Page 103 of The House on Sunset Lake

‘I hope you’re not blaming yourself.’ She tried to catch his eye but he would not let her fix her gaze on his. ‘It’s not your fault, Jim,’ she said.

‘Look, Jen, I don’t want to be rude, but I should get some sleep. I was at the hospital eighteen hours straight and I have to be back by eleven o’clock so I can swap shifts with my mum.’

She nodded tightly, then her face softened and she reached out and touched his shoulder, stroked the cotton of his shirt.

‘I’m here if you need me.’

‘Thank you,’ he said crisply.

She headed for the door, then turned back.

‘It doesn’t matter, not now, but you should know that I’ve left Connor.’

She paused as if she was waiting for an answer, then opened the door.

‘The argument was about you,’ he said.

She closed the door slowly. He instantly regretted saying anything. But it was done, and it needed to be said. Her expression was like stone until her lip began to quiver. Right then he wanted her to feel pain. The pain he had felt, that his father had felt.

‘Me?’ she said finally.

He inhaled sharply, wiped his dry lips with the palm of his hand.

‘I read his book. College. The first draft. The one he started when he was in Savannah. And the character, the beautiful brunette, she had a mole. A diamond-shaped mole, just like yours.’

He looked at her but she remained quiet. A tiny tear glistened in the corner of one eye.

‘He told me what happened. I know it didn’t mean anything and I understand that he’s an irresistible man,’ he said with a note of sarcasm. ‘But you have to understand how it hurt me and I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be for me to get past it. Not now.’

Her lips were pressed together, full, trembling.

‘We shouldn’t let what happened twenty years ago spoil things between us again.’

‘How can it not?’ said Jim, feeling his own emotions rise again at her tacit admission. ‘How could you do that to me? I was in love with you.’

The tear had escaped and was trickling down her cheek.

Jim shook his head. ‘Why does everything have to be so difficult between us?’

‘It doesn’t have to be,’ she said, inhaling audibly. ‘Please, Jim. Let’s talk about it.’

‘Just get out,’ he said quietly. ‘If you care about my feelings at all, just go.’

She nodded and walked with purpose out of the apartment, not looking back. As Jim listened to the fading sound of her footsteps in the stairwell, he heard another noise – the insistent ringing of his mobile phone.

He snatched it up. At first he heard nothing, just a cavernous silence, and then the small and defeated voice of his mother, uttering the words, ‘Your father is dead.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

Casa D’Or was finished. The paintwork gleamed, the marble shone and the linens on the king-sized beds practically crackled when you lay on them. The old house was almost unrecognisable from the sagging wreck Jim had seen that day he had bumped down the driveway. All those potholes had been filled, of course, the trees forming the avenue expertly trimmed, the gardens primped and planted to look as if an army of gardeners had been carefully tending to the grounds since the twenties. Not that Jim was seeing any of that. There was less than thirty-six hours to go before the bells-and-whistles party to launch the resort was due to begin, and there were a thousand things to see to before then: the wine, the catering, the crooner who would serenade the VIP guests as they arrived, and who was currently stuck in Reykjavik.

In the six weeks since his father’s death, Jim had let work be his saviour.

He had returned to London for his father’s funeral and sp

ent a week’s compassionate leave with his mother. Simon Desai had been incredibly understanding and had told him to take as long as he wanted. But Elizabeth’s sister and brother-in-law had moved into the Hampstead house to be with her, and when she had insisted that he return to America, Jim had decided it was for the best.

‘Just go and finish that property,’ she had said when she had waved goodbye to him at the airport. He knew exactly what she meant. He wanted to put it all behind him, and had thrown himself into the final preparations for the Casa D’Or launch with a fervour that even the most zealous workaholic would have found tiring.