‘Okay.’
Strong arms cocooned her close to his body and Rosie was right where she was supposed to be.
He’d wrapped his arms, his leg around her like ivy and she was so very warm and so very safe.
She was dreaming.
Alexander held her in his arms and they were dancing, waltzing through the glass covered ballroom of Ludlow Hall. And she was wearing a long ivory gown and he looked fabulous in his morning suit. All around them were friends and family. Bronte carried Luca as she nuzzled his glossy curls, a single tear of utter happiness slid down her cheek. Nico simply held Sophia who wore an ivory dress in silk taffeta that made her look like a tiny fairy.
A wave of euphoria, so big it threatened to lift her high in the air, washed over Rosie.
Alexander opened his mouth to speak...
The sound of a cell phone broke the spell.
In her ear Alexander groaned a curse as he rolled off her.
‘Shit,’ he cursed again and she heard his hand drumming to find his cell, the light.
‘Yeah?’ he said in a voice that told whoever was there that he was not a happy man.
Then he slapped on a light.
‘Janine? Right, you phoned the police? Okay. We’ll be right there. No, lock the fucking door and barricade yourselves in the cellar.’
Rosie sat and her heart beat too fast in her chest as Alexander thrust his legs into his jeans, taking care not to trap his Love Muscle in the zip.
‘Get dressed. Janine’s got an intruder.’
He hauled on a T-shirt, thrust his feet into loafers.
Rosie leapt out of bed, pulled on his boxers, T-shirt and hot on his heels ran down the stairs.
In his Range Rover, he tossed her his cell.
‘Phone Nico.’
She did as he asked.
He put his foot down and her head was thrust back in the seat as the car leapt forward.
Fear gripped her by the throat as she alerted Nico who told her he’d organise a security team.
‘I’ve never been happy with her living out there all on her own with a little baby,’ she said now as Alexander roared down the main road to screech up into the overgrown driveway to The Grange.
Approaching the house they could hear the increasingly loud shriek of an intruder alarm.
She gripped the dashboard as the car skidded to a halt.
He was out of the car so fast, Rosie didn’t have time to even feel the sting of gravel digging into her bare feet as she followed him through the damaged front door.
Logic told her not to touch anything as the house alarm pealed too loud in her ears.
Alexander flew around the ground floor, calling for Janine.
‘This way,’ she yelled.
Rosie knew the house and headed for the kitchen following the sound of a screaming Boo.
She pounded on the cellar door.
‘It’s us, Janine!’
The sound of a key turning in the lock and the door opened.
Wearing cotton pyjama bottoms and a ratty T-shirt a sobbing Janine virtually collapsed into Rosie’s arms.
Red faced, little Boo was wailing at the top of her lungs.
When Alexander entered it all happened so fast for Rosie that later she wondered if she’d dreamt it.
She was pushed aside.
Janine and the baby ended up in his arms.
‘I was so scared,’ Janine sobbed into his shoulder.
Alexander held them close, his hands stroking the girl’s hair as he pressed a gentle kiss on the baby’s head.
‘I’m here. You’re okay. Everything’s okay. Hush now.’
Time stood utterly still.
And for Rosie the air was sucked right out of her lungs the way the world seemed to redress itself, right itself in a way that told her this was how it was meant to be.
They looked so good together, so right together.
And it killed her.
The police in the shape of Inspector Andy Bradshaw, entered along with a constable. Andy was long and lean and just happened to be paramedic Susan’s husband.
Hot on his heels Nico and a team from Ludlow Hall arrived.
Over the next three hours Rosie went through the motions, making soothing noises she cradled little Boo, made copious cups of coffee and tea as Janine clung to Alexander.
Andy was speaking privately to Janine and Alexander had insisted on being there too.
‘Are you okay?’ Nico wanted to know.
Rosie gave him what passed for a grin.
‘Fine. Are you going home? Can I get a lift? I need to grab my clothes.’
His gaze slid over her and although her heart felt as if it was pieces, Rosie was thankful for the teasing light in those dark eyes.
‘
Si
, no problem. We’ll treat you to breakfast.’
She scribbled a quick note for Alexander telling him she’d gone home to change and she’d speak to him later.
‘He’s asked me to move in with him.’
Bronte simply stared at her friend.
They were in the kitchen of The Dower House. It was six-thirty in the morning and no one had slept.
Dressed in her brother’s boxers and T-shirt, Rosie stood looking very tired and terribly vulnerable as well as deeply unhappy.
Under the table Bronte found Nico’s hand and squeezed.
‘What did you say?’ Bronte asked needing to make sure she’d heard correctly.
If Alexander had asked Rosie to live with him then the situation between her brother and best friend had undergone a seismic change.
Rosie stood and began to pace.
‘I said he was moving too fast.’
Her sisterly concern overtook the very real anxiety for her best friend.
‘That’s not fair to him.’
Dismay for her friend and her brother squeezed sticky fingers around Bronte’s heart.
Rosie spun now to face Bronte.
‘Don’t you think I don’t know that?’
‘I don’t want him hurt!’
‘And who am I, Mata Hari?’ Rosie shot back.
‘Jesus, sit down, you’ve gone as white as a sheet.’
‘I’m okay, just a dizzy spell. I didn’t get much sleep.’
‘You’ve come back to work too soon.’
Now she grabbed Bronte’s hand.
‘Don’t tell Alexander. He’ll cluck around me like a mother hen.’
‘On one condition.’
Surprised, Rosie blinked. ‘What condition?’
‘You tell me the truth about what’s going on with you.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Okay, I’ll just text my brother.’
A child’s cry, Luca, burst from the baby monitor and Nico stood.
‘I’ll get him,’ he told Bronte.
But before he went, his hand slid over Rosie’s hair and he pressed a kiss to her cold cheek.
After he left, the heavy silence between them was unremitting.
Rosie sat, stared unseeing out at the garden and she knew the time had come to tell her best friend nothing but the truth.
‘You and Nico are so happy. Two individuals who’ve come together to make something very special.’ Feeling terribly guilty, she raised her eyes to Bronte’s. ‘I’m jealous.’
Teeth worrying her bottom lip, Bronte frowned.
‘I don’t understand.’
God this was so hard. Who said unburdening the truth shall set you free?
‘I don’t begrudge you one moment of happiness. I love you. I love Nico and the kids.’ She heaved a big sigh. ‘I’d just like a tiny part of what you’ve found for myself.’
‘And you don’t think you’d find that with Alexander?’
Rosie shook her head.
‘There’s a fundamental inequality in our relationship.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I’ve loved him my whole life.’ Now she rose to stand and stare into the gardens. ‘Not in a dreamy romantic sense, but it’s a needy, passionate, almost a fast and furious love. Sometimes I’ve felt it’s not been healthy. It’s too possessive, too intense. I’d die for him.’
She turned to look at her best friend, recognised the anxiety, the fear in those green eyes.
‘He doesn’tfeel that way about me. He doesn’t hunger. He doesn’t need me in the way I need him. Am I making sense?’
Nodding, Bronte clasped her hands together recalling the month of hell she’d endured when she’d been estranged from Nico.
‘Yes, I know what you mean.’
‘He never loses control. Never lets himself go.’ Heat flooded her cheeks and she pressed cold hands to her face. ‘And I’m holding it all in. I can’t let him see what he does to me. It’s killing me.’
‘You need to talk to him.’
‘He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t really get me. I can’t be in a relationship with someone I love too much. He can’t give me what I need.’
Now Bronte’s eyes went cool and it broke Rosie’s heart to see it. Of course she would side with her brother, blood was thicker than water and hadn’t she always known it?
‘What do you need?’
Rosie had the strangest sensation of standing right on the edge of a precipice.
‘To be front and centre in his life.’
Now Rosie saw those vivid eyes tear up and it was like a sucker punch right to the heart.
‘I dreamt that you were my sister. I’ve always wished you were. Remember as children we used to say we’d always be best friends?’
‘We always will be,’ Rosie’s voice was barely a whisper.
‘He’ll be badly hurt if you leave. He loves you very much.’
‘In his own way, I know he does. It’s just not enough.’
‘Can I just say that nothing you’ve said is making any sense to me?’
Now Rosie groaned, pressed her fingers into her eyelids and opened that locked door to her heart.
‘I’m so confused, annoyed, about a number of things. I’m good at what I do.’
Bronte stood, took her hands, held them tight and waited until their eyes met.
‘You are.’
Agitated, Rosie yanked her hands from under Bronte’s.
‘I’ve got everything I’ve always wanted. A home, a wonderful friend. My own business. But it’s all falling apart. I’m tired, bone weary all the time. I can’t fix it.’
‘Do you want to fix it?’
‘I don’t know.’ When her voice broke, she pressed her fingers to her lips. ‘I don’t know how to. Everything about him hurts me. His touch, his smell, the sound of his voice.’
‘Are there no happy memories with him?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you need to hold onto, treasure, your memories instead of being hurt by them.’ Bronte pushed her hair back from Rosie’s hot cheek. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’
Rosie shook her head.
‘No, I’m fine. Thanks, Bronte.’
Her friend kissed her cheek.
‘You need to stop thinking. Slow down that hectic brain of yours.
‘I don’t want to have to fight for his love anymore. It’s all I’ve ever done.’
‘You think?’
‘You don’t?’
Now Bronte shook her head.
‘Nope. Not once did you lift a finger to go out and get him. You’ve hugged these feelings to you too close, locked them away for so long you’re afraid to let them out. Until you do and you’re honest with yourself and with him. How can you ever be happy wherever you go? Even if you went to Pluto those feelings will go right along with you.’
By that stubborn look on her face, she wasn’t reaching her.
And Bronte couldn’t cope with this. Not now.
Who was this woman standing there telling her that Alexander wasn’t enough for her?
She rose, shook her head and her eyes stung as her husband walked through the door to join them.
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t listen to anymore of this.’
As she sped through the house, Rosie moved to follow, but Nico held her back.
‘Give her a moment. It has been an emotional couple of weeks. She is tired. Worrying about me, upset with your plans to leave and now you and Alexander.’
Rosie dropped her head in her hands.
‘This is why I didn’t want to talk about it. I knew this would happen.’
Nico dropped an arm around her shoulder, squeezed.
‘Sometimes our behaviour causes the thing we fear most to happen.’
Now she raised her head to look at him.
‘I don’t understand.’
He shrugged.
‘You must decide your own destiny. From my perspective Bronte is hurting. Alexander will be hurt and you are hurting. There is something holding you back. Until you acknowledge it, face it, the hurt will continue.’
Guilt that she couldn’t be more supportive to Janine along with the fact that she’d hurt her best friend and she didn’t want to speak to, couldn’t face, Alexander burned like battery acid in Rosie’s belly.
It was over six hours later and no matter how hard she tried, the picture of them together just wouldn’t let go of her overwrought imagination.
However, through the grapevine she heard Alexander had taken Janine and little Boo home.
She’d decided to treat the day like any other and gone to work and now reckoned she’d made a big mistake.
Her head was aching so bad she was eating painkillers like candy. The weather was too hot and sultry under a blanket of low cloud and she wished to God it would break.
‘Apparently, she’s been having trouble at the house on and off for weeks,’ Bronte said in a too high chatty voice, wittering on about Janine as she had been all morning.
She was boxing up tiers of a six tier wedding cake and didn’t notice Rosie’s lack of response as she continued,
‘The Grange is riddled with mould and damp. Nico’s organised Josh to go out and have a look at the roof. I don’t know what she was thinking living out there in those conditions.’
Rosie sipped her coffee and ordered herself to remain calm even though she felt sick to her stomach that Bronte was acting as if their conversation this morning had never happened.
‘Lucky for her she has good friends,’ she muttered and told herself she was nothing more than an evil, jealous bitch.
Bronte nodded.
‘I know, thank goodness you and Alexander rode to the rescue. He’s determined she’s not going back there until the house is at least habitable. You know what he’s like?’
She did indeed know what he was like.