Page 32 of From Notting Hill with Love…Actually (Actually #1)
“You’re telling me, Scarlett.” David ran his hands through his own wet hair, but he didn’t look anywhere near as sexy doing it as Sean had done a few minutes earlier.
“I thought we agreed we were going to spend the day together before we flew home tomorrow night? And now you want to spend it with him . Who, ten minutes ago, do I need to remind you, was found by me with his hands all over you?”
“No, Sean isn’t the complication.” Well, he was part of it, but I wasn’t going to tell David that. “There’s something else.”
“You mean to tell me there’s more going on than you running off to London for a month’s holiday away from me?
A month that I now fear I was very much mistaken in allowing you to have?
More than you spending all your time with another man—who you’ve not only tried to make out is nothing more than ‘just a friend,’ but who you now announce you would rather spend Valentine’s Day with than me?
There’s more to it than that, Scarlett?”
“Yes, David, there is.”
“Well let’s hear it then, because I’m sure this will be very illuminating. ”
“Why don’t we go back to our room? You can get dried off, and then we can talk as much as you like.”
David looked down at the puddle around his feet.
He doesn’t look anywhere near as good wet as Sean did …
I shook my head—I had to stop these comparisons, they were almost as bad as my movie ones.
“No, Scarlett,” David said, staring angrily at me. “I think I want to hear everything right now, before you have time to think up more excuses for your behavior. You at least owe me that.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I said, and I told David as quickly as I could about what had been going on with my mother, how Sean and I had been chasing leads all over the place, and why I now really needed to go with him into Paris tomorrow. By the time I had finished, he was starting to look very cold.
“David, let’s go inside and finish talking about this. You’ll catch pneumonia if you continue to stand out here soaking wet.”
“Just answer me three questions,” David said, appearing not to hear me. “Do you love me, Scarlett?”
“Yes, of course I do. What sort—”
David cut me short. “Do you love him ?”
“Who? You mean Sean?”
David nodded.
My mouth went dry and I swallowed hard. “No.”
“Do you love your father?”
“What the hell sort of question is that? Of course I do!”
“Then leave it, Scarlett. Leave this whole notion of finding your mother alone. You’ll only end up getting hurt. And you’re going to end up hurting others too.”
I thought about what he’d just said. “What do you mean, people are going to get hurt? Are you talking about Dad and me if I find my mother? Or me and you if I go with Sean to find her?”
“Everyone, Scarlett—this whole process is going to end in heartbreak somewhere along the line. This started out as a simple—but now I see stupid—idea for you to have some time away, to ‘get your head together,’ I think was the exact phrase put to me. And it’s now escalated into this quite mad notion you’re going to find your mother.
And what if you do, Scarlett? What if you find her and she doesn’t want anything to do with you?
She didn’t all those years ago. Have you thought about that?
How you’re going to feel if she rejects you all over again? ”
I hadn’t even considered that possibility in all my euphoria.
“How will your father feel if by some chance she wants to be a part of your life once more? Have you thought about what that would do to him?”
I shook my head.
“No, I thought not. And have you thought about how I’m feeling in all this, when you, the woman I’m going to marry in a few weeks, is running around the country with another man? Have you ever stopped to think for one moment how that might make me feel? Have you?”
I hung my head and looked at the ground.
“When are you going to start realizing, Scarlett, this isn’t a movie you’re in now—this is real life, real people, and there might not be a happy ending if you continue messing with our lives like this.”
I looked up at David. He’d given it to me straight, and he was right. Everything he’d said had been true, and I hadn’t ever stopped to consider it.
“But what if I don’t see this through, David? I might never find out if I can have that happy ending with my mum. And that’s all I really want, to be happy, and to know that I did everything I could to give myself the chance to be.”
David shook his head despairingly. “If I hadn’t given my word to your father…” he muttered.
“What do you mean? What did you say to him?”
“It’s not what I said to him , Scarlett—it’s what he said to me.”
“I don’t understand. Explain yourself, David.”
“I can’t. I gave him my word when I went to see him that I wouldn’t get involved in this.
And against my better judgment, that’s just what I’m not going to do.
” He straightened himself up. “Scarlett, you win—I trust you. Go to Paris with Sean tomorrow—go to the moon with him for all I care. Just promise me you’ll be at that church, by my side, in April.
You do still want that, don’t you, for us to be married? ”
“I do, David,” I said, solemnly looking into his eyes. “Really, I do. I just need to do this one thing first.”
“Then that’s all I want, Scarlett. For you to be there that day, saying those same words to me.”
“David, I promise you that on our wedding day I’ll be in London, in my wedding dress, saying the words I do.”