Page 81 of The House on Sunset Lake

‘But she was dead.’

‘That’s right. And if it wasn’t for me, she might still be alive. I hated myself because of what happened that night,’ she said quietly. ‘I also knew that if I had you in my life, if I was constantly reminded of why I was fighting with my mother that night on the stairs, I wouldn’t just keep on hating myself, I’d end up hating you too. And I never wanted that.’

She puffed out her cheeks and didn’t look at him.

‘Over the years I’ve made my own sort of peace with what happened. As for me and you, we had a perfect summer, a perfect love affair frozen in time. Because if you hadn’t left Savannah, if we had stayed together, we’d have ended up like all those couples in Domina who don’t have anything to say to each other except their thoughts about the tasting menu. As it is, we were and always will be incredible.’

‘Is that what you honestly think? Has life really made you that cynical?’ he said passionately. ‘We were perfect for each other.’

‘I’m married, Jim,’ she said, the tone of her voice hardening. ‘Connor loves me. He’s always been so good to me.’

‘And I never had the chance,’ Jim replied with passion.

He paused before he proceeded.

‘I know about the pregnancy,’ he said finally. He knew he might never get another chance to say everything he wanted to say to her, but he hadn’t been able to forget what Connor had revealed in Baruda. ‘Connor told me. He told me about the abortion.’

‘He never should have done that,’ she said, her voice hardening as a tear slipped down her cheek.

Jim reached over to touch her hand, but as she flinched away, Jim felt a wave of sorrow that made him lose his breath. A sorrow for what was, what they had lost and what never could be.

‘You’d better go,’ Jennifer said. ‘My husband will be back soon.’

‘Jen, please. We’ve waited twenty years to talk about this.’

‘Just go,’ she repeated, her voice getting even more steely.

Jim nodded grimly at the irony of it, at the painful reality of history repeating itself, and left the house without another word.

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘So do you think you can pull it off?’ Jim looked at Nina Scott

, one of New York’s top travel industry publicists as she sat in the boardroom outlining her plans for the Casa D’Or launch in November.

‘I can pull off the best launch party of the millennium if you can promise me the place is going to be finished in time. I’ve been burned too many times by hoteliers wanting the big splash but having to settle for a soft launch because the swimming pool hasn’t been tiled.’

‘It will be finished,’ said Jim with determination. ‘Everything is on schedule. All I need is for you to get me lots of big celebrity names and acres of lovely media coverage. If you do, there’s a presidential suite at any of the Omari hotels with your name on it for a night.’

‘Well, I’ve put out some feelers and people are already biting my hand off for an invite. I thought it might be a question of who we can get down to Savannah, but I think it’s going to be how many people we have to let down.’

‘Seems Simon was right about the number of people with Scarlett O’Hara fantasies,’ said Jim, flicking through the media pack.

‘Speaking of feisty belles,’ added Nina, ‘an agent from Elan Models called me up yesterday. Seems they’ve got wind of the party and Celine Wood, a very old friend of yours apparently, wants to know if she can be on the guest list. She said to call her.’

‘Did she now?’ said Jim, smiling as he sipped his coffee.

‘An old friend, hey?’

‘Not like that.’

‘I wondered. I don’t doubt how popular you are with the ladies, although I read in People magazine the other day that she’s going out with Richie Hawkins, the rock star, now. So long as you don’t have any emotional objections, I can put him down as her plus one.’

‘Mr Johnson, I have your ten o’clock call holding,’ said Jim’s executive assistant, popping her head around the door.

‘Put him through to my office in a moment,’ replied Jim, finishing off his coffee.

He wound up his meeting with Nina and went back to his office. He had always wondered what it would be like to be the boss, and had figured it would be an easy life of long lunches and hand-shaking deals. In reality he sometimes felt like a juggler, keeping all these balls in the air, switching lanes from one project to another.