watched, hypnotised by the action. ‘It was on Wednesday. As you were away I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.’ She looked up at him from under her lashes. ‘Don’t worry—I didn’t have a wild house party here while you were away, only a couple of friends over for dinner and we made sure to tidy up afterwards.’

Fighting a strange disquiet, he flapped a dismissive hand at her. ‘Cara, it’s okay for you to keep some of your things in the communal areas and have friends over for your birthday, for God’s sake. I don’t expect the place to be pristine the whole time.’