Her Best Worst Mistake Read online

  Funny, but he’d always wanted to go to Australia. As a kid, his mother had been an avid viewer of Australian soap operas, and he couldn’t hear the familiar theme song to Neighbours without being transported back to the cramped flat where he’d grown up. Shirley St Clair had loved the wide blue skies and the brightness of life in Australia as depicted on the show and every day she’d sit ensconced in her armchair, the tea pot in its cosy at the ready, him at her feet as they watched half an hour of pure fiction about a world that even then he’d known was too good to be true. Still, it had made him want to go and see for himself. In the back of his mind, he’d thought that it was something he and Elizabeth might do together one day.

  He felt tired and grubby by the time he stepped into the cool pre-dawn of a Melbourne summer’s day some twenty-four hours later. He’d booked a hire car on-line and he made his way to the kiosk and filled out the required paperwork. Half an hour later he was on the road, squinting at road signs and trying to get his bearings.

  Philip Island was an hour and a half’s drive out of Melbourne. He stopped twice for coffee, and it was nearing nine in the morning when he pulled into a parking spot in the sleepy seaside town of Cowes on Philip Island. To his left was a silvered wooden jetty, thrusting into sparkling blue water, to his right a series of beach-themed boutiques selling bikinis and beach towels and board shorts. He flipped the visor down to check his appearance. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a mess, his shirt wrinkled and limp. He smoothed his hair with his fingers before flipping the visor back up. It didn’t matter that his clothes were wrinkled and his eyes bloodshot. Neither of those things was going to convince Elizabeth to come home with him.

  Loathe to leave his valuables in the car in a strange town, he took both his overnight bag and his briefcase with him as he headed for the Isle of Wight Hotel. The girl behind the counter was very young, which was perhaps why she was happy to hand out Elizabeth’s room number to a complete stranger.

  He glanced around the main bar as he followed her directions to the stairs that would take him to the first floor. The carpet was sticky beneath his feet and the air smelled of old beer and cooking oil. A tanned, heavyset man with sun-bleached hair raised a friendly hand to him as he passed the bar. Martin nodded in acknowledgement before stepping onto the staircase.

  He paused when he reached Elizabeth’s room, aware that his heart was pounding inside his chest.

  He loved her. He loved her kindness and her patience and her quiet determination. He loved her elegance and discreet dignity. She was one of the best people he knew. He needed her in his life.

  He needed to make this work between them. Otherwise everything he’d strived for would be for nothing and no one.

  He raised his hand and knocked. There was a moment’s silence, then he heard someone moving around on the other side of the door.

  He took a deep breath, waiting. Hoping.

  And then the door opened.

  Violet agonized for a full day over how to tell Elizabeth what she’d done and finally settled for the coward’s way—email. She sat down to compose a message three times before finally simply confessing that she’d blabbed to D.D.—short for Droopy Drawers—and that she was sorry for being such a feeble friend but that he’d been so insistent and sad that she’d felt unable to deny him. She’d hit send and sat back to wait for her friend’s response.

  It took two days before Elizabeth’s reply arrived in her in-box—two days of Violet sweating it out and feeling like the worst friend ever.

  It’s okay, Vi. You did the right thing. I didn’t mean for you to get caught in the middle of all this. Martin turned up on my doorstep a couple of days ago. We talked. I hope we parted as friends. I guess time will tell. Will write more when I can.

  Love you,

  E

  Violet frowned at her laptop screen. Was it just her, or was Elizabeth’s account of what had happened woefully inadequate? Where was Martin now, for example? Had he come home again? When was Elizabeth coming home? Maybe Violet was reading way too much into her friend’s economical email, but she sensed that there was something else going on with her friend. Something unrelated to both Martin and her father.

  The shop bell tingled and she glanced up to see a tall, broad shouldered figure filling the doorway. The sun was directly behind him, reducing him to a silhouette, and her heart gave a crazy, nervous thump against her rib cage.

  “Martin?” she said.

  The moment he stepped into the light she saw it wasn’t Martin. Disappointment thudded in her belly.

  “Excuse me. Can you tell me where I would find the nearest Tube Station?” he asked with a broad American accent.

  “End of the street, turn right. You should see the sign on your left.”

  “Thank you. Have a great day.”

  The polite smile faded from her lips as he exited. She had no idea why she’d thought he might have been Martin, why Martin had been the first person to leap to mind when she’d seen that tall, broad silhouette in the doorway. There was no way Martin would ever turn up at her shop voluntarily. He despised her. He thought she was a bad influence on Elizabeth. Hell, he probably blamed her for everything that had happened with her friend.

  Not so many days ago, Elizabeth had told her that she needn’t bother getting hot under the collar about Martin any more, since she never had to see him again. Violet should have been grateful for the knowledge. She should be celebrating even now that she would never have to look into his condemning grey eyes again.

  So why wasn’t she?

  Martin’s footsteps echoed around the empty space as he walked from the formal dining room into the kitchen. He glanced around the room at the gleaming white cabinets and Carrera marble counters, then crossed to the window to see if the sash had been repaired, as per his instructions.

  Not that it mattered. He would never live in this apartment. He’d bought it for Elizabeth. He’d planned to surprise her with the purchase when they returned from their honeymoon. He’d searched for months for just the right property. The right neighborhood, the right proportions. He’d had the whole place repainted, taking his cues from Elizabeth’s grandparents’ stately Mayfair mansion.

  He’d been deluded. He could see that now. What woman wanted a house she hadn’t chosen for herself? Better yet, what woman wanted a house that had been decorated to someone else’s taste?

  The window moved smoothly, indicating the sash cords had been replaced. He let the window thump back down to the sill.

  He should go home. It was late, and there was no point to this. He was simply rubbing salt into the wound. Tomorrow he would call the real estate agent and put this place on the market. With a bit of luck, he’d get his money back. That was what he should be concentrating on right now.

  There was nowhere to sit, so he sat on the floor, his back against one of the kitchen cabinets, feet flat on the floor, knees bent. He rested his forearms on his knees and stared down the hallway to the front door, ignoring the fact that he was probably getting dust on his suit.

  He didn’t know how to feel, what to do with himself. For so long his future had stretched in front of him like this hallway—straight and clean and utterly known. He’d known exactly what he needed to do—build his reputation at Whittaker, Malcolm and Venables, make partner, solidify his position in the world. Elizabeth had been an integral part of that, the woman he’d imagined at his side as he took the steps required to get him to where he wanted to be.

  As it turned out, where he’d wanted to be was not where she’d wanted to be. Funny, but he’d never thought to even ask her.

  Just as he’d never thought to ask her if she would like to live in this house, with these paint colors.

  He lowered his head and massaged the small muscle between his eyebrows. He’d been an idiot. A blind, foolish idiot. And he’d paid the price. He’d lost Elizabeth.

  The woman you think you want to marry doesn’t exist. She’s a construct, cobbled together by my over-de
veloped sense of duty and your desire to be connected to a man who in many respects has filled the role of father in your life. I would make a terrible, terrible wife for you.

  Elizabeth’s words from three days ago echoed in his mind. At the time, he had denied them. Hadn’t wanted to hear what she’d been saying. He’d been driven by fear and pride, determined to bring her home with him. They were supposed to walk down the aisle barely six weeks from today. All their friends were invited to the wedding, along with the most important of his work colleagues. If—when—they called the wedding off, the fact that Elizabeth had jilted him would be common knowledge. People would talk and snicker behind their hands. There would be speculation. He would be a laughing stock. A man who couldn’t hold onto his woman.

  Even as humiliation rose afresh within him, he knew that the blow he’d taken to his pride was the least of his problems. More important to him was the fact that Elizabeth had been frustrated and stifled by him and the life they’d planned together.

  He’d made her unhappy, and he hadn’t seen it. She’d hidden it from him, toed the line, agreed to everything, and yet inside she had been suffocating.

  Not my fault. She’s a grown woman. She could have spoken up. Told me what she wanted, how she felt. We were supposed to be equals, after all.

  He pushed himself to his feet. Brushing dust off the seat of his pants, he strode for the front door.

  He couldn’t leave his thoughts behind so easily. They caught up with him as he got into his car.

  Because Elizabeth had tried to talk to him—and he’d ignored her. Not so many months ago, she’d waited until they were having a quiet night in and she’d told him in a nervous, self-conscious way that she’d like to experiment more in the bedroom. She’d told him that she wanted to spice things up between them, try something new.

  And he’d been so uncomfortable with what she’d asked that he’d shut her down. Self-conscious heat burned through his body as he recalled the way he’d dismissed her suggestions. He’d all but patted her on the head and told her not to worry herself about such matters in his rush to end the conversation.

  It wasn’t as though she’d asked for anything ridiculously kinky, either. Certainly nothing he hadn’t done with his other girlfriends. Her sexual fantasies had been very vanilla, very tame by modern standards—and yet the thought of throwing her on a bed and taking her from behind had felt as decadent and out of the question for him as if she’d asked him to beat her bloody and watch her sleep with ten different men.

  At the time he hadn’t stopped to question why, but Elizabeth had, as she’d so eloquently demonstrated when she gently but firmly severed the ties that bound them three days ago.

  Let’s call a spade a spade here. For better or for worse, I’m fixed in your mind as the granddaughter of the man you respect more than any other person in the world. You said it yourself—you owe him everything. When you look at me, you see the granddaughter of Edward Whittaker first and me second.

  As much as he wanted to repudiate her view of their relationship, her words had resonated within him.

  Twenty years ago, he’d made a vow to himself that he would not repeat his parents’ mistakes. He had been determined to make it out of the cycle of poverty and ignorance into which he’d been born. He’d stuck with school when his peers had dropped out. He’d ignored the lures of drugs and drink and girls, even though the council estate had been rife with distractions and temptations and even though his mother had been baffled by his determination to better himself.

  He hadn’t been the brightest kid in his class, but he’d worked his ass off, studying and cramming until he’d aced his A Levels. When he’d first walked into Wren Library at Trinity College, he’d looked around and known without a doubt that he was the roughest, poorest kid in the building. He’d earned himself a partial scholarship to cover his tuition but missed out on a Government grant for living expenses, so he’d worked two jobs as well as doing everything in his power to make himself an attractive prospect for a future employer. He’d listened to the presenters on the BBC and practiced until he’d smoothed out his rough North London accent, and he’d watched where the more well-heeled of his peers shopped and parroted them. In short, he had reinvented himself—as much as a man could when he was on the outside looking in. It had taken a long-established insider like Edward Whittaker taking an interest in him to complete his transformation. Under Edward’s guidance he’d shed the last of his rough edges and gained the polish that allowed him to pass as someone born and bred to success. To this day he didn’t know why the older man had taken an interest in him—perhaps because he’d never had a son of his own, just as Martin had never had a father—but whatever his motivation, Edward had made his current life possible, and the prospect of becoming part of the old man’s family through marrying Elizabeth had held enormous appeal for him, as had Elizabeth herself.

  She was a million miles from the girls he’d grown up with. She always knew the right thing to say or do. She was beautiful, refined, elegant. Her love had been the final seal on his success.

  And it had all been a house of cards, his facade balanced precariously on Elizabeth’s.

  Sitting in his car, he stared bleakly out the windshield.

  Elizabeth had had the courageto call bullshit on all the pretense, but he’d been so invested, so desperate to belong that he’d been prepared to play a part for the rest of his life.

  You sad, pathetic, when-will-I-be-good-enough bastard.

  For a moment he was gripped with the urge to start the car and simply drive away from it all. The life he’d created for himself. The career he’d so arduously built. The friends, the clubs. He could drive and drive and drive until he was somewhere else. And maybe he could start again. Do it differently this time.

  After a long beat, he started his car and drove home. The truth was, he’d fought too hard and too long to make this life. Like it or not, it still meant too much to him. Maybe that made him weak or tragic or grasping, but it was the truth.

  Now he just had to work out what to do with it.

  Violet blew onto her cupped hands. She was wearing gloves, but it was dark and cold and threatening snow and she was freezing her derriere off in the street outside the offices of Whittaker, Malcolm and Venables.

  She checked her watch again.

  Where in the hell was he?

  She jiggled from one foot to the other, the heavy weight of the bottle of Belgian peach schnapps in her shoulder bag banging against her hip. Not for the first time she wondered what she was doing, lurking out here in the dark, waiting for a man who showed every indication of genuinely despising her.

  Not for the first time, she had no ready answer.

  The obvious reason was that she felt sorry for Martin. She knew how much he loved Elizabeth, and she knew that things were over between the two of them, which meant he was probably feeling more than a little sorry for himself and perhaps more than a little angry over the shitty hand he’d been dealt.

  She knew for a fact that he’d only landed back in the country two days ago, and she’d made an educated guess that instead of taking a few days off to recover from jet-lag and lick his wounds, he would march straight into work like a good little soldier. As though his heart wasn’t broken and he wasn’t miserable and sad and lonely.

  Idiot.

  She blew on her hands again. A figure appeared in the doorway of the very old, very genteel building where Elizabeth’s grandfather and former-fiancé plied their trade. She tensed but as he stepped out into the street she saw that he was too old to be Martin.

  Although they probably patronized the same tailor, judging by his stuffy attire.

  She looked up at the building, eyeing the one window that was still illuminated. She imagined Martin bent over some dusty legal tome, burying himself in precedents and caveats and whatevers because he didn’t know how to deal with his own feelings. He could be in there forever. For all she knew, he might be the kind of tragic workaho
lic who slept on the couch in his office rather than go home and be forced to face his own life.

  She made a decision, crossing the street to stand outside the front entrance of his building. Two minutes later, her hopes were answered as a severely dressed woman exited through the security door. Trying to look as though she knew exactly what she was doing and where she was going, Violet caught the door before it could close behind the woman and ducked into the foyer. The dry warmth of central heating hit her, warming her cheeks, and she unbuttoned her coat.

  Now there was only the small problem of working out what floor Martin’s office might be on. She crossed to the elevator and stared at the brass plaque. She knew that Martin worked in insolvency, but it looked like there were two floors dedicated to the joys of people going out of business. With the economy the way it was, they were probably eyeing a third floor.

  She stepped into the lift, hitting the buttons for both floors. She stared at the indicator and tried to ignore the voice in the back of her head that was telling her this was a bad idea.

  As she’d already acknowledged, Martin hated her. He thought she was easy, spoiled and vacuous. Not that he’d said any of those things to her face—although he had made that crack about the Playboy catalogue. His contempt was in every glance he threw her way, in every word he said to her.

  And yet here she was, a peace offering banging against her hip.

  She must be mad.

  The lift pinged to a halt and she ducked her head out. From what she could see, there wasn’t a single light on throughout the whole floor. Onwards and upwards, then.

  The lift doors slid shut and she tapped her foot nervously. Another ping and the doors opened again. She stuck her head out. Ah. A light. Finally.